avily
caparisoned horse, shaking his head amidst a Babel-tower of gaudy worsted
tassels and brass bells--the deeply laden waggon, creeping slowly
along--are all in keeping with a scene, where the very mist that rises
from the valley seems indolent and lazy, and unwilling to impart the rich
perfume of verdure with which it is loaded. Every land has its own
peculiar character of beauty. The glaciered mountain, the Alpine peak,
the dashing cataract of Switzerland and the Tyrol, are not finer in their
way than the long flat moorlands of a Flemish landscape, with its clump
of stunted willows cloistering over some limpid brook, in which the oxen
are standing for shelter from the noon-day heat--while, lower down, some
rude water-wheel is mingling its sounds with the summer bees and the
merry voices of the miller and his companions. So strayed my thoughts as
the German shook me by the arm, and asked if "I were not ready for my
breakfast?" Luckily to this question there is rarely but the one answer.
Who is not ready for his breakfast when on the road? How delightful, if
on the continent, to escape from the narrow limits of the dungeon-like
diligence, where you sit with your knees next your collar-bone, fainting
with heat and suffocated by dust, and find yourself suddenly beside the
tempting "plats" of a little French dejeune, with its cutlets, its fried
fish, its poulet, its salad, and its little entre of fruit, tempered with
a not despicable bottle of Beaune. If in England, the exchange is nearly
as grateful--for though our travelling be better, and our equipage less
"genante," still it is no small alterative from the stage-coach to the
inn parlour, redolent of aromatic black tea, eggs, and hot toast, with a
hospitable side-board of red, raw surloins, and York hams, that would
made a Jew's mouth water. While, in America, the change is greatest of
all, as any one can vouch for who has been suddenly emancipated from the
stove-heat of a "nine-inside" leathern "conveniency," bumping ten miles
an hour over a corduroy road, the company smoking, if not worse; to the
ample display of luxurious viands displayed upon the breakfast-table,
where, what with buffalo steaks, pumpkin pie, gin cock-tail, and other
aristocratically called temptations, he must be indeed fastidious who
cannot employ his half-hour. Pity it is, when there is so much good to
eat, that people will not partake of it like civilized beings, and with
that air of che