a
people admirably adapted by nature to become a kind of territorial
coinage alternately paid over by one great State to another, as the
balance of Europe inclines to this side or that; with industry enough
always to be worth robbing, and with a territory perfectly suitable to
pitched battles--two admirable reasons for Belgium being a species of
Houns-low Heath or Wormwood Scrubs, as the nations of the Continent feel
disposed for theft or fighting. It was a cruel joke, however, to make
them into a nation. One gets tired of laughing at them at last; and even
Sancho's Island of Barataria had become a nuisance, were it long-lived.

Well, I must hasten away now. I can't go back to the 'France' yet
awhile, so I'll even take to the road. But what road? that's the
question. What a luxury it would be, to be sure, to have some person of
exquisite taste, who could order dinner every day in the year, arranging
the carte by a physiognomical study of your countenance, and plan out
your route by some innate sense of your desires. Arthur O'Leary has none
such, however, his whole philosophy in life being to throw the reins on
the hack Fortune's neck, and let the jade take her own way. Not that he
has had any reason to regret his mode of travel. No: his nag has carried
him pleasantly on through life, now cantering softly over the even turf,
now picking her way more cautiously among bad ground and broken pebbles;
and if here and there an occasional side leap or a start has put him out
of saddle, it has scarcely put him out of temper; for one great
secret has he at least learned--and, after all, it's one worth
remembering--very few of the happiest events and pleasantest
circumstances in our lives have not their origin in some incident,
which, had we been able, we had prevented happening. So then, while
taking your mare Chance over a stiff country, be advised by me: give her
plenty of head, sit close, and when you come to a 'rasper,' let her take
her own way over it. So convinced am I of the truth of this axiom, that
I should not die easy if I had not told it. And now, if anything should
prevent these Fragments being printed, I leave a clause in my will
to provide for three O'Leary treatises, to establish this fact being
written, for which my executors are empowered to pay five pounds
sterling for each. Why, were it not for this, I had been married, say
at the least some fourteen times, in various quarters of the globe, and
might have had