rt, "Je vois que vous etes lye monsieur,
parceque vous mangez beaucoup de tout!" From Frejus Smollett proceeds
to Toulon, repeating the old epigram that "the king of France is
greater at Toulon than at Versailles." The weather is so pleasant that
the travellers enjoy a continual concert of "nightingales" from Vienne
to Fontainebleau. The "douche" of Aix-les-Bains having been explained,
Smollett and his party proceeded agreeably to Avignon, where by one of
the strange coincidences of travel he met his old voiturier Joseph "so
embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois." In
spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are still in the
ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of good advice. Above
all, he adjures us when travelling never to omit to carry a hammer and
nails, a crowbar, an iron pin or two, a large knife, and a bladder of
grease. Why not a lynch pin, which we were so carefully instructed how
to inquire about in Murray's Conversation for Travellers?

But-the history of his troublous travels is drawing to an end. From
Lyons the route is plain through Macon, Chalons, Dijon, Auxerre, Sells,
and Fontainebleau--the whole itinerary almost exactly anticipates that
of Talfourd's Vacation Tour one hundred and ten years later, except
that on the outward journey Talfourd sailed down the Rhone.

Smollett's old mental grievances and sores have been shifted and to
some extent, let us hope, dissipated by his strenuous journeyings, and
in June 1765, after an absence of two years, he is once more enabled to
write,

"You cannot imagine what pleasure I feel while I survey the white
cliffs of Dover at this distance [from Boulogne]. Not that I am at all
affected by the nescio qua dulcedine natalis soli of Horace.

"That seems to be a kind of fanaticism, founded on the prejudices of
education, which induces a Laplander to place the terrestrial paradise
among the snows of Norway, and a Swiss to prefer the barren mountains
of Soleure to the fruitful plains of Lombardy. I am attached to my
country, because it is the land of liberty, cleanliness, and
convenience; but I love it still more tenderly, as the scene of all my
interesting connections, as the habitation of my friends, for whose
conversation, correspondence, and esteem I wish alone to live."

For the time being it cannot be doubted that the hardships Smollett had
to undergo on his Italian journey, by sea and land, and the violent
passions