or. I can commend the zeal of the
newly-appointed Librarian in Chief; but must be permitted to question
alike his judgment and his motives.

One more brief remark in this place. My translator should seem to
commend what is only laudatory, in the original author, respecting his
countrymen. Sensitively alive to the notice of their smallest defects,
he has the most unbounded powers of digestion for that of their
excellences. Thus, at the foot of the ABOVE PASSAGE, in the text,
Mons. Licquet is pleased to add as follows--in a note: "Si M. Dibdin
ne s'etait livre qu'a des digressions de cette nature, il aurait
trouve en France un chorus universel, un concert de voeux unanimes:"
vol. i. p. 239. And yet few travellers have experienced a more cordial
reception, and maintained a more _harmonious_ intercourse, than
HE, who, from the foregoing quotation, is more than indirectly
supposed to have provoked opposition and _discord!_]

LETTER IX.

DEPARTURE FROM ROUEN. ST. GEORGE DE BOSCHERVILLE. DUCLAIR. MARIVAUX. THE
ABBEY OF JUMIEGES. ARRIVAL AT CAUDEBEC.

_May_, 1818.

MY DEAR FRIEND.

In spite of all its grotesque beauties and antiquarian attractions, the
CITY OF ROUEN must be quitted--and I am about to pursue my route more in
the character of an independent traveller. No more _Diligence_, or
_Conducteur_. I have hired a decent cabriolet, a decent pair of horses, and
a yet more promising postilion: and have already made a delightfully rural
migration. Adieu therefore to dark avenues, gloomy courts, overhanging
roofs, narrow streets, cracking whips, the never-ceasing noise of carts and
carriages, and never-ending movements of countless masses of
population:--Adieu!--and in their stead, welcome be the winding road, the
fertile meadow, the thickly-planted orchard, and the broad and sweeping
Seine!

Accordingly, on the 4th of this month, between the hours of ten and eleven,
A.M. the rattling of horses' hoofs, and the echoes of a postilion's whip,
were heard within the court-yard of the _Hotel Vatel_. Monsieur, Madame,
Jacques--and the whole fraternity of domestics, were on the alert--"pour
faire les adieux a Messieurs les Anglois." This Jacques deserves somewhat
of a particular notice. He is the prime minister of the Hotel Vatel.[78] A
somewhat _uncomfortable_ detention in England for five years, in the
character of "prisoner of war," has made him master of a pr