rface of the
time, and look into what is growing below."

"Well, well," replied my honest fellow soldier, "I never perplex my
brain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right;
at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it, that
musket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that discipline
and my old master Frederick, will be as good as Dumourier and
desperation, when we shall have brigade for brigade."

The postillions cracked their whips, the little Norman horses tore
their way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered off
on every side, to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of St
Denis, rich with golden corn, and tracked by lines of stately trees,
opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a
_parting_ glance at Paris--it was mingled of rejoicing and regret.
What hours of interest, of novelty, and of terror, had I not passed
within the circuit of those walls! Yet, how the eye cheats
reality!--that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty, of royal
sorrow and of popular exultation, now looked a vast circle of calm
and stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Across
that plain, luxuriant with harvest, surrounded with those soft hills,
and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening, it looked a
paradise. I knew it--a pendemonium!

I speeded on--every thing was animated and animating in my journey.
It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; the
prospects--as I swept down valley and rushed round hill, with the
insolent speed of a government _employe_, leaving all meaner
vehicles, travellers, and the whole workday world behind--seemed to
be to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of its
colouring was my own! Was _I_ not _free?_ was I not _returning to
England?_ was I not approaching scenes, and forms, and the realities
of those recollections, which, even in the field of battle, and at
the foot of the scaffold, had alternately cheered and pained,
delighted and distressed me?--yet which, even with all their
anxieties, were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was I
not about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne?
was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to see
those relatives who were to shape so large a share of my future
happiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men, with whose
renown the courts and even the camps of Europe were alr