d
even a beggar, to tell the strange stories which the common people
relate; tho' it could not fail of being a very lucrative post, were it
only from the bounty of strangers, who visit it out of curiosity; but a
Frenchman, whether monk, or mumper, has no idea of a life of solitude:
yet I am sure, were it in England, there are many of our, _first-rate
beggars_, who would lay down a large sum for a money of _such a walk_.
If a moiety of sweeping the kennel from the Mews-gate to the Irish
coffee-house opposite to it, could fetch a good price, and I was a
witness once that it did, to an unfortunate beggar-woman, who was
obliged by sickness to part with half of it; what might not a beggar
expect, who had the _sweeping_ of the _Pont du Gard_; or a monk, who
erected a confessional box near it for the benefit of _himself_, and the
fouls of poor travellers?

After examining every part of the bridge, above and below, I could not
find the least traces of any ancient inscription, except three initial
letters, C, P, A; but I found cut in _demi relief_ very extraordinary
kind of _priapus_, or rather group of them; the country people, for it
is much effaced, imagine it to be dogs in pursuit of a hare; but if I
may be permitted to _imagine_ too perhaps, indeed, with no better
judgment, might not the kind of representations be emblematical of the
populousness, of the country? though more probably the wanton fancies of
the master mason, or his journeymen; for they are too diminutive pieces
of work to bear any proportion to the whole, and are therefore
blemishes, not ornaments, even allowing that in those ages such kind of
works were not considered in the light they would be in these days of
more delicacy and refinement.

LETTER X.

NISMES.

I have now been here some time, and have employed most of it, in
visiting daily the _Maison Carree_, the _Amphitheatre_, the Temple of
_Diana_, and other Roman remains, which this town abounds with above all
others in France, and which is all the town affords worthy of notice,
(for it is but a very indifferent one.) The greater part of the
inhabitants are Protestants, who meet publicly between two rocks, at a
little distance from the city, every Sunday, sometimes not less than
eighteen thousand, where their pastors, openly and audibly, perform
divine service, according to the rites of the reformed church: Such is
the difference between the mild government of _Louis_ the 16th, and that
wh