y object, every custom was offensive; but the
native of any country might have been disgusted with the general
aspect of his lodging and entertainment. I had now exchanged my elegant
apartment in Magdalen College, for a narrow, gloomy street, the most
unfrequented of an unhandsome town, for an old inconvenient house,
and for a small chamber ill-contrived and ill-furnished, which, on the
approach of Winter, instead of a companionable fire, must be warmed by
the dull invisible heat of a stove. From a man I was again degraded to
the dependence of a schoolboy. Mr. Pavilliard managed my expences,
which had been reduced to a diminutive state: I received a small monthly
allowance for my pocket-money; and helpless and awkward as I have ever
been, I no longer enjoyed the indispensable comfort of a servant. My
condition seemed as destitute of hope, as it was devoid of pleasure: I
was separated for an indefinite, which appeared an infinite term from my
native country; and I had lost all connexion with my catholic friends.
I have since reflected with surprise, that as the Romish clergy of every
part of Europe maintain a close correspondence with each other, they
never attempted, by letters or messages, to rescue me from the hands
of the heretics, or at least to confirm my zeal and constancy in the
profession of the faith. Such was my first introduction to Lausanne; a
place where I spent nearly five years with pleasure and profit, which
I afterwards revisited without compulsion, and which I have finally
selected as the most grateful retreat for the decline of my life.

But it is the peculiar felicity of youth that the most unpleasing
objects and events seldom make a deep or lasting impression; it forgets
the past, enjoys the present, and anticipates the future. At the
flexible age of sixteen I soon learned to endure, and gradually to
adopt, the new forms of arbitrary manners: the real hardships of my
situation were alienated by time. Had I been sent abroad in a more
splendid style, such as the fortune and bounty of my father might have
supplied, I might have returned home with the same stock of language
and science, which our countrymen usually import from the Continent.
An exile and a prisoner as I was, their example betrayed me into some
irregularities of wine, of play, and of idle excursions: but I soon felt
the impossibility of associating with them on equal terms; and after
the departure of my first acquaintance, I held a cold a