ed, one of the Lions of the Town; the room is splendid in size, and
everybody goes to see it. It is open 3 times a day for about 2 or 3
hours each time. About 50 or 60 people were winning or losing round a
large table at a game apparently something like vingt un; not a word was
said, but money was shovelled to the right and left very plentifully....
I forgot to mention that near Linz on the Rhine we passed a headland
fronted and inlaid with as fine a range of Basaltic columns as the
Giant's Causeway, some bent, some leaning, some upright. They are
plentiful throughout that part of the country, and are remarkably
regular; all the stone posts are formed of them, and even here I still
see them....

[Illustration: FRENCH DILIGENCE.]

LETTER XI.

BRUXELLES, _29th_.

After a night and greater part of two days passed in a species of oven
called a French Diligence, with Reaumur Thermometer at 23--hotter, you
will observe, than is necessary to hatch silkworms, and very nearly
sufficient to annihilate your unfortunate brother and husband--did we
arrive at Bruxelles.... I must give you a few details that you may fully
understand the extent of our misery. We arrived at Liege all well, with
only two other passengers; conceive our sorrow when on re-entering the
Diligence after dinner we found besides ourselves and a lady the places
occupied by a Dutch officer, who sat gasping without his coat, and so
far exhausted by the heat, though he had been ten years in Batavia, that
his pipe hung dangling as if he had not breath sufficient to keep its
vestal fire alive, and a lady with two children besides living
intruders. A net from the top was filled with bags, baskets, and
band-boxes. Our night was sad indeed, and the groans of our
fellow-travellers and the ineffectual fluttering of a fan which the
Officer used proved how little they were satisfied with the order of
things. The children were crammed with a succession of French Plums,
almonds, garlicked mutton, liqueurs, and hock, all of which ingredients
the kind mother endeavoured to cement on their Stomachs by Basons of
milk at sunrise, but no sooner had a few additional jolts brought these
bons-bons into close contact than the windows were occupied the rest of
the journey by the stretched-out heads of the poor children.

The heat has been more excessive for the last 4 or 5 days than has been
experienced for many years in this country; and, in short, when _I_
think it worth whil