d devotees. The same
hosts of beggars also besiege both places, of all ranks and pretensions,
from those who stand silent in a white sheet for drapery, to those who
obstreperously exhibit their want of any drapery at all. The chapel is
hung with little pictures, dedicated to the Virgin by the honest sailors
and peasants, and representing different providential escapes: the
wretched daubing of which is somewhat atoned for by the good feeling
which placed them there. One of them represents the Virgin appearing to
a ship in a storm, with a visage and demeanor which might as well
accompany a flying mermaid; another describes a man run over by a cart,
and preserved unhurt by a similar interference; a third, the recovery
from a sick bed, and the joy of the friends on the occasion, whose
countenances not a little reminded us of our grim friends Damon and
Holofernes. Some offerings of a better and richer description were
pillaged at the time of the Revolution.

We descended from this airy situation down a range of streets as
precipitous as the roof of a house, the slope of which probably
counteracts the effect of heat, and prevents the stagnation of air in
the crowded situations of the old town: Marseilles is said to be healthy
in consequence; and the generally active and fine appearance of its
population confirms it. The heat, however, to judge from a comparison
with Naples at the hottest season of the year, must be tremendous. It
struck on us at nine in the morning, on re-entering the town, like the
air from the mouth of an oven; and the herds of poor goats who compose
the walking dairies of Marseilles and the environs, dead asleep on the
trottoirs, formed, with a few strolling Turks, almost all the
out-of-doors population in the principal streets. We had no objection
whatever to imitate the general practice, and to sit still in a cool
room for the rest of the morning, reserving ourselves for an evening's
walk on the quay. I have as yet seen no place where a promenade of this
sort is so fraught with little circumstances of amusement, or where such
a variety of different ideas can be taken in by the eyes alone.

"Greeks, Romans, Yankeedoodles, and Hindoos,"

and more nations than could be described in a whole stanza of names, may
be found clustering in knots, or lounging under the awnings of their
different coffee-houses; while new detachments of fresh-men are seen
continually landing, with lank staring quarantine faces, and