the cathedral, and surpassing it in interest and
antiquity, a remarkable Gothic church.

Of the sixty leagues which separate this town from Bayonne, forty afford
the most perfect example of monotony. One sighs for the Steppes of
Russia. These are the well-known Landes, consisting of uncultivated
sands and morass; now covered league after league with the unvarying
gloom of the pine and cork forests,--now dreary and bare,--but ever
presenting to the wearied eye a wide interminable waste, replete with
melancholy and desolation. It is true, that a day of pouring rain was
not calculated to set off to advantage the qualities of such a region,
and should in strict justice be admitted in evidence before passing
condemnation on the Landes.

LETTER III.

THE BASQUE PROVINCES.

Burgos.

It never causes me surprise when I see the efforts made by persons of
limited means to obtain the situation of Consul in a continental town.

In spite of one's being, as it were, tied to one's residence,--and that
not one's home,--there are advantages which counterbalance the evil. The
place carries with it a certain degree of consequence. One feels oneself
suddenly a man of influence, and a respectable public character. I have
heard one, certainly far from being high on the list of these
functionaries, termed by a humbler inhabitant of his "residence," the
"Premier Consul."

The income, too, is, it is true, limited; but then one is usually in a
cheap place. In fact, I always envied these favoured individuals. No
calling, however, is without its _deboires_. It seems as if Providence
had decreed that an income cannot be fairly, if agreeably, earned.
Thus, the set-off against the bliss of the consul, is the necessity he
is under of holding out his hand for his fee. I make these remarks, to
introduce to your notice an ingenious method, put in practice--probably
invented--by our consul at Bayonne, for getting over the irksomeness of
this duty. I found him in his _bureau_, pen in hand, and a large sheet
of official-shaped paper before him, half written over. On my passport
being presented for his _visa_, his countenance assumed a painful
expression, in which regret was blended with a sort of tendency to
compassion, and which at first occasioned me a sensation of alarm,
conjuring up in my imagination all the consequences of an irregular
passport--tedious routes to be retraced, time lost, expense incurred,
and suspicion, and even incarce