advantage. I called in my landlord to my consultation; and having
explained my peculiar views, was advised by him to purchase a Norman
horse, one of which he happened to have in his stables; a circumstance
which perhaps suggested the advice. Be this as it may, I adopted his
recommendation, and I had no cause to repent it. The bargain was struck
upon the spot; and for twenty-seven Louis I became master of a horse,
upon whom, taking into the computation crossroads and occasional
deviations, I performed a journey not less than two thousand miles; and
in the whole of this course, without a stumble sufficient to shake me
from my seat. The Norman horses are low and thick, and like all of this
make, very steady, sure, and strong. They will make a stage of thirty
miles without a bait, and will eat the coarsest food. From some
indications of former habits about my own horse, I was several times led
to conclude, that he had been more accustomed to feed about the lanes,
and live on his wits, as it were, than in any settled habitation, either
meadow or stable. I never had a brute companion to which I took a
greater fancy.

Having a letter to a gentleman resident about two miles from Calais, I
had occasion to inquire the way of a very pretty peasant girl whom I
overtook on the road, just above the town. The way was by a path over
the fields: the young peasant was going to some house a mile or two
beyond the object of my destination, and, as I have reason to believe,
not exactly in the same line. Finding me a stranger, however, she
accompanied me, without hesitation, up a narrow cross-road, that she
might put me into the foot-path; and when we had come to it, finding
some difficulty in giving intelligibly a complex direction, she
concluded by saying she would go that way herself. I was too pleased
with my companion to decline her civility. I learned in the course of
my walk that she was the daughter of a small farmer: the farm was small
indeed, being about half an arpent, or acre. She had been to Calais to
take some butter, and had the same journey three mornings in the week.
Her father had one cow of his own, and rented two others, for each of
which he paid a Louis annually. The two latter fed by the road-sides.
Her father earned twenty sols a day as a labourer, and had a small
pension from the Government, as a veteran and wounded soldier. Upon this
little they seemed, according to her answers, to live very comfortably,
not to say s