nderings hereafter; of the unslumbering nature of the soul; of
the everlasting progress which we are predoomed to make through the
countless steps and realms and harmonies in the infinite creation? Oh,
often in my rovings have I dared to dream so,--often have I soared on
the wild wings of thought above the "smoke and stir" of this dim earth,
and wrought, from the restless visions of my mind, a chart of the
glories and the wonders which the released spirit may hereafter visit
and behold!

What a glad awakening from self,--what a sparkling and fresh draught
from a new source of being,--what a wheel within wheel, animating,
impelling, arousing all the rest of this animal machine, is the first
excitement of Travel! the first free escape from the bonds of the linked
and tame life of cities and social vices,--the jaded pleasure and
the hollow love, the monotonous round of sordid objects and dull
desires,--the eternal chain that binds us to things and beings,
mockeries of ourselves,--alike, but oh, how different! the shock that
brings us nearer to men only to make us strive against them, and learn,
from the harsh contest of veiled deceit and open force, that the more we
share the aims of others, the more deeply and basely rooted we grow to
the littleness of self!

I passed more lingeringly through France than I did through the other
portions of my route. I had dwelt long enough in the capital to be
anxious to survey the country. It was then that the last scale which the
magic of Louis Quatorze and the memory of his gorgeous court had
left upon the mortal eye fell off, and I saw the real essence of that
monarch's greatness and the true relics of his reign. I saw the poor,
and the degraded, and the racked, and the priest-ridden, tillers and
peoplers of the soil, which made the substance beneath the glittering
and false surface,--the body of that vast empire, of which I had
hitherto beheld only the face, and THAT darkly, and for the most part
covered by a mask!

No man can look upon France, beautiful France,--her rich soil, her
temperate yet maturing clime, the gallant and bold spirits which she
produces, her boundaries so indicated and protected by Nature itself,
her advantages of ocean and land, of commerce and agriculture,--and not
wonder that her prosperity should be so bloated, and her real state so
wretched and diseased.

Let England draw the moral, and beware not only of wars which exhaust,
but of governments which im