their knees, while the ascending censers filled the air with perfume. Solemn music--a long train of military, and a vast number of priests of various orders and in splendid robes, attended and made up the pageant.

From witnessing this procession we proceeded to a convent, and saw the ceremony of the repose of the host. The altar was extremely splendid, and one blaze of light, from the many tapers that burned upon it. On one side of the altar was the Chapel of the Nuns. We saw the Lady Abbess and one of the Sisters, by pressing close to the railing of the altar; the rest were concealed from our view. The chanting of the nuns, in the vespers, was most thrilling, and the responses of the female choir in the organ loft not less captivating. At one period I was wrapped in a delirium of delight, and could scarcely deem it earthly music, so superior was it to any thing I had ever heard, or conceived, of the power of human voice before. We were to have seen the convent, which is also a school for young ladies, but it being a day of such extraordinary solemnity, the nuns continued at their devotions in the chapel during the whole of it. There are several English girls in the school, and we were introduced into a gallery hung round with specimens of their work.

Before the revolution there were forty-two convents and thirty-three churches in this city. There are at present but five convents and twenty churches. Thirteen of the convents are converted into ware

houses, and post-houses, and are thus rendered much more serviceable to the public. The monastery of St. Ouen, attached to the church of that name, is converted into a library, which contains 70,000 volumes, a museum for paintings, and public offices of various kinds. Near the last-mentioned church lived that notorious infidel Voltaire. His house is at present occupied by an attorney. I must not omit to remind you that this city was the birth-place of William the Conqueror; and that the heart of Richard Coeur-de-Lion is in the cathedral. But I shall weary you of Rouen-I have only to add, that there is a man here to be guillotined in the course of the week, for cutting off his wife's head a few days after their marriage, because she had carotty hair-and also a man to be tried for pretending to be the Dauphin of France, and heir to the throne.

Your's, &c.

LETTER V.

Paris.

MY DEAR

We left Rouen early yesterday morning, and reached Paris, between 90 and 100 miles, by nine o'clock last night. You would have supposed, however, had you seen our cattle and harness at starting, that we should have been two or three days, at least, performing the journey.-The horses are taken, just as they happen to be wanted, from the field, the cart, or the plough, and yoked to your carriage, with ropes fastened to their backs with wretched straps, that altogether cut a worse appearance than the most miserable hawker's cart in the streets of London. Nor does the postillion make a less extraordinary figure than his horses. His enormous boots, weighing from 5 to 7 pounds each, in which there is room for two legs of ordinary sizehis powdered hair and long pigtail-his enormous whip, in the smacking of which he makes the most wonderful evolutions over his head, and the most terrible noise that can be imagined, and by the regulation of which, on principles known to themselves, he apprizes the postmaster as he enters a town or village, whether the travellers be French or English, and whether they pay well or ill--altogether make up so grotesque a figure, that, though often described, I could not deny myself the pleasure of sketching its

outline. With all these disadvantages, however, the road is in your favour, being generally straight and level-kept in excellent repair-soft on either side, with pavement in the centre--and usually lined with trees, sometimes in double rows.

About four miles from Rouen, looking back from the summit of a hill, is seen one of the finest views in France. In the foreground is the Seine, winding through a luxuriant valley, and studded with a variety of little islands crowned with the richest woods. Rouen, with its towers and spires, appears in the distance, and all around an almost boundless extent of country rich in cornfields and exquisite in beauty. Indeed, nothing can exceed the height to which cultivation is carried every where in Normandy. The land does not appear to be, as it is with us, in the hands of mighty Lords and wealthy Commoners, nor let out in immense farms of many hundred acres-but rather occupied by humble cultivators of the soil, who have no more than enough to maintain their families, and must, therefore, make the most of what they have. Hence arises one circumstance which, in some parts, certainly injures the picturesque appearance of the country. The land is cultivated in little formal patches, and straight lines; here a stripe of clover, and there a stripe of wheat, and then of potatoes, and so on-this is by no means pleasing to the eye, and gives the sides of the distant hills the appearance of a tailor's pattern book unfolded. But the industry and prudence it indicates sufficiently atone to the lover of mankind, for the loss that is sustained by the lover of the picturesque.

About forty miles from Rouen we first saw vineyards, and I must confess I was greatly disappointed in them. One of our hop gardens, when the hop is in blossom, is a far more beautiful object. They were in their infancy it is true-the plants were young-and they will attain a greater height and luxuriance. But they never suffer them to grow many feet from the ground, but bend them over from stick to stick, at the height of about three feet from the surface. At present they have a curious appearance up the sides of the hills, for as yet little more than the sticks are seen, so that they look more like fields of broomsticks stinted in their growth than vineyards. But we shall probably see more of them, and my opinion may be altered by a better acquaint

ance.

We passed two Chateaux, near each other, on opposite sides of the road-one of them the residence of Marshal Suchet, the other of Marshal Victor. They were neither of them distinguished by elegance or grandeur, and would pass for nothing more than good country houses in England. We also passed Rigney, formerly the seat of the great Duke of Sully, and now the country residence of Talleyrand. We dined at Nantes, a town of some importance upon the Seine, with a magnificent church.

At Saint Germain en Laye we stopped to take a view of the Palace. It is a gloomy structure, built of a dark-coloured brick, and has more the appearance of a prison than a palace. It was the retreat of the fugitive James II. of England; and here, worn with vexation and grief, he expired. It was