What I Remember, Volume 2

x, Angouleme, Limoges, and thence back to Paris. On looking at the book for the first time since I read the proof-sheets I find it amusing. The fault of it, as an account of the distr

production of a score of other volumes on the subject! I could easily have done so. I was in no danger of incurring the anathema launched by Sterne-I think it was Sterne-agains

if a line were drawn through France from Calais to the centre of the Pyrenean chain, by far the greater part of the prettiest country and most interesting populations, as well as places, would be found

y to my mind because it was in one small volume instead of two big ones, and both for want of space and want of time was done hurriedly and too compendiously. The true motto for the writer of such a book is nihil a me alienum puto, whether humanum or otherwise. My own opini

th the upper and lower provinces of Auvergne and the whole of the Bourbonnais. My voluminous notes of the whole of these wanderings are now before me. But I will let my readers off easy, recording only that I walked from Murat to St. Flour, a distance of fifteen miles, in five min

all the articles her own colonies now supplied her with. One of these individuals told me and the rest of his audience, that he had the means of knowing that the interest of the English national debt was paid every year by fresh borrowing, and that bankruptcy and absolute smash must occur within a few years. "Ah!" said a much older, grey-headed man, who had been listening sitting with his hands reposing on his walking-stick before him, and who spoke with a sort of patient, long-expecting hope and a deep sigh, "ah! we have been looking for that many a year; bu

glishmen that the octroi, universal on the Continent, is an impo

which my inborn love of rambling allowed me to pass there. But in the following June it was determined that the house in York Street should be given up. Probably the causa causans of this det

tle, are apt in London to leave tradesmen's bills not altogether small in proportion to their littleness. "The fact is," said my mother, "that potatoes have been quite exceptionally dear." For a very long series of years she never heard the last of those exceptional potatoes. But despite the alarming def

e of trunks, and all our worldly possessions to the contents of them, with an opening vista of carriages, diligences, and ships ad libitum in prospect, I should have jumped

but this time separately, my mother going to my sister at Penrith and I to pass the summer mo

e acquired when living en famille. But I am disposed to think that the tolerably intimate knowledge I flatter myself I possessed of the Paris and Parisians of Louis Philippe's time was mainly the result of this second residence. I remember among a host of things indicating the extent of the difference between those days and these, that

aps the restless discontent which destroyed Louis Philippe's government is the most disheartening circumstance in the whole course of recent French history. That the rule of Charles Dix should have occasioned revolt may be regrettable, but is not a matter for surprise. But that of Louis Philippe was not a stagnant or retrogressive ré

ast, too frank to pretend any of the assurance which was then de mode. She saw what was coming, and was fully persuaded that it must come. I hope that her eye may rest on this testimony to her perspicacity, thoug

speaks in his autobiography; which I mention chiefly for the sake of recording my testimony to the exactitude of his description of that very singular individual. If it had not bee

andt, who has been mentioned before, and was now living somewhat solitarily in her huge house in its huge park near Bamberg), my mother and I started for Italy. Neither of us had at that time conc

isit to Italy, as the work was entitled (with justly less pretence than the titles of either of its predecessors had put forward), was in truth all too short. And I find that almost

friends, principally at Florence, and thus paved the way, alt

er first child at Penrith. And for this purpose we left Rome in February, 1842, in very severe weather. We crossed the Mont Cenis in sledges-which to me was

mountain amid the snow, then rapidly falling, the driver of the descending diligence, which had accomplished its work an

the northern side. But as we made our slow way to the top our vehicle was supported fro

d to see the mountain in its winter dress, the reco