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The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged -all the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Gregoire was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his office. On this occasion it was not death that he was to inflict, he was only to expose a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards to Paris. St. Just had ordered that Schneider should stand for six hours in the public place of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the capital, to be dealt with as the authorities there might think fit.

The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of punishment, and Gregoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man whose orders he had obeyed so often, who had delivered over to disgrace and punishment so many who merited it not.

Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and insults of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched on to Paris, where it is probable that he would have escaped death but for his own fault. He was left for some time in prison quite unnoticed, perhaps forgotten; day by day fresh victims were carried to the scaffold, and yet the Alsatian tribune remained alive; at last by the mediation of one of his friends a long petition was presented to Robespierre stating his services and his innocence, and demanding his freedom. The reply to this was an order for his instant execution: the wretch died in the last days of Robespierre's reign. His comrade St. Just followed him, as you know; but Edward Ancel had been released before this, for the action of my brave Mary had created a strong feeling in his favour.

"And Mary?" said I.

Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain's little room: she was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some forty years, and followed by a number of noisy rosy children.

"This is Mary Ancel," said the Captain, " and I am Captain Pierre, and yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force, for it is the fête of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters have all come from their schools to dance at his birth-day."

PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF TRISTRAM DUMPS, ESQ.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

PREVIOUS to entering upon the little trip which forms the subject of these pages, I may as well inform the reader of a few particulars relative to my own personal condition.

I am the only surviving son of Tristram Dumps, Esq., of Invermain, in the county of Roxburgh. My family name, however ordinary it may sound to the ear of the world in general, can, like others, lay claim to a higher construction than that which, on a hasty inspection, may appear. The first of my progenitors who took the trouble of investigating its real value was my grandfather, upon whom a large property devolved from collateral branches of the family; and it was then, and not until then, that the heralds decided this name to be none other than a very ancient corruption of the words Dominus Princeps, or, as it used to be written in old deeds, or similar manuscripts, Dms. Ps.; so that, instead of Dumps of Invermain, it was, according to the phraseology of those days, "Our Lord the Prince of Invermain.”

In the faith of this interpretation my grandfather and father both lived and died; and, consequently, were very proud of their family. I cannot, however, say that I participated in this ancestral satisfaction. In my younger days (I may as well confess it) I tried every species of print, every sort of card, plain, ribbed, or otherwise-a plate of every shape to make the name look more presentable at a London door; but, after all, I still continued my original practice of pushing it hastily into the footman's hand upside down, and the sooner I turned the corner of a street, the more agreeable to my feelings.

There is another circumstance which, however trivial it may appear, has given me through life, but especially in the earlier part of my career, considerable annoyance. I bear a strong resemblance to a well-known

may call him the first comic actor of the day, whose assumed gravity of face is, of itself, sufficient "to set the house on a roar. So particular a physiognomy, however advantageous an attribute it may be to that worthy man and successful votary of Thespis, was by no means of equal value when placed upon my shoulders. The natural seriousness of my character, united to the peculiarity of my name, seldom failed to "tickle the fancy" of those to whom the lineaments of the popular actor are known, that is, to nearly every individual within the Bills of Mortality.

The lives of some people are actuated by greater, of others by lesser circumstances; and I really believe that the morbid sensations which I experienced upon such occasions as these, operating upon a peculiar temperament, influenced, in some measure, my social character. Of one thing I am quite sure, that they cast a damp upon every scintillation of matrimonial ardour; for, whatever my grandmother or mother might think of it, I, with that keen sense, as well as quick perception of the ridiculous, which most hypochondriacal people possess, never could persuade myself otherwise than that Mrs. Dumps both looked and sounded extremely odd.

At the period when this narrative commences, I had lost my father about two months, at a very advanced age; and, by his decease, I

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succeeded to a large property, as well as to what most people would have considered a very desirable residence in the country; but my habits of life, partly regulated by my own character, and also by that parsimony to which my father always thought proper to restrict them, were sufficiently peculiar to render me, at the age of about fifty, little calculated for the enjoyment of my newly-acquired fortune. I was, what is called, "alone in the world"-that is, in the world of relatives-with the exception of an old maiden aunt, and had lost, in comparatively early life, an only sister-my dear sister Kitty-to whom I was passionately attached; but first, by what was considered a disgraceful match, she became alienated from the family, and finally was taken from us by death. I therefore found myself, when already beyond the middle age of life, without a creature for whom I felt any particular interest; and, as far as my own personal feelings were concerned, with habits so averse from the trammels of what the world calls prosperity, that the first thing I did, after getting rid of attornies, stewards, &c., was to steal away to Paris for a month or two, and so far to indulge myself in my former independent manner of roving about as to go even without a servant.

This premised, I shall deliver to the reader my personal narrative exactly as it was penned from day to day during the period of my residence at Paris, or, at least, of the events which are there recorded.

PREFACE, BY THE FRIENDS OF MR. DUMPS.

"The following pages were not originally composed with any view to publication, but are committed to the press solely at the instigation of a few, perhaps too partial, friends." Such were the modest and unusual words with which Mr. Dumps was commencing his preface, when, by a gentle violence, we took the pen from his hand into our own.

We think it right to lay before the public the reasons which have induced the friends of the above-mentioned gentleman to rescue from threatened oblivion the valuable papers which have furnished materials for the personal narrative.

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It would be a want of candour on the part of the friends of Mr. Dumps were they to attempt to conceal the fact, that other publications relative to the French metrópolis have already appeared. A few works, with titles such as these- A Trip to--Three Weeks-A Month--A Spring A Summer-An Autumn-A Winter at-and Letters from Paris," may have fallen under the eye of every one conversant with the most lucrative sides of "The Times Morning Post." But, although every nook and corner of the French capital may thus have been ransacked and described-every object of interest from the Temple to the last Barricades-from the prison of Marie Antoinette to the interesting localité of the "glorious three days "-although the politics, commerce, arts, sciences, and trades-institutions of charity or diversion-the state of modern literature-the present form of societyeverything from the "menus plaisirs du Roi" to the daily list of Galignani for the relief of idle travellers;-in short, though everything public or private, statistical or theoretical, useful or ornamental, has found a chronicler, yet there still appeared to be wanting a wORK which, by a judicious mixture of personal with local interest, might be more adapted to the taste of that la class of readers in the present deeply

thinking age who, for obvious reasons, influence greatly the labours of the press.

We leave to writers of the last and of the early part of the present century the tedious details of what was then considered the "useful knowledge' "of a country, and hand them over, with their dry conciosiacosache" style of composition, to the Limbo of those authors who are called the Formalists of another country. Who, for example, while perambulating the classic shores of the Mediterranean or Adriatic, would venture to select for his theme the antiquities, history, statistics, or biography of those countries? or, if he should so far mistake the literary propensities of the age, what gentleman of the trade would undertake to publish his work? Certainly neither Messrs. M

nor L ; we ourselves can answer for that: and if even they were to be so rash, who, we should be glad to know, and triumphantly ask, would become a purchaser of the book? It is, therefore, upon the personal character of the following narrative-the careful exclusion of all information (which might be too tedious) and the substitution of the " dulce" for the << utile," that the friends of Mr. Dumps take their stand, boldly challenging the attention of a modern public to the work before them, and confident that every one will rise from the perusal of it with this conviction-namely, that in an age of much speculation and some fiction, a little of the romance of real life is calculated, not only to refresh the mind, but to improve the heart.

Here the friends of Mr. Dumps had, at first, intended to have taken leave of the public, whom they were unwilling to detain upon the threshold of the literary feast presented for enjoyment; but, upon mature deliberation, they trust that a few particulars relative to the rescue of the Dumps Manuscript may not be an unacceptable addition to the preceding notice of its character and contents.

It was upon the 10th of August last that a fortunate, but wholly accidental, circumstance conducted a literary friend of the author per steam from the English to the Scottish capital, and from thence (by easy stages) to the ancient family domain of the Dumpses, Invermain, in the county of Roxburgh. On retiring to rest on the evening of the 11th instant, an intimation was given to the traveller that an early and general move in the house might be expected upon the following morning; but he was at the same time politely informed that, beyond the inconvenience of being awakened a few hours earlier than usual, this unwonted circumstance need not, in any wise, disturb the accustomed routine of his matutinal proceedings.

It was explained to the native of the English metropolis (who was born much within the sound of Bow bell) that the 12th of August was a day upon which a favourite recreation of the higher classes of society annually commences in the northern part of the island. What the French would denominate by the substantive chasse, we are obliged to translate by the participle, "shooting," when we mention the destruction of that species of bird, so well known by the name of Grouse. Scarcely had the day begun to break, when the traveller, according to the premonition he had received, was roused from his slumbers by the loud report of a gun immediately under his window, a considerable whipping of dogs, which was naturally accompanied by vocal indications of dissatisfaction on the part of the animals, and a general note of pre

paration through all the court-yards and other precincts of the Hall House of Invermain.

Although in no wise interested in the general projects of the morning -the traveller, with that vague, but half-prophetic feel of restlessness, which "coming events," casting "their shadows" (whether radiant or dingy) "before them," sometimes inspire-rose from his bed; and, doubtful whether to commence his toilette at that early hour, or again to court the favours of Morpheus, was standing pensively in his night head-gear, at the window of his chamber, which commanded a view of the court-yard below.

A young gentleman in habiliments suited to the occasion, whose name the friends of the author, for reasons of their own, think it better at present to withhold, had at that moment issued forth from the breakfast-table, as was apparent from the unfinished process of mastication which the eagerness of his pursuit had evidently interrupted. On commencing to charge his gun, a serving-man, in a bright green jacket, handed to him, from a confused bunch of paper hastily drawn from his pocket, one half of a letter-sheet covered with characters of a very intricate appearance, but which forcibly arrested the attention of the young gunsman as he cast his eye upon them. Suddenly he seemed to be seized with symptoms of much greater hilarity than even his age or the circumstances of the morning appeared sufficient to produce; and it was with some interest that the traveller watched his motions, until after some laughter, he seated himself upon a bench in the yard, to finish the perusal of the sheet. Need we intimate to the penetrating reader that this was a stray fragment of the Dumps Manuscript, or that it finally led to the production of the whole, from an old bureau of papers (with a bad lock) which the housemaids, those harpies of the literary sphere, had been in the habit of invading, from time to time, during periodical scarcities of materials for lighting the fires-oh, horror!-in the Hall -House of Invermain.

CHAP. I.

I left London for Dover on the 15th of November, Anno Domini 18-, without the slightest curiosity to see again those countries which I had so frequently visited, but actuated alone by a wish to escape from the ennui of a listless and uninteresting life-from the wearisome repetition of my daily routine-from every surrounding circumstancein short, from myself. I was greatly consoled a little while afterwards to find, by a passage in the collection of Petrarch's letters, that I had as great a precedent as himself for the motives of my journey; and that I possessed, moreover, the advantage of him in one particular, which was, that I had not, like him, left a canon's stall at Padua, nor incurred the now unpopular guilt of ecclesiastical non-residence-"Ad Gallias iturus," says he to a friend, "non tam desiderio millies visa revidendi, quam ut, more ægrotorum, mutatione loci tædio consulerim." I have frequently quoted this passage during the progress of my journey, not only because it presents an elegant and almost classical parallel to my own feelings, but because it affords a pleasing confirmation of my general views of human existence even under the most favourable circumstances, and in the persons of its most favoured subjects.

My right-hand companion in the coach was a gentleman in black,