UNIVER SKETCHES, &c. CHAPTER I. Leave England-Land at Dieppe-Rouen-Low Road by the Seine-Arrival at Puris. FROM the moment I could read and reflect, it had been one of my most earnest wishes to visit Italy; yet I could only regard it as an occurrence, possible indeed, but far from probable; and perhaps my fancy dwelt on it the more, from there appearing no reasonable prospect of its ever coming to pass. Circumstances, however, which have brought about more extraordinary and unlooked-for events, at length procured me this longwished-for gratification; and at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 10th of September 1816 in company with my sister and one of my brothers, I embarked at Newhaven for Dieppe. But-though less than twelve months before, I had sorrowfully bade adieu to France, as I believed, for ever,-the near prospect of revisiting that country, and even of realizing my long-cherished vision of seeing Italy itself, lost all its charms from the influence of the private affliction by which the journey was caused; for "Still where rosy pleasure leads, "A kindred grief pursues." At this moment, England alone occupied my thoughts, alone filled my heart; and, as I stood on the deck of the vessel and watched her receding shores, with something of a similar feeling to that which filled the soul of our Scottish Mary when she gazed for the last time on the coast of France, almost despairing of ever returning to it, I felt ready like her to exclaim, "Oh beloved country! shall I ever see thee more?" Though the weather had been extremely stormy for some time, we made a most prosperous passage; light and favouring gales wafting us across the Channel with a steady course. The packet was large and commodious; it had few passengers, but among them, was one of the Indian jugglers, whose genuine eastern idioms, rendered literally into broken English, sounded not a little strange to our ears. We had no occa sion to alter a single sail during the ten hours we were at sea, till the pilots of Dieppe came on board, by a bright moonlight, to conduct our vessel into port. The dress and appearance of these men, as well as of the female peasantry of Normandy, are very grotesque and amusing to an English eye; and those travellers who wish to enjoy the full effect of the contrast which the intervention of a few miles of water has preserved in appearance and manners between the natives of the bordering coasts, and who are willing to purchase this gratification at the expense of a longer voyage and an awkward embarkation, should cross to Dieppe. There they will find every thing new,-every thing French. At Calais, on the contrary, France is scarcely France, it is more than half England. |