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country brought us to Basle, and the shores of the Rhine. The city is extremely well-built and clean, and has an air of affluence about it. Wishing to see as much of the river as possible, we engaged a boat to go down to Strasburg. It was a frail conveyance, directed by one man only, with a paddle; for such is the extreme rapidity of the current, that oars or sails would be perfectly needless. Fast, prodigiously fast, the little bark sped its way, at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and flew like lightning past the banks. Nothing was lost by the velocity of its course, for the scenery on each side was the most tame and monotonous possible. Sandy banks, strewed with stunted brushwood-extensive and useless flats !-not a hamlet or a cottage to be seen-no cheerful volume of smoke rising into the air, to mark the haunt of a living being:-and we perceived that we had been too impatient to seize on the charms of this celebrated river, which, after all, are found but on a very scanty portion of its long and tedious course. In the evening our weariness was relieved by arriving at the only romantic spot in the passage-a large hamlet, that had formerly been much handsomer and more extensive, but was burned by the French in the war of the Revolution. A steep hill rose over it, on the top of which towered the shattered walls of many a goodly dwelling that had been destroyed. The view from this point over the plain in front was fine, and of great extent. The auberge in this distant spot was really a good one, and the landlord assured us we were fortunate in arriving just then: they were not in general, he said, provided for travellers, but on this day there was a pic-nic dinner, at which all the gentlemen and ladies, for a great distance round, were present-quite a banquet-and out of which he promised that an excellent repast should soon be set before us.

The result justified his praises; and early next day we re-entered our light bark, and, in spite of furious currents and even whirlpools by the way, which the skill of the boatman rendered quite harmless, arrived in safety at Strasburgh. From this city to Mayence it was best to proceed by land; and we arrived on a fine evening, that afforded a clear view of the river, its long bridge, and the ancient town. Two days afterward we took boat to proceed to Cologne, and passed through the most striking scenery the Rhine is considered to exhibit. In a short time the village of Bingen made its appearance, and ruin after ruin was passed till the noble remains of Rheinfels were seen, and St. Goar on the opposite side. The whole of this voyage is too well known, and has been too much lauded, to admit of any attempt at description. Were it not for the bold and graceful ruins, that stand on precipices and projecting points, the finest sites possible for effect, the tour of the Rhine would scarcely be worth performing for any intrinsic beauty. The villages are often pretty, and in picturesque situations; but in general nothing can be more tame, poor, and unlovely, than the shores themselves of the river. They are all vine-hiils, with little wood; and their summits present the form of a bald, uniform ridge: there are, it is true, sweet breaks at long intervals, which vary the extreme monotony.

In the evening we arrived at Coblentz, opposite which was the strong fortress of Ehrenbreitstein; and on the following day our tour ended at Cologne, having passed Drachenfels, and the seven hills, both sung in immortal verse; but poetry, like the touch of Midas, can

change into gold at its will whatsoever it pleases; and partly in consequence of this, the Rhine scenery is extolled par excellence, though a perverse taste might deem it deserving of very secondary rank. But even Rousseau's eloquence cannot make the bald rocks of Meillerie picturesque; whilst Clarens has sweeter villages near it than itself, and but for its fame, its common-looking dwellings by the road-side would be overlooked for the sake of the lovely and peerless Montreux. The situation of this latter, beside high and wooded precipices, is admirable: its dwellings are models of neatness; the river divides its streets, rushing along furiously at the bottom of a deep ravine, that is crossed by a bridge: its ancient church and beautiful spire stand apart, shrouded in wood. The climate of Montreux is the softest in Switzerland, and the scenery it commands, altogether, the most delicious. It is not more distinguished for the attractions of its site, than for the singular excellence of the aged minister, who has so long exercised in it his pastoral care. Monsieur, the learned and talented Curé of the village, is ninety-six years of age, and still preaches every Sabbath in his secluded church, with an eloquence that the approach of a century of years has not abated. He has resided many years in England, as tutor to a lady of high rank; and about fifty years since he returned to take charge of his present flock. Patronage has been heaped on him from England; but, though his income is handsome, he preserves the utmost simplicity of life, and a charm and amiableness of manners that seem to belong to a purer age and scene than to the valley of tears through which he has nearly passed. His hair is not thin, and is as white as the snow of his own mountains; and his large light eye is yet full of fire, nor is its sight dim. The power of his memory is but little impaired, as is evident by the animation that spreads over his fine and impressive features when engaged in converse that interests him. To relieve the wants of his people, and to labour for their spiritual good, are the chief pleasures of this estimable Curé.

has a twin brother,

It is a singular circumstance that Monsieur who is also a minister, and preaches, and bears his age of ninety-six, with equal vigour, though of a less strong and accomplished mind than the pastor of Montreux. They are so exactly alike in size and feature, that even their friends have sometimes been at a loss to distinguish one from the other. The most ludicrous scenes have sometimes occurred from this strange resemblance. When one brother has taken a walk along the high road to the neighbouring town or villages; passengers, who were perfect strangers to the two Curés, have been struck by meeting so venerable and impressive a personage, and in the course of a few miles after, have beheld, apparently, the same being, with the same dress, features, and manner, as him who had previously passed, advancing full upon them. They have sometimes looked on in mute terror, or else taken to their heels out of the way, while the good Curé passed on to join his relative.

There is an Italian blandness in the air of Montreux; it being defended by its amphitheatre of mountains from the cold and piercing winds, and open only to the south. Chillon is just beneath, and the valley of the Rhone; and both the shores of the long lake are in front and on each side.

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"Il faut convenir qu'il est impossible de vivre dans le monde, sans jouer de tems en tems la commedie."-CHAMPFORT.

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To live in society, and to tolerate its goings-on, requires either the influence of a good substantial passion, or no small share of frivolity. At the outset of life, when we are boiling over with health and temperament, when we are hot in the pursuit of beauty, pleasure, or wealth, we may contrive to shut our eyes to what is passing around us, and to wrap ourselves up in an optimism founded much more on the tone of our own organs than on the realities of existence. But when the period of illusions is passed,-when we have arrived at "years of discretion," and, ceasing to feel, begin to think, so many incongruities stare us in the face, such varied forms of evil press upon the attention, that unless we can take refuge in a constitutional carelessness, or in determined habits of trifling, we may as well beat a retreat, for we are no longer fit for the world, nor the world for us. To live in society, we must sympathize with it; but no sympathy can subsist between the knaves and fools, who are playing the game of make-believe, and quarrelling over the stakes, and the désabusé, who sees through their trickery, and despises its objects. There is no disguising from the cool eye of philosophy that all living creatures exist in a state of natural warfare; and that man (in hostility with all) is at enmity also with his own species. Man is the natural enemy of man ; and society, unable to change his nature, succeeds but in establishing an hollow truce, by which fraud is substituted for violence. Experience points out that killing and eating our fellow man, however amusing, is but a coarse and rude method of turning him to account; that our end is better attained after the Abyssinian method of operating on the living subject; that tears are more prolific than blood, and that lying and imposture are better and safer modes of working the raw material than roasting him whole. On the other hand, it is pleasanter to the victims to be cheated than murdered; and as every man stands, or may stand, in the double relation of pursuer and prey, the voice of the victims goes for something in the calculation. This is the true basis of social institutes; and the theoretic perfection of society would be found in that state in which a maximum of humbug should be united with a minimum of suspicion, in which the trout might be tickled with the greatest dexterity, and the powerful might, like the Vampire-bat, fan the powerless into a delicious slumber, while they were wasting his substance.

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The conservative principle of society, the cause of all mitigations of the cannibal tendencies of the animal, is that, while every one desires to eat his neighbour, every one is anxious that his enemy shall not eat him; and that while each is meditating an attack on the other, all are obliged to look to their own defence. In the early stages of society, war and slavery existed in their fullest developement, and the waste of bhuman life and happiness was enormous. In the feudal times, almost every one above the condition of a serf preyed upon his neighbour, and the chieftain was an wholesale consumer of human flesh. The misery resulting from this state of things produced a gradual change. The feeble conspired to secure themselves; power became more equalized;

and the spirit of liberty curbed the spirit of cannibalism. The desire, however, still subsists unabated in the heart of man; and the wits of the dethroned tyrants of the earth are set to work to defraud those whom they can no longer overpower. In this result of civilization, the present age far exceeds its predecessors; and the cannibals of England, where greater dexterity is required to manage the cheat, are confessedly pre-eminent over those of the rest of the world, in the great art of wheedling their victims into an unresisting quiescence.

Homer has proverbially established the people-eating propensity of monarchs as an incontrovertible fact in the natural history of the species. But though despots, like other beasts of prey, waste more than they devour, the destruction they cause is not comparable with that produced by some other classes of man-eaters. There is one class, for instance, which must be nameless, which at its regular meals swallows one tenth of the whole agricultural population, not to speak of its occasional luncheons, at the expense of the rest of the public. So exquisite is the address of these cannibals, that they not only persuade their prey, like “dilly dilly duck," " to come and be killed" for the good of his own soul, but also engage him to knock every one on the head who presumes to question their right in his bones and blood. Of the military cannibals it is not necessary to speak at length, because they chiefly prey upon each other, and because they rather should be considered as purveying for the appetites of their employers, than as acting for their own gratification. The lawyers are a very sly and subtile race of man-eaters, especially remarkable for the ingenuity of their nets, hooks, and other engines for taking their prey. They erect weirs so cleverly contrived, that on the outside the watercourse seems quite smooth and unimpeded; while within, the labyrinth is so complicated, that not a fish of the utmost cunning can escape, except such as by their restless efforts to get out become so lean and shotten as not to be worth taking; and these may perhaps slip through some small hole, which is not considered worth the trouble of stopping. Among these gentry there is one who may be taken as the very chief of all anthropophagi, since he consumes in his own proper person more than the whole tribe put together. His especial morsel is the human heart, which he macerates, by "hope delayed," till it is arrived at the proper state of mortification for his cannibal appetite. Like Saturn of old, he consumes a vast number of infants; though he is so far unlike that god, as to be much too cunning to be taken in with a stone. He is likewise especially fond of a madman; and, between the two, has generally to the value of some thirty or forty millions of pounds sterling in his warrens, ready for killing. But so fond is he of a bankrupt above all other sorts of fare, that he will often not leave even a single bone of him at the end of the repast. Of the very few who escape with life from his clutches, all suffer more or less. One loses a buttock, another a shoulder; and, strange to say, if he lays but his finger upon a man, the wretch becomes instantly lighter by the process: indeed, so malignant is his nature, that while others must make some exertion to secure their prey, his mere inertness is the death of thousands; and the less he stirs himself, the more certain is the havoc he occasions. Another description of man-eaters, whose depredations have increased exceedingly of late years, consume a multi

tude of peasants to feed their hares and partridges; and by a refinement; on cruelty, contrive to destroy not only the bodies but the souls of their victims. In this process they will sometimes waste as much as onefourth of the whole fruits of the earth; which, by raising the price of corn, consumes the sweat and blood even of the inhabitants of distant towns, which may be considered as served up to their tables in the shape of pasties, and perdrix au chou. Still, however, the destruction of these sportsmen is a mere trifle to the carnage they commit in their capacity of corn lords. Under the false and iniquitous pretence of flattering the farmer, and preventing puddings from ever becoming inordinately dear, they persuade poor silly manufacturers to submit to their cannibal proceedings; and they destroy an entire population to furnish themselves with an additional side-dish to their second coursejust as the Romans killed singing-birds by hundreds for the sake of their brains. Like Diomede of old, they nourish their very studs upon human flesh; sacrificing manufacturing towns without mercy, to ride a better horse at a fox-chace. Not, indeed, that these persons are more evil-minded than their neighbours. They are but men, like the rest; and nothing worse can be laid to their door, than the common propensities of humanity. They have more power than others, and they abuse it accordingly; but they do ill only as every other class does, that is, to the full extent of their combined selfishness, ignorance, and opportunity.

In great cities, cannibalism takes an infinite variety of shapes. In the neighbourhood of St. James's-street there are numerous slaughterhouses, where men are daily consumed by the operation of cards and dice; and where they are caught by the same bait, at which Quin said he should have infallibly bitten. A similar process is likewise carried on in Change Alley, on a great scale; not to speak of that snare especially set for widows and children, called a "joint stock speculation." But your cannibal of cannibals is a Parliament patron. Here, a great borough proprietor swallows a regiment at a single gulp; and there, the younger son of a lord ruminates over a colony till the very crows cannot find a dinner in it; and there again, a duke or a minister, himself and his family, having first " supped full of horrors," casts a diocese to the side-table, to be mumbled at leisure by his son's tutor. The town is occasionally very indignant and very noisy against the gouls of Surgeons' Hall, because they live upon the dead carcases of their fellow-creatures; while, strange to say, it takes but little account of the hordes of wretches who openly, and in the face of day, hunt down living men in their nefarious dealings as porter brewers, quack doctors, informers, attorneys, manufacturers of bean flour, alum, and Portland stone; and torture their subjects like so many barbacued pigs, in the complicated processes of their cookery.

Among the different parts of the British empire, Ireland stands conspicuously prominent for cannibalism; six millions of Catholics being there kept, as in a pen, for the private picking of about five hundred thousand "ascendancy boys," who growl like so many hungry mastiffs, if any one goes but near to the cage-door, or looks as if he meant to let them out. Thousands, and tens of thousands, are on this account annually slain by the processes of starvation and fever, in order to be served up at the tables of the master caste; and as an Irishman is not

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