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it will be harsh and out of tune; the diapason dies, when every string does not perform his part. Surely, without an union to God, we cannot be secure or well. Can he be happy, who from happiness is divided? To be united to God we must be influenced by his goodness, and strive to imitate his perfections. Diligence alone is a good patrimony; but neglect will waste the fairest fortune. One preserves and gathers; the other, like death, is the dissolution of all. The industrious bee, by her sedulity in summer, lives on honey all the winter. But the drone is not only cast out from the hive, but beaten and punished.

FRANCE TO THE LIFE.

FRANCE painted to the Life, by a learned and impartial hand.-Motto.—

Quid non Gallia parturit ingens.

Second edition; London, printed for William Leake, at the Crown, in Fleet-street, betwixt the two Temple gates, 1657.

Of this curious book, I know nothing more than what we are told in the title page. It will be seen from the following extract, that the French national character has not materially altered since the time of its being written.

The cart stayeth, and it is fit we were in it; horses we could get none for money, and for love we did not expect them. We are now mounted in one chariot,

for so we must call it. An Englishman thought it a plain cart, and if it needs will have the honour of being a chariot, let it; sure I am, it was never ordained for a triumph. At one end were fastened three carcasses of horses, and three bodies which had been once horses, and now were worn to dead images. Had the statue of a man been placed on any one of them, it might have been hanged up at an inn door to represent St. George on horse-back; so lifeless they were and so little moving: yet at last they began to crawl, for go they could not. This converted me from my former heresy, and made me apprehend life in them; but it was so little, that it seemed only enough to carry them to the next pack of hounds. Thus accommodated, we bade farewell to Dieppe, and proceeded with a pace so slow, that we thought our journey to Rouen would prove a most perfect emblem of the motion of the ninth sphere, which was forty-nine thousand years in finishing. But this was not our greatest misery; the rain fell on us through our tilt, which for the many holes in it, we would have thought a net, The dust brake plentifully in upon us through the rails of our chariot, and the unequal and unproportionable pace of it startled almost every bone of us. I protest I marvel how a Frenchman durst adventure in it. Thus endured we all the diseases of a journey, and the danger of three several deaths, drowning, choaking with the mire, and break

ing of the wheel, besides a fear of being famished before we came to our inn, which was six French miles from us. The mad duke that in the play undertook to drive two snails from Millaine to Musco, without staff, whip, or goad; and in a bravery to match him, for an experiment, would here have had matter to have tired his patience. We came at last

**

to Tostes, the place destinate to our lodging; a town like the worser sort of market towns in England. There our charioteer brought us to the ruins of a house, an alehouse I would scarce have thought it, and yet in spite of my teeth it must be an inn, yea, and that an honourable one too, as Don Quixote's host told him. Despair of finding there either bedding or victuals made me just like the fellow at the gallows, who, when he might have been reprieved, on condition he would marry a wench which there sued for him; having viewed well, cried to the hangman to drive on his cart. The truth is, J'eschappay du tonnere et rencheu en l'es lair, according to the French proverb; I fell out of the frying-pan into the hot fire. One of the house (a ragged fellow I am sure he was, and so most likely to live there) brought us to a room somewhat of kindred to a charnel-house; as dark and as dampish; I confess it was paved with brick at the bottom, and had towards the orchard a pretty hole, which in former times had been a window, but now the glass was all vanished. By the light

that came in at the hole, I first perceived that I was not in England. There stood in the chamber three beds, if at the least it be lawful so to call them. The foundation of them was of straw, so infinitely thronged together, that the wool-pack which our judges sit on in the parliament were melted butter to them. Upon this lay a medley of flocks and feathers together, sowed up in a large bag, (for I am confident it was not a tick) but so ill ordered, that the knobs stuck out on each side of it, like a crab-tree cudgel. He must needs have flesh enough that lieth upon one of them; otherwise, the second night would wear out his bones. The sheets they brought for us were so coarse, that in my conscience no mariner would vouchsafe to use them for a sail; and the coverlid so bare, that if a man would undertake to reckon the threads, he need not miss one of the number. The napery of the table was suitable to the bedding; se foul and dirty, that I durst not conceive it had ever been washed above once, and yet the poor cloth looked as briskly, as if it had been promised for the whole year ensuing to escape many a scouring. The napkins were fit companions for the cloth; unum si noveris, omnia nosti. By my description of the inn you may guess at the rest of France. Not altogether so wretched, yet is the alteration almost insensible.

Let us now walk into the kitchen, and observe their provision; and here we found a most terrible

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