4 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



native humour of its people, it cannot but create a smile. A 

 sporting yeoman in his neighbourhood, and an esteemed judge 

 in horse-flesh, had eloquence sufficient to induce Sir Harry to 

 leave three hundred pounds in his hands with which he was to 

 purchase for him " a pair of hunters ;> that were to beat every 

 horse in Leicestershire. Whether such nonpareils were not to 

 be found, is not for me to say ; but one thing is certain na 

 horses, either good or bad, were sent to Leicestershire. Then, 

 what said the Baronet when he arrived in Louth the next sum- 

 mer ? Why, nothing ; but going over to the sporting yeoman's 

 house, he took his two best hunters out of the meadow in which 

 thev were regaling themselves, and had them led to his own 

 stables. 



There must be something forcibly striking .to any person on 

 his first landing in England, after a long sojourn in France, and 

 perhaps nothing more so at least such is my own case than 

 the absence of that violent gesticulation which accompanies 

 speech on this side the water ; and which, on very interesting 

 topics, is carried to such a pitch as to justify the extravagant 

 encomium of a Latin writer on some eminent professors of the 

 pantomimic art namely, that " in each of their eloquent hands, 

 there was a tongue." 



The following morning I took my place on the box of the 

 Eagle coach, which leaves Dover at eight o'clock A.M. ; and 

 here I must draw one more comparison between the country I 

 was now in, and that which I had just left. When comparing 

 the literature of the two nations, a French writer of acknowledged 

 abilities candidly says, that he had been at a loss to determine 

 in what department of it his countrymen excelled the English, 

 or in what the English excelled them. But between the systems 

 of travelling in France and in England, there cannot be admitted 

 any parallel ; nor indeed for the former any apology ; and when- 

 I am seated on the box of an English stage coach, and con- 

 trast the neatness of its build with the clumsiness of a French 

 diligence ; the brightness I was nearly saying elegance of 

 its harness, with the poverty-struck tackle of the other, which an 

 English farmer in some counties would be ashamed of ; the 

 personal cleanliness, and almost genteel, although appropriate, 

 character of the coachman, with the dirty, smoke-dried, smock- 

 frocked, nondescript appearance of the diligence driver ; and 

 though last, not least, the rapid and soul- stirring pace of its 

 horses, with the funereal slowness of the others, I cannot help 

 feeling a conscious pride in the superiority of my own country, 

 as regards the actual operations of common life. But here the 

 energy of the British mind comes into play. A saving of time. 



