447 



IL FAUT QU'IL L'APPRENNE DONC. 



AN ANECDOTE. 



Whoever has travelled the route from Calais to 

 Dunkerque, must allow, if his commendations are as 

 veracious as those bestowed by Sterne on the Pont 

 Neuf, that it is the most delightful, cheerful, ro- 

 mantic, sylvan scene, that traveller in search of the 

 picturesque could wish, or poetic imagination conceive. 

 It is delightful, inasmuch as you are exposed to the 

 full glare of a meridian sun in s\immer, and enjoy the 

 full benefit of a north-east wind in winter. It is 

 romantic, being a dead flat all the way ; sylvan, from 

 not the vestige of a tree meeting the eye for twenty- 

 five miles out of the thirty ; and cheerful, from the 

 antici^^ation of meeting, if you go at the proper hour, 

 a donkey with his driver, a charrette, and the diligence. 

 But unless we start at particular hours, the or a donkey 

 and a charrette will be about the maximum of fellow- 

 wayfarers to be expected. It fell, however, to my lot 

 on two occasions to have the weary monotony of this 

 route broken into by incidents that would have 

 proved expensive ones, had I not contrived to reim- 

 burse myself by means that, though they come before 

 us in rather a questionable shape, were, I hold, justi- 

 fiable, on the " lex talionis " principle. 



Driving along this road of blessed memory, a 

 French carrier considerately conceded to my use a 

 portion of the road just one foot less than the width 

 of my axletree. The consequence of the collision was 

 the compressing my gig into the smallest possible 



