but in an inscription on the pedestal, the Bearnais took care to state, that the statue was erected" à Louis XIV., roi de France et de Navarre, petit fils* de notre grand Henri."

*To Louis XIV., king of France and Navarre, grandson of our great Henry. The force of the satire is not to be rendered in an English translation.

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THE EAUX BONNES.

Nulle di più immirabile che un suolo il più fertile sotto il clima più bello, ovunque intersecato di vive acque ovunque popolato da villaggi. GANGANELLI.

FROM the higher range of the Pyrenees, which forms, as it were, an immense barrier between France and Spain, run a multitude of lateral valleys, each enclosing within its bosom its streams, its villages, and its plains, possessing its own peculiar race of inhabitants, its own usages and superstitions, and often having little communication with any world beyond its boundary of mountains. One of the sweetest and (until late years) one of the least frequented of these valleys, is the Valley d'Ossau, which leads apparently in a direct line to the foot of the Pic du Midi de Pau. I had often stood in the park, and looked up the long vista of hills before me, fancying a thousand things in the blue indistinctness of distance, and lending it as many charms as imagination can bestow on uncertainty; a longing took possession of me, to approach myself nearer to those airy hills whose fairy brightness haunted me; and I was never satisfied till we were on our way to the Eaux Bonnes. Of this little watering place, lying in the deepest recesses of the mountains, report had told such tales, that I got out of patience with my own fancy for believing them. You stupid fool, said I to Imagination, you are only getting up a disappointment for yourself and me; methinks Experience ought to have made you wise by this time; witness all the unpleasant scrapes into which you have plunged me. Just as I was reasoning thus with Fancy, came by a blind man, led by a dog; the sturdy cur would come into our courtyard for some little affair of his own, and kept tugging and pulling at the rope which tied him, till the blind man, who felt he was going wrong, but did not know by what means to set him right, was fain to comply and let him have his own way. So I gave up the matter too, and we ordered horses for the Eaux Bonnes, for it was impossible for the blind man's dog to

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tug him into our courtyard one bit more violently than my fancy tugged me into the mountains. And hereby I leave and bequeath the similitude between a blind man and his dog, and any man his fancy, to any person who may be disposed to profit by the same; giving up all right, title, and claim whatever upon the said similitude or simile, and declaring and avowing that I will have nothing more to do with it. Always provided, nevertheless, and be it hereby understood and agreed, that these presents be no further considered as gift, bequest, donation, or legacy, than as far as in me lies to give, bequeath, or devise, the similitude or simile aforesaid, inasmuch as it may have been uninvented, unpossessed, and unappropriated by any other person or persons whatsoever; otherwise, this item to be null, void, and of no effect, anything herein before said to the contrary notwithstanding.

By the time the horses came the next morning, I had quite resolved to be very much disappointed; and I got into the carriage, with precisely the same sort of unwillingness that the animal usually cited as the most striking example of consistency evinces when it is obliged to run according to its driver's will instead of its own. However, the day was fine, and nature seemed resolved to smile me into a good humour. We rattled down through the town, passed the bridge over the river, commented on the number of beggars, admired the view of the town from the banks, and then turning in among the lesser hills which lie to the left of the Valley d'Ossau, lost at once the prospect of the mountains, and might have forgotten that we were in the Pyrenees.

Indeed, the soft slopes covered with meadows and fields, handsome modern houses and pleasure grounds, and streams that flowed gently on with scarcely more force than sufficient to turn a mill, took from us all remembrance that we were within a few miles of some of the highest mountains in Europe.

As we proceeded, however, the scene gradually began to change; the houses were less frequent, and seemed to gather themselves into villages, the rivers became more rapid, and the country, though highly cultivated, assumed the appearance of a fine park; large clumps of oak and fir, lying scattered in every direction, and the tops of the hills hiding themselves in deep plantations. Still we saw nothing of the Pyrenees, and even the

people seemed to differ in nothing from the common Bearnais of Pau, except, indeed, that the women had discarded their shoes as well as stockings, or rather carried them in their hands instead of on their feet.

We stopped at last to change horses at Savignac. A gentle slope leads from the village through some thick trees into the valley; and dashing down with all the éclat of fresh horses and postillion, we found ourselves, in a moment, in a scene that leaves description, and almost imagination, behind.

The valley winding up to the peak again lay before us; but we were now among the mountains indeed, and on either side, at the distance of less than half a mile, rose crags, and precipices, and hills covered with pine, towering to the very sky, and forming, as it were, the impassable walls of the garden into which we were entering-for it was a garden. Up to the very foot of the rocks, and climbing up the hills, wherever a spot of vegetable mould was to be found, the highest cultivation was extended, and the most extraordinary verdure. The hay and the corn harvest were both in progress at the same time; and the new-mown fields appeared as if covered with rich green velvet, on which the large trees and rocks threw a beautiful transparent shadow. There were a thousand little objects of interest that filled up every spot the eye could rest upon, and satisfied it altogether. The valley all along was spotted with small villages, which seemed to creep for shelter close to the foot of the mountains. Not far on, stood a high rocky mound covered with the ruins of some feudal castle, and below lay a hamlet with its little church and the path winding up to it. Multitudes of small mountain bridges crossed the river all the way up its course, as it came dashing and foaming over a bed of rocks. The crags on either side were broken and interspersed with rich hanging wood, and kept narrowing in the distance, till they seemed to meet, precipice over precipice, with the high conical Pic du Midi rising purple above them all; and at the same time the warm sunshine, pouring over the hills, gave to all the farther parts of the valley a kind of luminous indistinctness. I cannot describe it! It was a congregation of the grandest and the most minute, the most opposite and the most harmonious beauties, that nature can produce!

After having staid some time to admire, we passed

on over a light, elegant little bridge, and followed an excellent road towards the Eaux Bonnes. In a valley which turns away to the left, lay the little town of Alur. di, scattered among some lesser hills. Part of it has been twice destroyed by avalanches, but the people still continue to build up their houses exactly on the same spot.

However grand the hills may appear, the eye, unaccustomed to such vast objects, does not judge rightly of their height till it compares them to something with which it is familiar. The steeple of Alurdi served us as a guide to estimate the objects around; and the effect was so extraordinary, that we both laughed on measuring it against the mountain behind. I am sure I know not why I laughed, for there is nothing in the littleness of man's works to make him merry; but so it was, and we went on.

Approaching Laruns, the valley appears terminated by high crags, and we could just distinguish the road to Spain, leading into a deep ravine, which seems scarcely more than a crevice in the rock. But here, turning off to the left, we passed through the town of Laruns itself,. which is as odd a building as ever I beheld. Perhaps some people might find a great deal of amusement in searching into the history of the place, for both the materials and structure appear of an antique date. The lower story of the houses are only inhabited by the cows, pigs, and horses; and the number of pretty faces which the sound of a carriage called to stare at the travellers, seemed as if they were looking out of the drawing-room windows. The streets are so narrow, that it is scarcely possible to pass; neither did I see a shop of any kind in the place. Over many of the doors we remarked the form of a serpent interlaced with two bars of iron, and the windows, which were without glass, consisting only of a kind of Gothic frame of black marble, giving an extraordinary churchlike appearance to the houses.

After passing through Laruns, as we entered another long valley to the left, we turned to take one more look at that which we were quitting. It was quite fairy land, a perfect scene of enchantment. The valley, full of villages, hamlets, and cultivation, undulating in a thousand slopes, and broken by woods and rivers, was all lighted up by the clear rays of the declining sun; while the

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