From its extremest summit, the eye shot almost perpendicularly down to the Vale. I durst not regard the swimming scene above a second at a time, and my brain sickened at the tremendous depth. We returned to the Convent in the evening, and after supper he took me to a crystal Fountain in the Wood, where three young Monks played with exquisite taste on the Flute, Violin, and Clarionet. The gurgling of the brook, the fall of the more distant cascades, the perfect calmness of the air, and the dancing Moon-beams among the rocks, formed an enchanting whole. From Belleveaux, on the good little Prieur's own mule, and attended by his servant, I travelled over the mountains to Alençon, a Convent of the Chartreux, in a similar though not so picturesque a situation as that of Tamiers. The Prieur of Alençon and his fraternity were as jolly fellows as if they had been Bernardines; they made me eat a variety of fine fish like an otter, and persuaded me it was right to make it swim in excellent wine. They sent me to Chambery maudlin, and mounted on a beast so full of wicked intentions, that he had like to have broke my neck twenty times down the precipices, he actually did souse me into a shallow river; this same steed was all bedecked and beflounced with fringes and tassels, and a white silk net that covered his clumsy carcass from head to knee. I certainly only wanted rings on my fingers and bells on my toes, to have pranced through the streets in perfect state. I had the satisfaction of

finding my dear wife extremely well, as you have that of being at the end of this unconscionable letter.

P. S. I forgot to tell you, that the oldest Monks of Belleveaux and Alençon had never seen an Englishman at their Convents before.

I HAVE visited the celebrated Fountain of Vaucluse, it is the fullest, purest, and most beautiful source imaginable. So serenely does it sleep in a vast Cavern at the foot of a lofty Rock, that not one intruding breath ruffles its azure surface, even while it is sending out a hundred limpid streams from its secret and immeasurable depth. These streams gush out from beneath a shelving bed of huge mossy stones, in various directions, and unite themselves into one little river. But this is its state only when the waters are low; as soon as the ardent beams of the sun penetrate into the mountain snows, and send them dissolving through the rocky crevices to replenish the springs, the Fountain of Vaucluse swells, and fills completely the ample cavern in which it now slumbers, and then its waters rush out with impetuous fury at the mouth of the cave, and foam over the rough crags, which

SUPPLENDA.

now seem to tower far above their reach.

379

Then

it is that the overflowing Fountain increases the now gentle Sorgue into a wide and rapid Torrent that often deluges the Vale. In the way back from the Fountain, the Steeple and Curate's House and Garden stand grouped to the eye on a little rising in the most picturesque style imaginable; and in the latter two stately and ancient Cypresses stand side by side, as if weeping over the ashes of Petrarch and Laura, and as emblems of their ever verdant memories. They are the only ones to be seen, and you cannot think how striking a feature they form in the picture, and how much in keeping one feels them with our ideas in such a spot. In an old Chateau belonging to the Marquis de Commond, in the village of Vaucluse, they shew you (as you are assured) the original Portraits of Petrarch and Laura; her features are regularly handsome, but her countenance is insipid, and she sticks up, prim and stiff, holding a Flower, precisely (like an Alderman's Wife on a Holiday) between her forefinger and thumb, which they tell you is an Amaranth, but which I would have sworn was a common red Poppy. What a sentimental nosegay for Petrarch's Laura ! Petrarch himself

appears with a rusty Doctor's Hood, a dark, eager, sanguine full fed face, expressive of strong passions, highly animated indeed, but wholly destitute of that tender melancholy and those pensive touching graces, with which fond imagination is wont to paint him. But as those portraits are by

no skilful hand, prepossessed Fancy has still a refuge; and after all, I am apt to think that those portraits, instead of being originals, are only vile copies of those painted by Simon, whom Petrarch has immortalized in two of his sonnets, and with whose performance, (low as the Art of Painting was in those days) he surely would not have been so satisfied had it been so lifeless. I had almost forgot to mention that on the summit of the left hand heights at Vaucluse stand the ruins of what is called Petrarch's Castle, though I believe it is well ascertained that it never belonged to him, and that his was a more lowly roof and situated in a more rural spot, consonant to his situation and taste, at the end of the Village, and on a willowed bank of his favourite River. I was glad to find this Ruin not so inaccessible as Mr. Wraxall thought it, though it cost me many a wearisome and difficult step to reach its mouldering walls. But I was well repaid by a noble view of the whole country far and near, through the ivied Arches of the Gothic Windows. I caught (in the partial manner painters love) the opposite Rocks, the Sorgue, and the Village. At about a mile distant on the high ground on the other side stands haughtily in a barren wild, the Chateau de Sommani, where once dwelt Laura, and which still belongs to her direct descendants; it was lately inhabited by the Abbé de Saade, a very respectable and learned man, who a few years since published a voluminous History of Petrarch, and of which Mrs. Dob

son is an abridgement. I have just read it, and found it extremely entertaining and satisfactory, though in some parts too prolix, and his translations in verse of the most elegant and celebrated of Petrarch's Sonnets and Odes prove him to be no poet, and not always master of his Author's sense; he has taken true pains to prove that his Ancestress was the real Laura of Petrarch, and seems indeed to have put it out of all doubt.

We have taken a commodious Country House for the ensuing Summer, beautifully situated in the neighbourhood of Vaucluse; I shall often wander thither, and whilst I muse over the delicious Fountain, or eat my cold dinner beneath the Mulberry trees, shall not envy the more brilliant and noisy pleasures of the gay and great. We made an agreeable excursion of three days last week to see the Antiquities of Nismes. The Ponte de Garde lay in our way, which is a noble remain of Roman greatness, and enchanted me with its august simplicity, towering with arch above arch over the river Gardon, and uniting the opposite hills. Its height is a hundred and fifty feet from the river; you know that it is really part of an ancient Roman Aqueduct, that conveyed water to the baths and amphitheatre at Nismes, from a fountain eight leagues distant. The drear and arid scenery around, where not one soft or smiling object allured the eye, gave new effect to the stateliness of the principal Object, whose mutilated grandeur seemed to rise up a proud though silent Witness of