Little enlivened our day after parting with our Monk, unless I should except a good scene from a picture which happened at one of the Post houses. No Postillions were at home, so the Landlord himself was to drive--an enormous man, rather infirm, with a night-cap on his head, from whence emerged a long pigtail. It was necessary he should be put into his Jack boots. By Jack boots you are to understand two large things as big as portmanteaus, always reminding me of boots fit for the leg which appears in the Castle of Otranto. Accordingly no less than 4 or 5 persons actually lifted the Landlord into his boots, an operation which, from the weight and infirmities of the one and the extreme clumsiness of the others, took up nearly a quarter of an hour; and, of course, when fairly deposited in them he was unable to move, and further help was necessary to place him on the saddle.... The first view of Metz, after traversing an uninteresting country, is remarkably fine. It stands in a fine rich plain, near though beyond the reach of an eminence--for it does not deserve the name of a mountain--the sides of which are covered with woods, villages, and vineyards. There is something very grand in entering a fortified Town--the clattering of drawbridges, appearance of moats, guns, sentinels, and all the other etceteras of war. Our passports were demanded for the first time. At length we were allowed to pass, and found ourselves in a large, clean town, chiefly remarkable for its Cathedral, the painted window of which was equal to any I ever saw. The first thing we invariably do in these towns is to ascend the highest spire, from whence the general plan and position are at once explained. You need not be alarmed. There is no fever at present at Metz, or on the Rhine; but there has been. From the close of 1813 and until the last two months not less than 69,000 sick or wounded have been in the hospitals of Metz--a large Church contained about 3,000 at a time, the remainder were scattered about wherever they could find room, and many breathed their last in the streets. Of course, such a concourse of dead and dying infested the air to a certain degree, and a fever was the result. However, not above 2 or 300 inhabitants suffered. Of the sick troops from 12 to 1,500 per day were buried without the town, and quicklime thrown in. We supped with three or four Frenchmen and a Genoese officer, one of Buonaparte's Imperial _Elites_ of the Guard. His form and countenance were quite Vandyck--I never looked upon a face so well calculated for a picture; his dark whiskers and black curling hair composed an admirable frame for a couple of the most expressive eyes; his manners were extremely gentleman-like, and you may conceive I did not talk and look at him with any diminution of interest when I found he was on his way home from Moscow. He had gone through the whole of the retreat, had almost reached the boundaries of