The postillions cracked their whips, the little Norman horses tore their way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered off on every side, to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of St Denis, rich with golden corn, and tracked by lines of stately trees, opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a _parting_ glance at Paris--it was mingled of rejoicing and regret. What hours of interest, of novelty, and of terror, had I not passed within the circuit of those walls! Yet, how the eye cheats reality!--that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty, of royal sorrow and of popular exultation, now looked a vast circle of calm and stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Across that plain, luxuriant with harvest, surrounded with those soft hills, and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening, it looked a paradise. I knew it--a pendemonium! I speeded on--every thing was animated and animating in my journey. It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; the prospects--as I swept down valley and rushed round hill, with the insolent speed of a government _employé_, leaving all meaner vehicles, travellers, and the whole workday world behind--seemed to be to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of its colouring was my own! Was _I_ not _free?_ was I not _returning to England?_ was I not approaching scenes, and forms, and the realities of those recollections, which, even in the field of battle, and at the foot of the scaffold, had alternately cheered and pained, delighted and distressed me?--yet which, even with all their anxieties, were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was I not about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne? was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to see those relatives who were to shape so large a share of my future happiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men, with whose renown the courts and even the camps of Europe were already ringing: and last, proudest, and most profound feeling of all--was I not to venture near the shrine on which I had placed my idol; to offer her the solemn and distant homage of the heart; perhaps to hear of her from day to day; perhaps to see her noble beauty; perhaps even to _hear_ that voice, of which the simplest accents sank to my soul.--But I must not attempt to describe sensations which are in their nature indescribable; which dispose the spirit of man to silence; and which, in their true intensity, suffer but one faculty to exist, absorbing all the rest in deep sleep and delicious reverie.