I could have lingered for ever in the dreary, yet beautiful Forest of Fontainebleau, regardless of the present and future, so wrapped was I in contemplation of the past. Henry the Great rose upon my vision, and the horns seemed to sound in my ear, that summoned him and his brilliant cortege to the royal sports, of which this splendid forest was the favourite scene. The ghost of Bayard, dear to France, and adored by all whose breasts own a sympathetic spark of those glowing fires kindled by the spirit of chivalry, glided across my imagination; but the images of grandeur, and the phantoms of romance, soon vanished from my mind, and left it fixed in the concluding act of that astonishing drama, over which the curtain dropped at Fontainebleau, when Napoleon, fallen from his high estate, resigned the sovereignty of Europe, and sealed the death-warrant of that power which had subdued the world, and drawn the nations captive at his chariot wheels. Forgive me, I have broken my resolution, and am wandering from my purpose; but I promised more than I find it possible to perform, a lesson you will say, to my presumption. No, to pass through such scenes as these, as if one were travelling over a turnpike-road in the west of England, would argue something either above or below human nature; and, as I profess to be a very mortal of earth, I feel that I may claim your pardon for my digression. I _could_ tell you of the softest, stillest, most heavenly moon that ever lent its silver beams to heighten a prospect and inspire the genius of meditation. I _could_ dilate in raptures on the landscape round Nemours; I _could_ break from every restraining bond to expatiate on the transports with which, on arriving at the brow of the prodigious steep which overhangs Briare, I first beheld the Loire, rolling through a perfect Elysium: but I will hasten onwards. _You_ shall not be detained at Moulins, though we staid there two days. You shall not halt in the lovely Nivernois, though we broke down, and had thence the happiness of remaining for several hours in one of the sweetest cottages imaginable, admiring the groups of peasants at their daily toil, so cheerful--so picturesque.