My first recollections of the world are surrounded by somewhat strange scenery. Figure to yourself, reader, a town situated on the top of a high hill, like an eagle’s eyrie, but far more solid and substantial. The streets are paved with large round stones, and a gutter in the centre, tracking out like rays at every cross-road: the houses, stone-built, and somewhat ponderous, are tall and short, wide and narrow, as in most other towns, but there are some very fine churches in a somewhat severe style in the place, and it seems to possess two peculiar characteristics. Whether, because so far elevated that nothing could obstruct the drainage on every side, or because at that high point it caught the clouds as they whirled by, and attracted the wrath of every storm by its menacing front, it was the cleanest town in the universe. In vain did cooks and old women throw out cock’s-heads divested of their combs, and the gizzards of ducks and fowls—in vain on the Saturday night was every gutter in the place made the receptacle of all the dust of all the houses—in vain were a number of other untidy tricks practiced to defile the highways, and offend the olfactories of the passing stranger—before the Monday morning all was clear again—except in very rainy seasons, when I have known a dust-heap lie for a fortnight. This was one of its peculiar characteristics: cleanliness. I cannot help thinking there is something very merry in dirt. The very merriest people I have ever seen in my life have been the dirtiest; but perhaps, after all, the impression to this effect which I have received, may be attributed to my residence in that old town, where the exceeding cleanliness I have mentioned, was closely associated with that of dullness. The very cheerful summer sun, as he looked down into the open streets, held up as upon a pedestal to his view, looked dull and even sad. The clear light of the summer day had a cool, calm, gentlemanly melancholy about it, which did not serve to rouse or to enliven. One looked up the street and saw a man, a single solitary man, so lost in the yellow sunshine at the end, that you could not tell whether he had pike, pitch-fork, or crosier in his hand—three-cornered hat, or round, or cap of liberty on his head. One looked down the street toward the valley below, and could hardly make out whether the lonely carriage drawn by four beasts of some kind, had really four horses, or four mules, or four rats without a tail—amongst them. Not another being did you see. No heads were put out of windows—no idle figures presented themselves before the doorways. Curiosity seemed dead in the place, as well as every thing else; and although the sound of a carriage wheels—especially coming from below, where there was a post-house—was very rare, it seemed not to awaken any interest in the inhabitants whatsoever, at least not more than was displayed in just raising the eyes from the calves’ feet, or the sheep’s trotters which were preparing