beneath them, not very comfortable when the sun was hot, still less comfortable of a rainy day, but just in the place which of all others a real traveller would wish to be in at morning or evening or of a moonlight night. The remainder of the top was reserved for the baggage, carefully packed and covered up securely from dust and rain. I had taken the precaution to engage a seat in the _coupé_ the day before I set out. Of my companions, I am sorry to say, I have not the slightest recollection. But the road was good,--bordered, as so many French roads are, with trees, and filled with a thousand objects full of interest to a young traveller. There was the _roulage_: an immense cart filled with goods of all descriptions, and drawn by four or five horses, ranged one before another, each decked with a merry string of bells, and generally rising in graduated proportions from the full-sized leader to the enormous thill horse, who bore the heat and burden of the day. Sometimes half a dozen of them would pass in a row, the drivers walking together and whiling away the time with stories and songs. Now and then a post-chaise would whirl by with a clattering of wheels and cracking of whip that were generally redoubled as it came nearer to the _diligence_, and sank again, when it was passed, into comparative moderation both of noise and speed. There were foot travellers, too, in abundance; and as I saw them walking along under the shade of the long line of trees that bordered the road, I could not help thinking that this thoughtful provision for the protection of the traveller was the most pleasing indication I had yet seen of a country long settled. While I was thus looking and wondering, and drawing perhaps the hasty comparisons of a novice, I saw a gentleman coming towards us with a firm, quick step, his blue surtout buttoned tight over his breast, a light walking-stick in his hand, and with the abstracted air of a man who saw something beyond the reach of the bodily eye. It was Cooper, just returning from a visit to the General, and dreaming perhaps of his forest-paths or the ocean. His carriage with his family was coming slowly on behind. A day earlier and I should have found them all at La Grange.