Ye glittering towns with wealth and splendour crown'd, Ye fields where summer spreads profusion round, Ye lakes whose vessels catch the busy gale, Ye bending swains that dress the flowery vale, For me your tributary stores combine, Creation's tenant, all the world is mine.--THE TRAVELLER. What was the cause of our setting out so late the personage who certainly had the chief hand in it best knows, but it was between four and five o'clock in the afternoon before we got from the door of the Hôtel de France, on our way towards Pau and the Pyrenees. The carriage, too, was unlike anything that the ingenuity of man ever before invented; not indeed from itself, but from its appendices: every hole and corner was crammed with all sorts of conveniences. There was a whole subjunctive mood of comforts---everything that we might, could; should, or ought to want, piled up in grotesque forms both inside and out. I never saw anything like it but the carriage of a lady, whom I once met coming from Italy, and that, indeed,--Heaven help her, poor thing, for I am sure when she was in it she could not help herself. At length, however, we did set off, and passing by several _guingettes_, or, as it may be translated, tea-gardens, though they drink no tea there, left Bordeaux behind us and proceeded on our way to Langon. It was night ere we reached Barsac, not more worthy fame on account of its good wines than its bad pavements. For what purpose they were constructed, I defy any one to explain; but they answer three objects, breaking carriages, laming horses, and jolting the unfortunate traveller to such a degree, that were there any thing contraband in his composition, it would be sure to be shaken out of him.