The reason of this impression was manifestly because I was always in intercourse with foreigners who live and trade upon English travellers, who make a livelihood of ministering to John Bull's national leanings in dress, cookery, and furniture; and who, so to say, get up a kind of artificial England abroad, where the Englishman is painfully reminded of all the comforts he has left behind him, without one single opportunity for remembering the compensations he is receiving in return. To this cause is attributable, mainly, the vulgar impression conveyed by a first glance at the Continent It is a bad travesty of a homely original. [Illustration: 304] What a sudden change came over me now, as we swept along through this enchanting country, where every sight and every sound were novel and interesting! The little villages, almost escarped from the tall precipice that skirted the river, were often of Roman origin; old towers of brick, and battlemented walls, displaying the S. P. Q. R.,--those wonderful letters which, from school days to old age, call up such conceptions of this mighty people. A great wagon would draw aside to let us pass; and its giant oxen, with their massive beams of timber on their necks, remind one of the old pictures in some illustrated edition of the "Georgics." The splash of oars, and the loud shouts of men, turn your eyes to the Rhine, and it is a raft, whole acres of timber, slowly floating along, the evidence of some primeval pine forest hundreds of miles away, where the night winds used to sigh in the days of the Cæsars. And now every head is bare, and every knee is bowed, for a procession moves past, on its way to some holy shrine, the zigzag path to which, up the mountain, is traceable by the white line of peasant girls, whose voices are floating down in mellow chorus. Oh, Tom! the whole scene was full of enchantment, and didn't require the consciousness that would haunt me to make it a vision of perfect enjoyment. You ask what was that same consciousness I allude to? Neither more nor less, my dear friend, than the little whisper within me, that said, "Kenny Dodd, where are you going, and for what? Is it Mrs. D. is sitting beside you? or are you quite sure it's not some other man's wife?" You 'll say, perhaps, these were rather disturbing reflections, and so they would have been had they ever got that far; but as mere flitting fancies, as passing shadows over the mind, they heightened the enjoyment of the moment by some strange and mysterious agency, which I am quite unable to explain, but which, I believe, is referable to the same category as the French Duchess's regret "that iced water was n't a sin, or it would be the greatest delight of existence." If my conscience had been unmannerly enough to say, "Ain't you doing wrong, Kenny Dodd?" I 'm afraid I 'd have said "Yes," with a chuckle of satisfaction. I'm afraid, my dear Tom, that the human heart, at least in the Irish version, is a very incomprehensible volume.