and laughing cauliflowers—­no bad illustration of the republican union of comfort with elegance which reigns through the whole establishment.  The master of the mansion, perhaps an old and valued schoolfellow:—­his wife, a well-bred, accomplished, and still beautiful woman—­cordial, without vulgarity—­refined, without pretension—­and informed, without a shade of blue!  Their children!...  But my reader will complete the picture, and imagine, better than I can describe, how one of my temperament must suffer at quitting such a scene.  At six o’clock on the dreaded morning, the friendly old butler knocks at my room-door, to warn me that the mail will pass in half an hour at the end of the green lane.  On descending to the parlour, I find that my old friend has, in spite of our over-night agreement and a slight touch of gout, come down to see me off.  His amiable lady is pouring out for me a cup of tea—­assuring me that she would be quite unhappy at allowing me to depart without that indispensable prelude to a journey.  A gig waits at the door:  my affectionate host will not permit me to walk even half a mile.  The minutes pass unheeded; till, with a face of busy but cordial concern, the old butler reminds me that the mail is at hand.  I bid a hasty and agitated farewell, and turn with loathing to the forced companionship of a public vehicle.

My anti-leave-taking foible is certainly not so much affected when I quit the residence of an hotel—­that public home—­that wearisome resting-place—­that epitome of the world—­that compound of gregarious incompatibilities—­that bazaar of character—­that proper resort of semi-social egotism and unamalgable individualities—­that troublous haven, where the vessel may ride and tack, half-sheltered, but finds no anchorage.  Yet even the Lilliputian ligatures of such a sojourn imperceptibly twine round my lethargic habits, and bind me, Gulliver-like, a passive fixture.  Once, in particular, I remember to have stuck at the Hotel des Bons Enfants, in Paris—­a place with nothing to recommend it to one of ordinary locomotive energies.  But there I stuck.  Business of importance called me to Bordeaux.  I lingered for two months.  At length, by one of those nervous efforts peculiar to weak resolutions, I made my arrangements, secured my emancipation, and found myself on the way to the starting-place of the Diligence.  I well remember the day:  ’twas a rainy afternoon in spring.  The aspect of the gayest city in the world was dreary and comfortless.  The rain dripped perpendicularly from the eves of the houses, exemplifying the axiom, that lines are composed of a succession of points.  At the corners of the streets it shot a curved torrent from the projecting spouts, flooding the channels, and drenching, with a sudden drum-like sound, the passing umbrellas, whose varied tints of pink, blue, and orange, like the draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate.  Then