suggested to prevent me from performing this blessed work? not the hare itself be some------?  In short, the counter-current carried me with it.  I had commenced my journey, and every one knows that when a man commences a journey it is unlucky to turn back.  On I went, but still with a subdued and melancholy tone of feeling.  If I met a cheerful countryman, his mirth found no kindred spirit in me:  on the contrary, my taciturnity seemed to infect him; for, after several ineffectual’ attempts at conversation, he gradually became silent, or hummed a tune to himself, and, on parting, bade me a short, doubtful kind of good day, looking over his shoulder, as he departed, with a face of scrutiny and surprise.

After getting five or six miles across the country, I came out on one of these by-roads which run independently of all advantages of locality, “up hill and down dale,” from one little obscure village to another.  These roads are generally paved with round broad stones, laid curiously together in longitudinal rows like the buttons on a schoolboy’s jacket; Owing to the infrequency of travellers on them, they are quite overgrown with grass, except in one stripe along the middle, which is kept naked by the hoofs of horses and the tread of foot passengers.  There is some tradition connected with these roads, or the manner of their formation, which I do not remember.

At last I came out upon the main road; and you will be pleased to imagine to yourself the figure of a tall, gaunt, gawkish young man, dressed in a good suit of black cloth, with shirt and cravat like snow, striding solemnly along, without shoe or stocking; for about this time I was twelve miles from home, and blisters had already risen upon my feet, in consequence of the dew having got into my shoes, which at the best were enough to cut up any man; I had therefore to strip and carry my shoes—­one in my pocket, and another stuffed in my hat; being thus with great reluctance compelled to travel barefoot:  yet I soon turned even this to account, when I reflected that it would enhance the merit of my pilgrimage, and that every fresh blister would bring down a fresh blessing.  ’Tis true I was nettled to the soul, on perceiving the face of a laborer on the way-side, or of a traveller who met me, gradually expanding into a broad sarcastic grin, as such an unaccountable figure passed him.  But these I soon began to suspect were Protestant grins; for none but heretics would presume by any means to give me a sneer.  The Catholics taking me for a priest, were sure to doff their hats to me; or if they wore none, as is not unfrequent when at labor, they would catch their forelocks with their finger and thumb, and bob down their heads in the act of veneration.  This attention of my brethren more than compensated for the mirth of all other sects; in fact, their mistaking me for a priest began to give me a good opinion of myself, and perfectly reconciled me to the fatiguing severity of the journey.