LYONS.

It was in the autumn of the year 1788 that, after traversing Italy from north to south, I first entered the ancient town of Lyons. I had quitted England young and unhappy; and my journey, which had for its object the diversion of those sorrows that have still left their blight upon my heart, and flung a cloud over all my life, was as excursive in its plan as it was utterly lonely. Accompanied only by a single servant, I had entered Italy by way of Switzerland; and, visiting the plains of Piedmont, had suffered my course-to be bounded, to the westward, by that gigantic barrier by which nature has linked them to the sky. Hence, after turning eastward to Venice, I had extended my route as far as the Tarentine Gulf; and, returning through Tuscany, embarked for Marseilles, with the view of exploring the rich valleys of Provence and Languedoc.

I have no recollections connected with Lyons, on which I do not linger with an indescribable fondness and delight. Amid that dim and shadowy indistinctness which shrouds almost all the objects of my memory, I have an impression, as vivid as it was twenty

years ago, of the evening when, like the dawning of a new hope, its white walls and stately temples first rose upon my eye, from the blue waters of the Rhone. Those pangs with which I had gazed on the receding cliffs of my own England, had lost their first bitterness, beneath the blue skies and sweet influences of sunny Italy; and the agonies of that wound which has never healed, had been softened and subdued by time and travel. I had been many days sailing up the Rhone, or wandering upon its picturesque banks; and I remember, with an exactness which is almost magical, every feature of its shifting panorama. Every castellated tower and lordly chateau; every cliff which rose abruptly from the water, darkened by the tendrils of the wilding vine, and spangled with the silver stars of the clematis; every smooth slope which swelled away, in gentle acclivity, crowned with its tuft of lofty pines and chesnuts, and garlanded with the mountain ash and golden laburnum; and every vista through which the eye wandered over the luxuriant plains of Dauphiné, with their Alpine back-ground, or caught glimpses of peasant groups, dancing in the moonlight;-all these are still present to my mind, with a clearness which partakes of reality. I sometimes think I should know again, wherever I met them, the long dark tresses of the village girls who crossed my path in that journey; and I have dreaming moments, when I am

haunted by every bright face which looked out upon me from the clustering vines, and every wild snatch of melody that reached my ear from the valleys of Languedoc.

It was in the deep and sabbath stillness of an autumnal sunset, that the little barge which I had hired at Tournon approached Lyons. The stealing motion with which we glided along, impelled by a single long oar, plied from the roof of the canopy under which I sat, suited well with the mood of mind in which I found myself. My boatman was a native of Crussol, and relieved the languor and monotony of his employment by the vintage music of his own Languedoc. It was in fine keeping with the hour and the scene; and I lay back in the boat, and yielded to their mingled influences. The sky, overhead, was still bright and blue; but, far to the east, the giant Alps, which had, all day long, formed a boundary-line of fantastic and ever-varying forms, began to lie like shapeless and indistinct masses upon the horizon. Groups of wandering Savoyards were occasionally seen, through some opening on the right bank of the river, dancing their sarabands beneath groves of limes and chesnuts, or threading their way to the magnificent towers of Lyons; and, not unfrequently, the sunburnt visage and gazelle eye of Arragon or Castile gazed upon us, from its rude bivouac upon some green slope, as we stole along

shore. To the left, the eye stretched over the rich Lionois, and rested upon the mountains of Auvergne, with their hundred peaks defined and brightened in the gorgeous glories of a splendid sunset. In front rose the heights of Saint Sebastian, with their hanging thickets of vines and olives, and their white chateaux and villages gleaming in the evening sun.

I was inexpressibly soothed, and already gazed, with a feeling nearer to happiness than any which I had long experienced, on those lofty summits, dark beneath their purple harvest ; at whose feet, my heart told me, Lyons lay, like a home of repose. The sound of its many bells came wafted distinctly, but distantly, on the still air; and their lively chimes, as they rang out for vespers, were finely contrasted with the deep and solemn tolling from its old cathedral. At every vista, the eye ranged over the plains of Dauphiné, or the distant champaigns of Burgundy; and rested, for relief from the almost oppressive feeling of richness which the warm flush of the departing daylight gave to their yellow harvests, on the white walls, peeping forth from their sheltering groves, which dotted every rising ground; or on the luxuriant clusters which dark-eyed girls were training, in festoons, along the branches of the stately elms. Amid this scenery the river wound its meandering way; with the shadows projected far into its blue waters, from the western bank; and, here and