Years Journey through France and Part of Spain | Page 6

provide butter, milk, &c. as we were for our breakfasts; and during the preparation of it, I believe every man, woman, and child of the hamlet, was come down to _look at us_; for beside that wonderful curiosity common to this whole nation, the inhabitants of this village had never before seen an Englishman; they had heard indeed often of the country, they said, and that it was _un pays tr��s riche_. There was such a general delight in the faces of every age, and so much civility, I was going to say politeness, shewn to us, that I caught a temporary chearfulness in this village, which I had not felt for some months before, and which I intend to carry with me. I therefore took out my guittar, and played till I set the whole assembly in motion; and some, in spite of their wooden shoes, and others without any, danced in a manner not to be seen among our English peasants. They had "shoes like a sauce-boat," but no "steeple-clock'd hose." While we breakfasted, one of the villagers fed my horse with some fresh-mowed hay, and it was with some difficulty I could prevail upon him to be paid for it, because the trifle I offered was much more than his Court of Conscience informed him it was worth. I could moralize here a little; but I will only ask you, in which state think you man is best; the untaught man, in that of nature, or the man whose mind is enlarged by education and a knowledge of the world? The behaviour of the inhabitants of this little hamlet had a very forcible effect upon me; because it brought me back to my earlier days, and reminded me of the reception I met with in America by what we now call the Savage Indians; yet I have been received in the same courteous manner in a little hamlet, unarmed, and without any other protection but by the law of nature, by those _savages_;--indeed it was before the Savages of Europe had instructed them in the art of war, or Mr. Whitfield had preached methodism among them. Therefore, I only tell you what they were in 1735, not what they are at present. When I visited them, they walked in the flowery paths of Nature; now, I fear, they tread the polluted roads of blood. Perhaps of all the uncivilized nations under the sun, the native Indians of America were the most humane; I have seen an hundred instances of their humanity and integrity;--when a white man was under the lash of the executioner, at Savannah in Georgia, for using an Indian woman ill, I saw Torno Chaci, their King, run in between the offender and the corrector, saying, "_whip me, not him_;"--the King was the complainant, indeed, but the man deserved a much severer chastisement. This was a Savage King. Christian Kings too often care not who is whipt, so they escape the smart.

LETTER V.
RHEIMS.
We arrived at this city before the bustle which the coronation of Louis the 16th occasioned was quite over; I am sorry I did not see it, because I now find it worth seeing; but I staid at Calais on purpose to avoid it; for having paid two guineas to see the coronation of George the Third, I determined never more to be put to any extraordinary expence on the score of crowned heads. However, my curiosity has been well gratified in hearing it talked over, and over again, and in reading _Marmontell_'s letter to a friend upon that subject; but I will not repeat what he, or others have said upon the occasion, because you have, no doubt, seen in the English papers a tolerably good one; only that the Queen was so overcome with the repeated shouts and plaudits of her new subjects, that she was obliged to retire. The fine Gothic cathedral, in which the ceremony was performed, is indeed a church worthy of such a solemnity; the portal is the finest I ever beheld; the windows are painted in the very best manner; nor is there any thing within the church but what should be there. I need not tell you that this is the province which produces the most delicious wine in the world; but I will assure you, that I should have drank it with more pleasure, had you been here to have partook of it. In the cellars of one wine-merchant, I was conducted through long passages more like streets than caves; on each side of which, bottled Champaigne was piled up some feet higher than my head, and at least twelve deep. I bought two bottles to taste, of that which the merchant assured me was each of the best sort he had, and for