Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

166

LETTERS CONCERNING ROUSSEAU,

had every day cooked your dinner of horseflesh by riding on it fifty miles between your breech and the shoulder of your horse, you had certainly been an obliging, good-natured, friendly man; but at the same time, that reading, conversation, and travel have detracted nothing from those virtues, and have made a considerable addition of other valuable and agreeable qualities to them. I remain, not with ancient sincerity, which was only roguery and hypocrisy, but very sincerely, dear sir,

Your most obedient

and most humble servant,

Edinburgh, 20th of Nov. 1766.

DAVID HUME.

P. S. The French translation of this strange piece of mine (for I must certainly give it that epithet) was not made by D'Alembert, but by one under his direction.

THE END.

Printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

NOX LIBRARY

NEW YORK

WALPOLIANA.

1. ADELA, A TALE.

I HAVE been amusing myself with a history of Picardy, and shall read you off a short tale that struck me.

Thomas de Saint Valery was travelling with his wife, Adela, daughter of a count de Ponthieu. They were attacked near a forest by eight armed men. St. Valery, after a severe struggle, was seized, bound, and thrown into a thicket. His wife was carried off, exposed to the brutality of the banditti, and afterwards dismissed in a state of nudity. She, however, sought for, and found her husband, and they returned together.

They were soon after met by their servants, whom they had left at an inn, and returned to their father's castle at Abbeville. The barbarous count, full of false ideas of honour, proposed, some days after, to his daughter, a ride to his town of Rue, on the sea shore. There they entered a bark, as if to sail about for pleasure; and they had stood out three leagues from the shore, when the count de Ponthieu, starting up, said, with a terrible voice," Lady, death must now efface the

shame which your misfortune has brought on all your family."

The sailors, previously instructed, instantly seized her, shut her up in a hogshead, and threw her into the sea, while the bark regained the

coast.

Happily a Flemish vessel passing near the coast, the crew observed the floating hogshead, and, expecting a prize of good wine, took it up, opened it, and, with great surprise, found a beautiful woman. She was, however, almost dead, from terror and want of air; and, at her earnest entreaty, the honest Flemings sent a boat ashore with her. She gained her husband's house, who was in tears for her supposed death. The scene was extremely affecting: but Adela only survived it a few hours.

John, count of Ponthieu, repenting of his crime, gave to the monks of St. Valery the right of fishing three days in the year, in and about the spot where his daughter had been thrown overboard.

11. COMMENTARIES OF AGRIPPINA.

TACITUS mentions the Commentaries of Agrippina, mother of Nero. I wish we had more extracts from a work by so singular an author. I should suppose it was decent, and attempted to palliate her crimes. Yet I should like to have a copy, bound up with Arian's life of Tilliborus the robber, quoted, if I remember right, by Lucian.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »