mine cover my ancles. White stockings and shoes, with neat square buckles in front, which make the foot look remarkably small, complete the figure. But by far the most extraordinary part of the Bernese costume, is the head dress, which consists of an immensely broad sort of black frill, made of open horse hair, from the top of the back of the head to under the chin, standing out like the wings of an immense moth. It is set into a little flat piece of black velvet, which just covers a small patch on the back of the head, and beneath which the Bernese girls wear two immense long plaits of hair, like tails hanging down their back, which (admire the rustic simplicity of these unsophisticated mountaineers!) is generally chiefly made of false hair! I was rather refractory respecting these tails; but Lady Hunlocke was absolute; and as my own hair is sufficiently long and thick for the tails of any Bashaw, she plaited it herself into two long queues, which hang strait down my back, so that I cut the most ridiculous figure possible. But in this warm weather, this fashion is most agreeably cool, so that I am now perfectly reconciled to it. The silver chain I wear is lent me by the Pastor's wife, who assured me she received it from her great, great, great grandmother;-for this article of

finery, and even the horse hair winged head piece, which seems to wear for ever, generally descend from generation to generation. The rest of the dress is new, and my own. Lady Hunlocke is so delighted with it, and thinks it so becoming, that she is determined to get one, and try what execution she can do in it,' she says, at the first fancy dress ball or masquerade she goes to. My metamorphose, now that I am attired in this garb, is so complete, both in figure and face, that Lady Hunlocke declares she could scarcely have recognised me herself; and it has just been effected in time-for this morning, to my unspeakable joy, our poor patient has spoken for the first time, and opened one of his eyes. Of course he was not allowed to talk, or to ask any questions, but he seemed soothed by the sounds of his native tongue, made me promise to stay by him, and then composed his head again upon the pillow, as if at ease and free from all pain or inquietude, excepting the weakness consequent on the fever, which is now gone, and the loss of blood. The surgeons-for we have got a famous practitioner from Berne, as well as his first attendant--seem to day to entertain sanguine hopes of his recovery, but a relapse, of which there is still great danger, would, they say, probably prove fatal.

LETTER XIX.

DOUGLAS STUART BREADALBANE, ESQ. TO THE

HONOURABLE PERCIVAL TOLLMARSH.

DEAR TOLL,

Grindelwald, Sept. 19.

I have been tumbled over a huge precipice,have broken one of my two arms in two placesand my only head in at least two hundred :am besides covered from head to foot with thumps, bumps, lumps, and bruises—am all over black and blue, and other colours, multifarious as the rainbow, but infinitely less lovely, have utterly spoiled at once my Manton and my beauty;-have been shaved, bled, blistered, leeched, physicked, fomented, and tormented for a full fortnight, with ́out ceasing-am shut up in a little bed room, in a little parson's house, in the midst of great inaccessible Swiss mountains, (which alas! I can no longer scramble over) where not a soul (except one) can understand a single word I say-in short, there never was such an unfortunate fellow;-and yet, Tolly-I am the happiest dog alive!

You who know me so well, will easily conceive that I am in love—and you are right, Toll,-I am ;but, but I am ashamed to tell it-I am in love, desperately, irrecoverably in love with-with-a Swiss Paysanne-a sort of servant.-No! by heavens it is impossible! She cannot be !-and yet she is :she is a sort of attendant, or humble companion, or fille de chambre of Lady Hunlocke's,-she says so herself!-And what is worse-she is the second Abigail I have fallen in love with within this fortnight!

By heavens! this country is under witchcraft, and I have neither the use of my eyes, ears, nor understanding since I entered it! I saw in a night-cap-an elegant lovely young creature, blushing, trembling, beaming with mind and sensibility-yet full of dignity-her soft glance penetrating to the soul-her ecstatic voice winning the very heart and lo!-in another hour-and without a night-cap, this angelic vision was transformed into a starched, prim, sharp old maid of a waiting woman-who accused me, forsooth, of having stolen her rings! And it actually was the same, for the rings were found upon the candlestick in my room, which I had taken away from hers by mistake, instead of my own, having gone to give her a light-allured by her syren voice while she

called for one at the top of the stairs; and she produced, in further proof of her identity, an egregiously absurd epistle that I had left upon her table, to apologise for the liberty I had taken, forsooth, of kissing her fair hand,-which so violently shocked and offended her, that she left the apartment with the air of an indignant Queen. I actually quoted Lord Byron to this starched pinner of caps! But there was little need, when I saw her again, for me to quote Lord Byron any more to her, or adjure her like him.

'Maid of Athens !'-(or lady's maid,) or

Old maid! O!-before we part,

Give, O give me back my heart!

For back came my heart of itself, the moment I saw, without night-cap or candle-light-the 'maid' to whom I had given it. I offered her back, at the same time, a red garter I had carried off from her chamber, as a 'relic'—but the jade would not have it. You cannot conceive what a ridiculous figure I cut, Toll! I was the jest of all the waiters and chamber-maids in the inn.

It does not signify, Toll, it certainly must be the devil, or one of his most particular agents, that haunts me in the shape of this confounded waitingmaid, and looks so elegant a creature;-for the