Joigny. A handsome stone bridge seems its most remarkable ornament: the river is broad and fine, flowing through steep banks fringed with wood. We dined and slept at _les Cinq Mineurs_, and this in the same room. A most obliging, intelligent, young woman waited upon us, whose name was _Veronique_. After dinner we walked on the promenade by the side of the river, and saw the barracks, &c. My friends met with a little adventure in their rambles, while I was resting myself at the inn. Seeing a pretty little boy and his sister at play near the chateau, (belonging to the ancient counts of Joigny,) they entered into conversation with them, upon which they were joined by the father of the children, a French country gentleman, who resided in a small house opposite the chateau: he insisted upon their coming in with him, and as the dinner was ready, much wished to tempt them to partake the meal: this they declined, and their new acquaintance proceeded to shew them his collection of pictures, _de très bons morceaux_, as he called them, but which did not rank quite so high in the estimation of his visitors. He unintentionally displayed, however, a much more pleasing possession; I mean that of an amiable and grateful disposition, for he said in the course of conversation, that he was always on the watch for an opportunity of shewing hospitality and attention to the English, as some little return for the kindness he had experienced from their nation, during a visit he had formerly made to his brother in Dorsetshire; this brother was one of the monks of the order of _La Trappe_, a small number of whom had been collected together, and who lived, in their former habits of monastic gloom and austerity, at Lulworth castle in that county, under the protection of an English catholic (Mr. Weld), during the French revolution. He related some interesting anecdotes of this severe establishment; in particular, that of an Austrian general of high rank, who after enrolling himself a member of the community, and living some years in the practice of incredible hardships and privations, at length permitted his tongue to reveal his name and family, about ten minutes previous to his dissolution; faithful to the vow which is common to them all, of not speaking until the moment of death. I was not aware that such an institution existed in England, till this French gentleman related the circumstance, and it strengthened the sensations of mixed horror and pity, which I have ever felt for the victims of fanaticism, in every shape and in every degree. How incredible does it appear, (in the judgment of reasonable beings) that mortals should imagine the benevolent Author of Nature can possibly take pleasure in a mode of worship which restricts his creatures from the enjoyment of those comforts and innocent pleasures with which life abounds, and for which he has so peculiarly adapted their faculties! Shall all created beings express their sense of existence in bursts of involuntary cheerfulness and hilarity of spirit, and man alone offer up his adorations with a brow of gloom, and a heart withered by slavish sensations of fear and alarm? but enough upon so sacred a subject.