accounts in Evelyn and Goldsmith are probably familiar to the
reader.] about this year, "six or seven hundred dirty half-naked
Turks in a small vessel chained to the oars, from which they are
not allowed to stir, fed upon nothing but bad biscuit and water,
and beat about on the most trifling occasion by their most
inhuman masters, who are certainly more Turks than their slaves."

After several digressions, one touching the ancient Cemenelion, a
subject upon which the Jonathan Oldbucks of Provence without
exception are unconscionably tedious, Smollett settles down to a
capable historical summary preparatory to setting his palette for
a picture of the Nissards "as they are." He was, as we are aware,
no court painter, and the cheerful colours certainly do not
predominate. The noblesse for all their exclusiveness cannot
escape his censure. He can see that they are poor (they are
unable to boast more than two coaches among their whole number),
and he feels sure that they are depraved. He attributes both
vices unhesitatingly to their idleness and to their religion. In
their singularly unemotional and coolly comparative outlook upon
religion, how infinitely nearer were Fielding and Smollett than
their greatest successors, Dickens and Thackeray, to the modern
critic who observes that there is "at present not a single
credible established religion in existence." To Smollett
Catholicism conjures up nothing so vividly as the mask of comedy,
while his native Calvinism stands for the corresponding mask of
tragedy. [Walpole's dictum that Life was a comedy to those who
think, a tragedy for those who feel, was of later date than this
excellent mot of Smollett's.] Religion in the sunny spaces of the
South is a "never-failing fund of pastime." The mass (of which he
tells a story that reminds us of Lever's Micky Free) is just a