SKETCHES OF FOREIGN TRAVEL

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"To an American visiting Europe for the first time," saith Geoffrey Crayon, "the long voyage which he has to make is an excellent preparative." To the greater proportion of those who revisit the old world, the voyage is only an interval of ennui and impatience. Not such is it to the writer of this sentence. For him the sea has charms which age cannot wither, nor head winds abate. For him the voyage is a retreat from the cares of business, a rest from the pursuit of wealth, and a prolonged reminiscence of his youthful days, when he first trod the same restless pathway, and the glories of England and the Continent rose up resplendent before him, very much as the gorgeous city in the clouds looms up before the young gentleman in one of the late lamented Mr. Cole's pictures. For it is a satisfaction to him to remember that such things were,—even though the performances of life have not by any means equalled the promises of the programme of youth,—though age and the cares of an increasing family have stifled poetry, and the genius of Romance has long since taken his hat.

The recollections of youthful Mediterranean voyages are a mine of wealth to an old man. They have transformed ancient history into a majestic reality for him, and the pages of his dog's-eared LempriÈre become instinct with life as he recalls those halcyon days when he reclined on deck beneath an awning, and gazed on Crete and Lesbos, and the mountains that look on Marathon. Neither age nor misfortune can ever rob him of the joy he feels when he looks back to the cloudless afternoon when he passed from the stormy Atlantic to that blue inland sea,—when he saw where Africa has so long striven to shake hands with Europe,—and thrilled at the thought that the sea then glowing with the hues of sunset was once ploughed by the invincible galleys of the CÆsars, and dashed its angry surges over the shipwrecked Apostle of the Gentiles.

It is rather a pleasant thing to report one's self on board a fine packet ship on a bright morning in May—the old portmanteau packed again, and thoughts turned seaward. There is a kind of inspiration in the song of the sailors at the windlass, (that is, as many of them as are able to maintain a perpendicular position at that early period of the voyage;) the very clanking of the anchor chains seems to speak of speedy liberation, and the ship sways about as if yearning for the freedom of the open sea. At last the anchor is up, and the ship swings around, and soon is gliding down the channel; and slowly the new gasometer, and Bunker Hill Monument, and the old gasometer (with the dome) on Beacon Hill, begin to diminish in size. (I might introduce a fine misquotation here about growing "small by degrees, and beautifully less," but that I don't like novelties in a correspondence like this.) The embankments of Fort Warren seem brighter and more verdurous than ever, and the dew-drops glitter in the sunbeams, as dear Nellie's tears did, when she said good-by, that very morning. Then, as we get into the bay, the tocsin calls to lunch—and the appetite for lobsters, sardines, ale, and olives makes us all forget how much we fear lest business of immediate importance may prevent an early return to the festive mahogany. And shortly after, the pilot takes his leave, and with him the small knot of friends, who have gone as far as friendship, circumstances, and the tide will allow. And so the voyage commences—the captain takes command—and all feel that the jib-boom points towards Motherland, and begin to calculate the distance, and anticipate the time when the ship shall be boarded by a blue-coated beef-eater, who will take her safely "round 'Oly'ead, and dock 'er." The day wears away, and the sunset finds the passengers well acquainted, and a healthy family feeling growing up among them. The next morning we greet the sea and skies, but not our mother earth. The breeze is light—the weather is fine—so that the breakfast is discussed before a full bench. Every body feels well, but sleepy, and the day is spent in conversation and enjoyment of the novelty of life at sea. The gentle heaving of the ocean is rather agreeable than otherwise, and the young ladies promenade the deck, and flatter themselves that they have (if I might use such an expression) their sea legs on. But the next day the gentle heaving has become a heavy swell,—locomotion is attended with great difficulties,—the process of dressing is a severe practical joke,—and the timorous approach to the breakfast table and precipitous retreat from it, are very interesting studies to a disinterested spectator. The dining-saloon is thinly populated when the bell rings—the gentlemen preferring to lounge about on deck—they have slight headaches—not seasick—of course not—the gentleman who had taken eight sherry cobblers was not intoxicated at all—it was a glass of lemonade, that he took afterwards, that disagreed with him and made his footing rather unsteady. But Neptune is inexorable, and exacts his tribute, and the payers show their receipts in pale faces and dull eyes, whether they acknowledge it or no; and many a poor victim curses the pernicious hour that ever saw him shipped, and comes to the Irishman's conclusion that the pleasantest part of going away from home is the getting back again.

But a few days suffice to set all minds and stomachs at rest, and we settle down into the ordinary routine of life at sea. The days glide by rapidly, as Shakspeare says, "with books, and work, and healthful play," and as we take a retrospective view of the passage, it seems to be a maze of books, backgammon, bad jokes, cigars, crochet, cribbage, and conversation. Contentment obtains absolute sway, which even ten days of head winds and calms cannot shake off. Perhaps this is owing in a great measure to the good temper and gentlemanly bearing of the captain, who never yielded to the temptation, before which so many intrepid mariners have fallen, to speak in disrespectful and condemnatory terms of the weather. How varied must be the qualities which make a good commander of a packet ship; what a model of patience he must be—patience not only with the winds, but also with variable elements of humanity which surround him. He must have a good word for every body and a smiling face, although he knows that the ship will not head her course by four points of the compass on either tack; and must put aside with a jest the unconscious professional gentleman whose hat intervenes between his sextant and the horizon. In short, he must possess in an eminent degree what Virgil calls the suaviter in what's-his-name with the fortiter in what-d'ye-call-it. I am much disposed to think that had Job been a sea captain with a protracted head wind, the land of Uz would not have attained celebrity as the abode of the most patient of men.

An eminent Boston divine, not long since deceased, who was noted alike for his Johnsonian style and his very un-Johnsonian meekness of manner, once said to a sea captain, "I have, sir, in the course of my professional career, encountered many gentlemen of your calling; but I really must say that I have never been powerfully impressed in a moral way by them, for their conversation abounded in expressions savouring more of strength than of righteousness; indeed, but few of them seemed capable of enunciating the simplest sentence without prefacing it with a profane allusion to the possible ultimate fate of their visual organs, which I will not shock your fastidiousness by repeating." The profanity of seafaring men has always been remarked; it has been a staple article for the lamentations of the moralist and the jests of the immoralist; but I must say that I am not greatly surprised at its prevalence, for when I have seen a thunder squall strike a ship at sea, and every effort was making to save the rent canvas, it has seemed to me as if those whose dealings were with the elements actually needed a stronger vocabulary than is required for less sublime transactions. To speak in ordinary terms on such occasions would be as absurd as the Cockney's application of the epithets "clever" and "neat" to Niagara. I am not attempting to palliate every-day profanity, for I was brought up in the abhorrence of it, having been taken at an early age from the care of the lady "who ran to catch me when I fell, and kissed the place to make it well," and placed in the country under the superintendence of a maiden aunt, who was very moral indeed, and who instilled her principles into my young heart with wonderful eloquence and power. "Andrew," she used to say to me, "you mustn't laugh in meetin'; I've no doubt that the man who was hung last week (for this was in those unenlightened days when the punishment of crime was deemed a duty, and not a sin) began his wicked course by laughing in meetin'; and just think, if you were to commit a murder—for those who murder will steal—and those who steal will swear and lie—and those who swear and lie will drink rum—and then if they don't stop in their sinful ways, they get so bad that they will smoke cigars and break the Sabbath; and you know what becomes of 'em then."

The ordinary routine of life at sea, which is so irksome to most people, has a wonderful charm for me. There is something about a well-manned ship that commands my deepest enthusiasm. Each day is filled with a quiet and satisfactory kind of enjoyment. From that early hour of the morning when the captain turns out to see what is the prospect of the day, and to drink a mug of boiling coffee as strong as aquafortis, and as black as the newly-opened fluid Day & Martin, from No. 97, High Holborn, to that quiet time in the evening when that responsible functionary goes below and turns in, with a sententious instruction to the officer of the watch to "wake him at twelve, if there's any change in the weather," there is no moment that hangs heavy on my hands. I love the regular striking of the bells, reminding me every half hour how rapidly time and I are getting on. The regularity with which every thing goes on, from the early washing of the decks to the sweeping of the same at four bells in the evening, makes me think of those ancient monasteries in the south of Europe, where the unvarying round of duties creates a paradise which those who are subject to the unexpected fluctuations of common life might be pardoned for coveting. If the rude voices that swell the boisterous chorus which hoists the tugging studding-sail up by three-feet pulls, only imperfectly remind one of the sounds he hears when the full choir of the monastery makes the grim arches of the chapel vibrate with the solemn tones of the Gregorian chant, certainly the unbroken calmness of the morning watch may well be allowed to symbolize the rapt meditation and unspoken devotion which finds its home within the "studious cloister's pale"; and I may be pardoned for comparing the close attention of the captain and his mates in getting the sun's altitude and working out the ship's position to the "examination of conscience" among the devout dwellers in the convent, and the working out of the spiritual reckoning which shows them how much they have varied from the course laid down on the divine chart, and how far they are from the wished-for port of perfection.

I have a profound respect for the sea as a moral teacher. No man can be tossed about upon it without feeling his impotence and insignificance, and having his heart opened to the companions of his danger as it has never been opened before. The sea brings out the real character of every man; and those who journey over its "deep invisible paths" find themselves intrusting their most sacred confidences to the keeping of comparative strangers. The conventionalities of society cannot thrive in a salt atmosphere; and you shall be delighted to see how frank and agreeable the "world's people" can be when they are caught where the laws of fashion are silent, and what a wholesome neglect of personal appearances prevails among them when that sternest of democrats, Neptune, has placed them where they feel that it would be folly to try to produce an impression. The gentleman of the prize ring, whom Dickens introduces looking with admiration at the stately Mr. Dombey, gave it as his opinion that there was a way within the resources of science of "doubling-up" that incarnation of dignity; but, for the accomplishment of such an end, one good, pitching, head-sea would be far more effectual than all the resources of the "manly art." The most unbending assumption could not survive that dreadful sinking of the stomach, that convulsive clutch at the nearest object for support, and the faint, gurgling cry of "stew'rd" which announces that the victim has found his natural level.

A thorough novitiate of seasickness is as indispensable, in my opinion, to the formation of true manly character, as the measles to a well-regulated childhood. Mentally as well as corporeally, seasickness is a wonderful renovator. We are such victims of habit, so prone to run in a groove, (most of us in a groove that may well be called a "vicious circle,") that we need to be thoroughly shaken up, and made to take a new view of the rationale of our way of life. I do not believe that any man ever celebrated his recovery from that marine malady by eating the pickles and biscuit which always taste so good on such an occasion, without having acquired a new set of ideas, and being made generally wiser and better by his severe experience. I meet many unamiable persons "whene'er I take my walks abroad," who only need two days of seasickness to convert them into positive ornaments to society.

But, pardon me; all this has little to do with the voyage to Liverpool. The days follow each other rapidly, and it begins to seem as if the voyage would stretch out to the crack of doom, for the head wind stands by us with the constancy of a sheriff, and when that lacks power to retard us we have a calm. But the weather is beautiful, and all the time is spent in the open air. Nut brown maids work worsted and crochet on the cooler side of the deck, and gentlemen in rusty suits, with untrimmed beards, wearing the "shadowy livery of the burning sun," talk of the prospects of a fair wind or read innumerous novels. The evenings are spent in gazing at a cloudless sky, and promenading in the moonshine. Music lends its aid and banishes impatience; my young co-voyagers seem not to have forgotten "Sweet Home," and the "Old Folks at Home" would be very much gratified to know how green their memory is kept.

At length we all begin to grow tired of fair weather. The cloudless sky, the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, and the bright blue sea, with its lazily spouting whales and its lively porpoises playing around our bows,—grow positively distasteful to us; and we begin to think that any change would be an agreeable one. We do not have to wait many days before we are awaked very early in the morning, by the throwing down of heavy cordage on deck, and the shouts of the sailors, and are soon aware that we are subject to an unusual motion—as if the ship were being propelled by a strong force over a corduroy road constructed on an enormous scale. Garments, which yesterday were content to hang in an orderly manner against the partitions of one's state-room, now obstinately persist in hanging at all sorts of peculiar and disgraceful angles. Hat boxes, trunks, and the other movables of the voyager manifest great hilarity at the change in the weather, and dance about the floor in a manner that must satisfy the most fastidious beholder. Every timber in the ship groans as if in pain. The omnipresent steward rushes about, closing up sky-lights and dead lights, and "chocking" his rattling crockery and glassware. On deck the change from the even keel and the clear sunlight of the day before is still more wonderful. The colour of the sky reminds you of the leaden lining of a tea-chest; that of the sea, of the dingy green paper which covers the same. The sails, which so many days of sunshine have bleached to a dazzling whiteness, are now all furled, except those which are necessary to keep some little headway on the ship. The captain has adorned his manly frame with a suit of India rubber, which certainly could not have been selected for its gracefulness, and has overshadowed his honest face with a sou'wester of stupendous proportions. With the exception of occasional visits to the sinking barometer, he spends his weary day on the wet deck, and tries to read the future in the blackening waves and stormy sky. The wheel, which heretofore has required but one man, now taxes the strength of two of the stoutest of our crew;—so hard is it to keep our bashful ship heading up to that rude sea, and to "ease her when she pitches." The breakfast suffers sadly from neglect, for every one is engrossed with the care of the weather. At noon there is a lull for half an hour or so, and, in spite of the threats of the remorseless barometer, some of our company try to look for an amelioration in the meteorological line. But their hopes are crushed when they find that the wind has shifted one or two points, and has set in to blow more violently than before. The sea, too, begins to behave in a most capricious and disagreeable style. When the ship has, with a great deal of straining and cracking, ridden safely over two mighty ridges of water, and seems to be easily settling down into a black valley between two foam-capped hills, there comes a sudden shock, as if she had met the Palisades of the Hudson in her path—a crackling, grating sound, like that of a huge nutmeg-grater operating on a coral reef, a crash like the combined force of all the battering-rams of Titus Flavius Vespasianus on one of the gates of Jerusalem,—and a hundred tons of angry water roll aft against the cabin doors, in a manner not at all agreeable to weak nerves. For a moment the ship seems to stand perfectly still, as if deliberating whether to go on or turn back; then, realizing that the ship that deliberates in such a time is lost, she rises gracefully over a huge pile of water which was threatening to submerge her.

The afternoon wears away slowly with the passengers. They say but little to one another, but look about them from the security of the wheel-house as if they were oppressed with a sense of the inestimable value of strong cordage. As twilight approaches, and all hands are just engaged in taking supper, after having "mended the reefs," the ship meets a staggering sea, which seems to start every timber in her firm-set frame, and our main-top-gallant-mast breaks off like a stick of candy. Such things generally happen just at night, the sailors say, when the difficulties of clearing away the broken rigging are increased by the darkness. Straightway the captain's big, manly voice is heard above the war-whoop of the gale, ringing out as Signor Badiali's was wont to in the third act of Ernani. The wind seems to pin the men to the ratlines as they clamber up; but all the difficulties are overcome at length; the broken mast is lowered down, and snugly stowed away; and before nine o'clock all is quiet, except the howling wind, which seems to have determined to make a night of it. And such a night! It is one of those times that make one want one's mother. There is little sleeping done except among the "watch below" in the forecastle, who snore away their four hours as if they appreciated the reasoning of Mr. Dibdin when he extols the safety of the open sea as compared with the town with its falling chimneys and flying tiles, and commiserates the condition of the unhappy shore-folks in such a tempestuous time. The thumping of the sea against our wooden walls, the swash of water on deck as the ship rolls and pitches as you would think it impossible for any thing addicted to the cold water movement to roll or pitch, and over all the wild, changeless, shrieking of the gale, will not suffer sleep to visit those who are not inured to such things. Tired of bracing up with knee, and hand, and heel, to keep in their berths, they lie and wonder how many such blows as that our good ship could endure, and think that if June gets up such gales on the North Atlantic, they have no wish to try the quality of those of January.

Morning comes at last, and every heart is cheered by the captain's announcement, as he passes through the cabin, that the barometer is rising, and the weather has begun to improve. Some of the more hopeful and energetic of our company turn out and repair to the deck. The leaden clouds are broken up, and the sun trying to struggle through them; but to the inexperienced the gale appears to be as severe as it was yesterday. All the discomfort and danger of the time are forgotten, however, in the fearful magnificence of the spectacle that surrounds us. As far as the eye can reach it seems like a confused field of battle, where snowy plumes and white flowing manes show where the shock of war is felt most severely. To watch the gathering of one of those mighty seas that so often work destruction with the noblest ships,—to see it gradually piling up until it seems to be impelled by a fury almost intelligent,—to be dazzled by its emerald flash when it erects its stormy head the highest, and breaks into a field of boiling foam, as if enraged at being unable to reach us;—these are things which are worth all the anxiety and peril that they cost.

The captain's prognostications prove correct. Our appetites at dinner bear witness to them; and before sunset we find our ship (curtailed of its fair proportion, it is true, by the loss of its main-top-gallant-mast) is under full sail once more. The next day we have a few hours' calm, and when a light breeze does spring up, it comes from the old easterly quarter. It begins to seem as if we were fated to sail forever, and never get any where. But patience wears out even a head wind, and at last the long-looked-for change takes place. The wind slowly hauls to the south, and many are the looks taken at the compass to see how nearly the ship can come up to her course. Then our impatience is somewhat allayed by speaking a ship which has been out twelve days longer than our own—for, if it be true, as Rochefoucauld says, that "there is something not unpleasing to us in the misfortunes of our best friends,"—how keen must be the satisfaction of finding a stranger-companion in adversity. The wind, though steady, is not very strong, and many fears are expressed lest it should die away and give Eurus another three weeks' chance. But our forebodings are not realized, and a sunshiny day comes when we are all called up from dinner to see a long cloud-like affair, (very like a whale,) which, we are told, is the Old Head of Kinsale. Straightway all begin to talk of getting on shore the next day; but when that comes, we find that we are drawing towards Holyhead very rapidly, as our favourable wind has increased to a gale—so that when we have got round Holyhead, and have taken our pilot, (that burly visitor whose coming every one welcomes, and whose departure every one would speed,) the aforesaid pilot heaves the ship to, and, having a bed made up on the cabin floor, composes himself to sleep. The next morning finds the gale abated, and early in the forenoon we are running up to the mouth of the river. The smoke (that first premonitory symptom of an English town) hangs over Liverpool, and forms a strong contrast with the bright green fields and verdant hedges which deck the banks of the Mersey. The ship, after an immense amount of vocal power has been expended in that forcible diction which may be termed the marine vernacular, is got into dock, and in the afternoon a passage of thirty-three days is concluded by our stepping once more upon the "inviolate island of the sage and free," and following our luggage up the pier, with a swing in our gait which any stage sailor would have viewed with envy. The examination at the Custom House is conducted with a politeness and despatch worthy of imitation among the officials of our Uncle Samuel. The party of passengers disperses itself about in various hotels, without any circumstance to hinder their progress except falling in with an exhibition of Punch and Judy, which makes the company prolific in quotations from the sayings of Messrs. Codlin and Short, and at last the family which never had its harmonious unity disturbed by any thing, is broken up forever.

Liverpool wears its old thriving commercial look—perhaps it is a few shades darker with smoke. The posters are on a more magnificent scale, both as regards size and colour, than ever before, and tell not only of the night's amusements, but promise the acquisition of wealth outrunning the dreams of avarice in lands beyond the farthest Thule. Melbourne and Port Philip vie in the most gorgeous colours with San Francisco; and the United States seem to have spread wide their capacious arms to welcome the down-trodden Irishman. Liverpool seems to be the gate to all the rest of the world. I almost fear to walk about lest I should find myself starting off, in a moment of temporary insanity, for Greenland's icy mountains, or India's coral strand.

Dull must he be of soul who could make the journey from Liverpool to the metropolis in the month of June, and not be lifted above himself by the surpassing loveliness of dear mother Nature. Even if he were chained to a ledger and cash book—if he never had a thought or wish beyond the broker's board, and his entire reading were the prices current—he must forget them all, and feel for the time what a miserable sham his life is—or he does not deserve the gift of sight. It is Thackeray, I think, who speaks somewhere of the "charming friendly English landscape that seems to shake hands with you as you pass along"—and any body who has seen it in June will say that this is hardly a figurative expression. I used to think that it was my enthusiastic love for the land of the great Alfred which made it seem so beautiful to me when I was younger; but I find that it wears too well to be a mere fancy of my own brain. People may complain of the humid climate of England, and curse the umbrella which must accompany them whenever they walk out; but when the sun does shine, it shines upon a scene of beautiful fertility unequalled elsewhere in the world, and which the moist climate produces and preserves. And then, too, it seems doubly grateful to the eyes of one just come from sea. The bright freshness of the whole landscape, the varied tints of green, the trim hedges, the luxuriant foliage which springs from the very trunks of the trees, and the high state of cultivation which makes the whole country look as if it had been swept and dusted that morning,—all these things strike an American, for he cannot help contrasting them with the parched fields of his own land in summer, surrounded by their rough fences and hastily piled-up stone walls. The solidity of the houses and cottages, which look as if they were built, not for an age, but for all time, makes him think of the country houses of America, which seem to have grown up in a night, like our friend Aladdin's, and whose frailty is so apparent that you cannot sneeze in one of them without apprehending a serious calamity. Then the embankments of the railways present not only a pleasant sight to the eye of the traveller, but a pretty little hay crop to the corporation; and at every station, and bridge, and crossing, wherever there is a switch to be tended, you see the neat cottages of the keepers, and the gardens thereof—the railway companies having learned that the expenditure of a few hundred pounds in this way saves an expenditure of many thousands in surgeons' bills and damages, and is far more satisfactory to all concerned.

What a charming sight is a cow—what a look of contentment she has—ambitious of nothing beyond the field of daily duty, and never looking happier than when she comes at night to yield a plenteousness of that fluid without which custards were an impossibility! Wordsworth says that "heaven lies about us in our infancy"—surely he must mean that portion of the heavens called by astronomers the Milky Way. It is pleasant to see a cow by the side of a railway—provided she is fenced from danger—to see her lift her head slowly as the train goes whizzing by, and gaze with those mild, tranquil eyes upon the noisy, smoke-puffing monster,—just as the saintly hermits of olden times might have looked from their serene heights of contemplation upon the dusty, bustling world. The taste of the English farmers for fine cattle is attested by a glance at any of their pastures. On every side you see the representatives of Alderney's bovine aristocracy; and scores of cattle crop the juicy grass, rivalling in their snowy whiteness any that ever reclined upon Clitumno's "mild declivity of hill," or admired their graceful horns in its clear waters. Until I saw them, I never comprehended what farmers meant when they spoke of "neat cattle."

What an eloquent preacher is an old church-tower! Moss-crowned and ivy-robed, it lifts its head, unshaken by the tempests of centuries, as it did in the days when King John granted the Great Charter or the holy Edward ruled the realm, and tells of the ages when England was one in faith, and not a poor-house existed throughout the land. Like a faithful sentinel, it stands guard over the humbler edifices around it, and warns their inhabitants alike of their dangers and their duties by the music of its bells. Erect in silent dignity, it receives the first beams of the morning, and when twilight has begun to shroud every thing in its neighbourhood, the flash of sunset lingers on its gray summit. It looks down with sublime indifference upon the changing scene below, as if it would reproach the actors there with their forgetfulness of the transitoriness of human pursuits, and remind them, by its unchangeableness, of the eternal years.

At last we draw near London. A gentleman, whose age I would not attempt to guess,—for he was very carefully made up, and boasted a deportment which would have excited the envy of Mr. Turveydrop, senior,—so far forgot his dignity as to lean forward and inform me that the place we were passing was "'Arrow on the 'Ill," which made me forget for the moment both his appearance and his uncalled-for "exasperation of the haitches." Not long after, I found myself issuing from the magnificent terminus of the North Western Railway, in Euston Square, in a cab marked V. R. 10,276. The cab and omnibus drivers of London are a distinct race of beings. Who can write their natural history? Who is competent to such a task? The researches of a Pritchard, a Pickering, a Smyth, would seem to cover the whole subject of the history of the human species from the anthropophagi and bosjesmen to the drinkers of train oil in the polar regions; but the cabmen are not included. They would require a master mind. The subject would demand the patient investigation of a Humboldt, the eloquence of a Macaulay, and the humour of a Dickens—and even then would fall short, I fear, of giving an adequate idea of them. Your London cab driver has no idea of distance; as, for instance, I ask one the simple question,—

"How far is it to the Angel in Islington?"

"Wot, sir?"

I repeat my interrogatory.

"Oh, the Hangel, sir! Four shillings."

"No, no. I mean what distance."

"Well, say three, then, sir."

"But I mean—what distance? How many miles?"

"O, come, sir, jump in—don't be 'ard on a fellow—I 'aven't 'ad a fare to-day. Call it 'arf a crown, sir."

Leigh Hunt says somewhere that if there were such a thing as metamorphosis, Dr. Johnson would desire to be transformed into an omnibus, that he might go rolling along the streets whose very pavements were the objects of his ardent affection. And he was about right. What better place is there in this world to study human nature than an omnibus? All classes meet there; in the same coach you may see them all—from the poor workwoman to the genteelly dressed lady, who looks as if she disapproved of such conveyances, but must ride nevertheless—from the young sprig, who is constantly anxious lest some profane foot should dim the polish of his boots, to the urbane old gentleman, who regrets his corpulence, and would take less room if he could. And then the top of the omnibus, which usually carries four or more passengers, what a place is that to see the tide of life which flows unceasingly through the streets of London! I know of nothing which can furnish more food for thought than a ride on an omnibus from Brompton to the Bank on a fine day. It is a pageant, in which all the wealth, pomp, power, and prosperity of this world pass before you; and for a moral to the whirling scene, you must go to the nearest churchyard.

London is ever the same. The omnibuses follow each other as rapidly as ever up and down the Strand, the white-gloved, respectable-looking policemen walk about as deliberately, and the tail of the lion over the gate of Northumberland House sticks out as straight as ever. The only great change visible here is in the newspapers. The tone of society is so different from what it was formerly, in all that concerns France, that the editors must experience considerable trouble in accustoming themselves to the new state of things. Once, France and Louis Napoleon furnished Punch with his chief materials for satire and amusement, and if any of the larger and more dignified journals wished to let off a little ill humour, or to say any thing particularly bitter, they only had to dip their pens in Gaul; but times are changed, and now nothing can be said too strong in favour of "our chivalric allies, the French." The memory of St. Helena seems to have given place to what they call here the entente cordiale, which those who are acquainted with the French language assure me means an agreement by which one party contracts to "play second fiddle" to another, through fear that if he does not he will not be permitted to play at all.

To the man who thoroughly appreciates the Essays of Elia, and Boswell's Life of Johnson, London can never grow tiresome. He can never turn a corner without finding "something new, something to please, and something to instruct." Its very pavements are classical. And there is nothing to abate, nor detract from, such a man's enthusiasm. The traveller who visits the Roman Forum, or the Palace of the CÆsars, experiences a sad check when he finds his progress impeded by unpoetical obstacles. But in London, all is harmonious; he sees on every side, not only that which tells of present life and prosperity, but the perennial glories of England's former days. Would he study history, he goes to the Tower, "rich with the spoils of time"; or to Whitehall, where mad fanaticism consummated its treasonable work with the murder of a sovereign; or to the towering minster, to gaze upon the chair in which the monarchs of a thousand years have sat; or to view the monuments, and read the epitaphs, of that host of

"Bards, heroes, sages, side by side,
Who darkened nations when they died."

Is he a lover of English literature? Here are scenes eloquent of that goodly company of wits and worthies, whose glowing pages have been the delight of his youth and the consolation of his riper years; here are the streets in which they walked, the taverns in which they feasted, the churches where they prayed, the tombs where they repose.

And London wears well. To revisit it when age has sobered down the enthusiasm of youth, is not like seeing a theatre by daylight; but you think almost that you have under-estimated your privileges. How well I remember the night when I first arrived in the metropolis! It was after ten o'clock, and I was much fatigued; but before I booked myself in my hotel, or looked at my room, I rushed out into the Strand, "with breathless speed, like a soul in chase." I pushed along, now turning to look at Temple Bar, now pausing to take breath as I went up Ludgate Hill. I saw St. Paul's and its dome before me, and I was satisfied. No, I was not satisfied; for when I returned up Fleet Street, I looked out dear old Bolt Court, and entered its Johnsonian precincts with an awe and veneration which a devout Mussulman, taking the early train for Mecca, would gladly imitate. And then I posted down Inner Temple Lane, and looked at the house in which Charles Lamb and his companions held their "Wednesday nights"; and, going still farther, I saw the river—I stood on the bank of the Thames, and I was satisfied. I looked, and all the associations of English history and literature which are connected with it filled my mind—but just as I was getting into a fine frenzy about it, a watchman hove in sight, and the old clock chimed out eleven. So I started on, and soon reached my hotel. I was accosted on my way thither by a young and gayly dressed lady, whom I did not remember ever to have seen before, but who expressed her satisfaction at meeting me, in the most cordial terms. I told her that I thought that it must be a mistake, and she responded with a laugh which very much shocked an elderly gentleman who was passing, who looked as if he might have been got up for the part of the uncle of the unhappy G. Barnwell. I have since learned that such mistakes and personal misapprehensions very frequently occur in London in the evening.

Speaking of Temple Bar, it gratifies me to see that this venerable gateway still stands, "unshaken, unseduced, unterrified," by any of the recent attempts to effect its removal. The old battered and splashed doors are perhaps more unsightly than before; but the statues look down with the same benignity upon the crowd of cabs and omnibuses, and the never-ending tide of humanity which flows beneath them, as they did upon the Rake's Progress, so many years ago. The sacrilegious commissioners of streets long to get at it with their crows and picks, but the shade of Dr. Johnson watches over the barrier of his earthly home. It is not an ornamental affair, to be sure, and it would be difficult for Mr. Choate, even, to defend it against the charge of being an obstruction; but its associations with the literature and history of the last two or three centuries ought to entitle its dingy arches to a certain degree of reverence, even in our progressive and irreverent age. The world would be a loser by the demolition of this ancient landmark, and London, if it should lose this, though it might still be the metropolis of the British empire, would cease to be the London of Johnson and Goldsmith, of Addison and Pope, of Swift and Hogarth.

Perhaps some may think, from what I have said in the commencement of this letter, that my enthusiasm has blinded me to those great moral and social evils which are apparent in English civilization; but it is not so. I love England rather for what she has been than for what she is; I love the England of Alfred and St. Edward; and when I contrast the present state with what it might have been under a succession of such rulers, I cannot but grieve. Truly the court of St. James under Victoria is not what it was under Charles II., nor even under Mr. Thackeray's favourite hero, "the great George IV.,"—but are not St. James and St. Giles farther apart than ever before? Is not Lazarus looked upon as a nuisance, which legislation ought, for decency's sake, to put out of the way? What does England do for the poor? Nothing; absolutely nothing, if you except a system of workhouses, compared with which prisons are delightful residences, and which seems to have been intended more for the punishment of poverty than as a work of charity. No; on the contrary, she discountenances works of charity; when a few earnest men among the clergy of her divided church make an effort in that direction, there is an outcry, and they must be put down; and their bishops, whose annual incomes are larger than the whole treasury of Alfred, admonish them to beware how they thus imitate the superstitions of the middle ages. No; your Englishman of the present day has something better to do than to look after the beggar at his doorstep; he is too respectable a man for that; he pays his "poor rates," and the police must order the thing of shreds and patches to "move on"; his progress must not be impeded, for his presence is required at a meeting of the friends of Poland, or of Italy, or of a society for the abolition of American slavery, and he has no time to waste on such common, every-day matters as the improvement of the miserable wretches who work his coal mines, or of those quarters of the town where vice parades its deformity with exulting pride, and the air is heavy with pestilence. There is proportionably more beggary in London at this hour than in any continental city. And such beggary! Not the comfortable, jolly-looking beggars you may see in Rome or Naples, who know that charity is enjoined upon the people as a religious duty, but the thin, pallid, high-cheeked supplicants, whose look is a petition which tells a more effective story than words can frame of destitution and starvation.

But there is another phase of this part of London life, sadder by far than that of mere poverty. It is an evil which no attempt is made to prevent, and so great an evil that its very mention is forbidden by the spirit of this age of "superficial morality and skin-deep propriety." I pity the man who can walk through Regent Street or the Strand in the evening, unsaddened by what he shall see on every side. How ridiculous do our boasts of this Christian nineteenth century seem there! Here is this mighty Anglo-Saxon race, which can build steam engines, and telegraphs, and clipper ships, which tunnels mountains, and exerts an almost incredible mastery over the forces of nature,—and yet, when Magdalene looks up to it for a merciful hand to lift her from degradation and sin, she finds it either deaf or powerless. There is a work yet to be done in London which would stagger a philanthropist, if he were gifted with thrice the heroism, and patience, and self-forgetfulness of a St. Vincent of Paul.

I cannot resist the inclination to give in this connection a passage from the personal experience of a friend in London, which, had I read it in any book or newspaper, I should have hesitated to believe. One evening, as he was passing along Pall Mall, he was addressed by a young woman, who, when she saw that he was going to pass on and take no notice of her, ran before him, and said in a tone of the most pathetic earnestness,—

"Well, if you'll not go with me, for God's sake, sir, give me a trifle to buy bread!"

Thus appealed to, and somewhat shaken by the voice and manner, he stopped under a gaslight, and looked at the speaker. Vice had not impressed its distinctive seal so strongly upon her as upon most of the unfortunate creatures one meets in London's streets; indeed, there was a shade of melancholy on her face which harmonized well with her voice and manner. So my friend resolved to have a few words more with her, and buttoning up his coat, to protect his watch and purse, he told her that he feared she wanted money to buy gin rather than bread. She assured him that it was not so, but that she wished to buy food for her little child, a girl of two or three years. Then he asked how she could lead such a life, if she had a child growing up, upon whom her example would have such an influence; and she said that she would gladly take up with an honest occupation, if she could find one,—indeed, she did try to earn enough for the daily wants of herself and child with her needle, but it was impossible,—and her only choice was between starvation and the street. At that time she said that she was learning the trade of a dressmaker, and she hoped that before long she should be able to keep herself above absolute necessity. Encouraged by a kind word from my friend, she went on in a simple, womanly manner, and told him of her whole career. It was the old story of plighted troth, betrayed affection, and flight from her village home, to escape the shame and reproach she would there be visited with. She arrived in London without money, without friends, without employment,—without any thing save that natural womanly self-respect which had received such a severe blow:—necessity stared her in the face, and she sank before it. My friend was impressed by the recital of her misfortunes, and thinking that she must be sincere, he took a sovereign from his purse and gave it to her. She looked from the gift to the giver, and thanked him again and again. He continued his walk, but had not gone more than three or four rods, when she came running after him, and reiterated her expressions of thankfulness with a trembling voice. He then walked on, and crossed over to the front of the Church of St. Martin, (that glorious soldier who with his sword divided his cloak with the beggar,) when she came after him yet again, and seizing hold of his hand, she looked up at him with streaming eyes, and said, holding the sovereign in her hand,—

"God bless you, sir, again and again for your kindness to me! Pray pardon me, sir, for troubling you so much—but—but—perhaps you meant to give me a shilling, sir,—perhaps you don't know that you gave me a sovereign."

How many models of propriety and respectability in every rank of life,—how many persons who have the technical language of religion constantly on their lips,—how many of those who, nurtured amid the influences of a good home, have never really known what temptation is,—how many such persons are there who might learn a startling lesson from this fallen woman, whom they seem to consider themselves religiously bound to despise and neglect! I have a great dread of these severely virtuous people, who are so superior to all human frailty that they cannot afford a kind word to those who have not the good fortune to be impeccable. But we all of us, I fear, need to be reminded of Burns's lines—

"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."

If we thought of this, keeping our own weaknesses in view, which of us would not shrink from judging uncharitably, or casting the first stone at an erring fellow-creature? Which of us would dare to condemn the poor girl who preserved so much of the spirit of honesty in her degradation, and to commend the negative virtues which make up so many of what the world calls good lives?

It is a very pleasant thing to get one's passport visÉd (even though a pretty good fee is demanded for it,) and to make preparations for leaving London, at almost any time; but it is particularly so when the weather has been doing its worst for a fortnight, and the atmosphere is so "thick and slab" that to compare it to pea-soup would be doing that excellent compound a great injustice. It is very pleasant to think of getting out from under that blanket of smoke and fog, and escaping to a land where the sun shines occasionally, and where the manners of the people make a perpetual sunshine which renders you independent of the weather. If there ever was a day to which that expressive old Saxon epithet nasty might be justly applied, it was the one on which I left the greasy pavements of London, and (after a contest with a cabman, which ended, as such things generally do, in a compromise) found myself on board one of the fast-sailing packets of the General Steam Navigation Company, at St. Catharine's Wharf, just below the esplanade of the Tower. The beautiful banks of the river below the city, the fine pile of buildings, and the rich foliage of the park at Greenwich, seemed to have laid aside their charms, and shrouded themselves in mourning for the death of sunshine. The steamer was larger than most of those which ply in the Channel; but the crowded cabins and diminutive state-rooms made me think with envy of the passengers from New York to Fall River that afternoon. And there was a want of attention to those details which would have improved the appearance of the boat greatly—which made me wish that her commander might have served his apprenticeship on Long Island Sound or on the Hudson.

The company was composed of about the usual admixture of English and foreign beauty and manliness; and the English, French, Dutch, and German languages were confounded in such a manner as to bring to mind the doings of the committee on the construction of public works recorded in Genesis. Among the crowd of young Cockneys in jockeyish-looking caps, with travelling pouches strapped to their sides, there was a rather tall gentleman in a clerical suit, with his throat covered with the usual white bandages. His highly respectable look, and the eminently "evangelical" expression of the corners of his mouth, made me feel quite sure that I had found a character. He had three little boys with him; and as far as appearance went, he might have been Dickens's model for Dr. Blimber, (the principal of that celebrated academy where they had mental green peas and intellectual asparagus all the year round,) for he had the eye of a pedagogue "to threaten and command," and his fixed look was the one which my old schoolmaster's face wore when he turned up his wristbands, and, taking his ruler, said, "I am very sorry, Andrew; but you know that it is for your good." His conversation savoured so strongly of the dictionary, that, even if I had been blind, I should have said that the speaker had spent years in correcting the compositions of ingenuous youth. I shall not forget his look of wonder when he asked one of the engineers what was the matter with a dog that was yelping about the deck, and received for a reply that he tumbled off the quarter deck, and was strained in the garret. However, I enjoyed two or three hours' conversation with him very much—if it could be called conversation when he did all the talking.

Towards evening, when we found ourselves in the open sea, the south-westerly swell rolled up finely from the Goodwin Sands, and produced a scene to remind a disinterested spectator of Punch's touching pictorial representation of the commencement of the continental tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson. I soon perceived that a conspicuous collection of white bowls, which adorned the main saloon, was not a mere matter of ornament. The amount of medicine for the prevention or cure of seasickness, which was taken by my fellow-voyagers from flat bottles covered with wicker-work, would have astonished the most ardent upholder of the old allopathic practice. But all the pitching and rolling of the steamer, and the varied occupations of the passengers, did not interfere with my repose. I slept as soundly in my narrow accommodations as if I had been within hearing of the rattling of the omnibuses of my native city.

The next morning I was out in good season; and though I do not consider myself either "remote," "unfriended," "melancholy," or "slow," I found myself upon the "lazy Scheldt," with Antwerp's heaven-kissing spire climbing up the hazy perspective. The banks of the Scheldt are not very picturesque; indeed, a person of the strongest poetical susceptibilities might approach Flanders without the slightest apprehension of an attack of his weakness. I could not help congratulating myself, though, on having been spared to see the country which was immortalized by the profanity of a great military force.

We Americans usually consider ourselves up to the times, and are prone to sneer at Russia for being eleven days behind the age; but we do not yet "beat the Dutch" in progress, for they are half an hour in advance, as I found, very soon after landing, that all the church clocks, with a great deal of formality and precision, struck nine, when the hands only pointed to half past eight; and I noted a similar phenomenon while I was taking breakfast an hour after. Antwerp is a beautiful old city, and its quiet streets are very pleasant, after the tumult and roar of London; but—there is one drawback—it is too scrupulously clean. I almost feared to walk about, lest I should unknowingly do some damage; and every door-handle and bell-pull had a most unhospitable polish, which seemed to say with the placards in the Crystal Palace, "Please not to handle." Cleanliness is a great virtue; but when it is carried to such an extent that you cannot find your books and papers which you left carefully arranged yesterday on your table,—when it gets to be a monomania with man or woman,—it becomes a bore. How strangely the first two or three hours in a Dutch town strike a stranger!—the odd, high-gabled houses, the queer head-dresses, (graceful because of their very ungracefulness,) the wooden shoes, and the language, which sounds like English spoken by a toothless person. But one very soon gets accustomed to it. It is like being in an Oriental city, where the great variety of costumes and languages, and the different manners of the people, make up an ensemble which a stranger thinks will be a lasting novelty; but on his second day he finds himself taking about as much notice of a Persian caravan as he would of a Canton Street or Sixth Avenue omnibus.

I might here indulge in a little harmless enthusiasm about this grand old cathedral of Antwerp. I might talk about the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault," and give an elaborate description of it,—its enormous dimensions and artistic glories,—if I did not know that any reader who desires such things can find them set down with greater exactness than becomes me, in any of the guide books for Belgium. I spent the greater proportion of my waking hours in Antwerp under the solemn arches of that majestic old church. I wonder, shall we ever see any thing in America to remind us even faintly of the glories of Antwerp, Cologne, Rouen, Amiens, York, or Milan? I fear not. The ages that built those glorious piles thought less of fat dividends than this boastful nineteenth century of ours, and their religion was not the mere one-day-out-of-seven affair that the improved Christianity of to-day is. The architects who conceived and executed those marvels of sublimity never troubled themselves with our popular query, "Will it pay?" any more than Dante interrupted the inspiration of his Paradiso, or Beethoven the linked harmony of his matchless symphonies, with their solicitude about the amount of their copyright. No; their work inspired them, and while it reflected their genius, it imparted to them something of its own divine dignity. Their art became religion, and its laborious processes acts of the most fervent devotion. But we have reformed all that, and now inspiration has to give way to considerations of the greatest number of "sittings," that can possibly be provided, and if the expenses of the sacred enterprise can be lessened by contriving accommodation for shops or storage in the basement, who does not rejoice? There are too many churches nowadays built upon the foundation of the profits, leaving the apostles entirely out of the question.

But while I lament our want of those wonderful constructions whose very stones seem to have grown consciously into forms of beauty, I must record my satisfaction at the improvement in architectural taste which is visible in most of our cities at home. If we must have banks, and railway stations, and shops, it is some compensation to have them made pleasant to our sight. Buildings are the books that every body unconsciously reads; and if they are a libel on the laws of architecture, they will surely vitiate in time the taste of those who become familiarized to their deformity. Dr. Johnson said, that "if a man's hands were dirty, his thoughts would be dirty"; and it may be declared, with much more reason, that those who are obliged to look, day after day, at ungraceful, mean, and unsubstantial objects, lose, by degrees, their sense of the beautiful and the harmonious, and set forth, in the poverty of their minds, the meanness of their surroundings.

On one account I have again and again blessed the star that guided me to Antwerp,—that is, for the pleasure afforded me by its treasures of art. I have, in times past, fed fat my appetite for the beautiful in the galleries of Italy, and therefore counted but little on the contents of the museum and churches of this ancient city. Do not be frightened, beloved reader; I am not going to launch out into the muddy stream of artistic criticism. I despise most of that which passes current under that dignified name, as heartily as you do. Even the laurels of Mr. Ruskin cannot rob me of a moment's repose. I cannot if I would, nor would I if I could, talk learnedly about pictures. So I can safely promise not to bore you with any "breadth of colouring," and to keep very "shady" about chiaro 'scuro. I only wish to say that he who has never been in Antwerp does not know who Rubens was. He may know that an industrious painter of that name once lived, and painted (as I used to think, judging from most of his works that I had seen elsewhere) a variety of fat, flaxen-haired women; but of Rubens, the great master, the painter of the Crucifixion, and the Descent from the Cross, he is as ignorant as a fourth-form boy in the public schools of Patagonia. It is worth a month of seasick voyaging to see the works of Rubens and Vandyck which Antwerp possesses; and the only regret connected with my visit there has been, that I could not give more days to the study of them than I could hours.

It is but fifteen miles from Antwerp to Mechlin, or Malines, (as the people here, in the depths of their ignorance, insist upon calling it,) and as a representative of a nation whose sole criterion is success, and whose list of the cardinal virtues is headed by Prosperity, I felt that it would be a grievous sin of omission for me not to stop and visit that thriving old town. It did not require much time to walk through its nice, quiet streets, and look at the pictures and wood carvings in its venerable churches. The white-capped and bright-eyed lace-makers sat in windows and doorways, their busy fingers forming fabrics, the sight of which would kindle the fire of covetousness in any female heart. Three hours in Mechlin sufficed to make me about as well acquainted with it as if I had daily waked up its echoes with the creaking of my shoes, until their thick soles were worn out past all hope of tapping. Selecting one of the numerous railways that branch out from Mechlin, like the reins from the hand of a popular circus rider in his favourite "six-horse-act," the "Courier of St. Petersburg," I took a ticket for Brussels, and soon found myself spinning along over these fertile plains, whose joyous verdure I had not sufficient time to appreciate before I found myself in the capital of Belgium.

And what a charming place this city of lace and carpets is! Clean as a parlour, not a speck nor a stain to be seen any where, with less of Dutch stiffness and more of French ease, so that you do not feel so much like an intruder as in most other strange cities. Brussels is a kind of vestibule to Paris; its streets, its shops, its public edifices are all reflections in miniature of those of the French metropolis. It has long seemed to me so natural a preparation for the meridian splendours of Paris, that to go thither in any other way than through Brussels, is as if you should enter a saloon by a back window, rather than through the legitimate front door. In one respect I prefer Brussels to Paris; it is smaller, and your mind takes it all in at once. In the French capital, its very vastness bewilders you. You are in the condition of the gentleman whose wife was so fat that when he wished to embrace her, he was obliged to make two actions of the feat, and use a bit of chalk to insure the proper distribution of his caress. But in Brussels every thing is so harmoniously and compactly combined, that you can enjoy it all at once. How does one's mind treasure up his rambles through these fair streets and gay arcades, his leisurely walks on these spacious boulevards, or under the dense shade of this lovely park, his musings in this fine old church of Ste. Gudule, whose gorgeous windows symbolize the heavenly bow, and whose air of devotion is eloquent of the undying hope which abides within its consecrated precincts! How one looks back years after leaving Brussels, and conjures up, in his memory, its public monuments, from that exceedingly diminutive and peculiar statue near the HÔtel de Ville, which has pursued its useful and ornamental career for so many centuries, to the heroic equestrian figure of Godfrey of Bouillon, in the Place Royale! How vividly does one remember the old Gothic hall, which has remained unchanged during the many years that have passed since the Emperor Charles V. there laid down the burden of his power, and exchanged the throne for the cloister.

One of the most delightful recollections of my term of residence in Brussels, is of a bright summer day, when I made an excursion to the field of Waterloo. Some Englishmen have established a line of coaches for the purpose—real old fashioned coaches, with a driver and a guard, which latter functionary performed Yankee Doodle most admirably on his melodious horn as we rattled out of town. The roadside views cannot have changed much since the night when the pavement shook beneath the heavy artillery and thundering tramp of Wellington's army. The forest of Soignies (or, to use its poetical name, Arden) looked as it might have looked before it was immortalized by a Tacitus and a Shakspeare; and its fresh foliage was "dewy with Nature's tear-drops," over our two coach loads of pleasure-seekers, just as Byron describes it to have been over the "unreturning brave," who passed beneath it forty years ago. Our party was shown over the memorable field by an old English sergeant who was in the battle; a fine bluff old fellow, and a gentleman withal, who, though his head was white, had all the enthusiasm of a young soldier. It was the most interesting trip of the kind that I ever made, far surpassing my expectations, for the ground remains literally in statu quo ante bellum. No commissioners of highways have interfered with its historical boundaries. It remains, for the most part, under cultivation, as it was before it became famous, and the grain grows, perhaps, more luxuriantly for the chivalric blood once shed there. There they are, unchanged, those localities which seem to so many mere inventions of the historian, Mont St. Jean, the farm of La Haye Sainte, the chÂteau of Hougoumont, the orchard with its low brick wall, over which the chosen troops of France and England fought hand to hand, and the spot where the last great charge was made, and the spell which held Europe in awe of the name of Napoleon, and made that name his country's watchword, and the synonyme of victory, was broken forever. Perhaps I err in saying forever, for France is certainly not unmindful of that name even now. That showery afternoon, when the great conqueror saw his veterans, against whom scores of battle fields, and all the terrors of a Russian campaign, proved powerless, cut to pieces and dispersed by a superior force, to which the news of coming reËnforcements gave new strength and courage,—that very afternoon a boy, without a thought of battles or their consequences, was playing in the quiet grounds of the chÂteau of Malmaison. If Napoleon could have looked forward forty years, if he could have foreseen the romantic career of that child, and followed him through thirty years of exile, imprisonment, and discouragement, until he saw him reËstablish the empire which was then overthrown, and place France on a higher pinnacle of power than she ever knew before, how comparatively insignificant would have seemed to him the consequences of that last desperate charge! If he could have seen that it was reserved to his nephew, the grandchild of his divorced but faithful Josephine, to avenge Waterloo by an alliance more fatal to England's prestige than any invasion could be, and that the armies which had that day borne such bloody witness to their unconquerable daring, would forty years later be united to resist the encroachments of the power which first checked him in his career of victory, he would have had something to think of during that gloomy night besides the sad events that had wrought such a fearful change in his condition.

I returned to Brussels in the afternoon, meditating on the scenes I had visited, and repeating the five stanzas of Childe Harold in which Byron has commemorated the battle of Waterloo. In the evening I read, with new pleasure, Thackeray's graphic Waterloo chapter in Vanity Fair, and dreamed all night of falling empires and "garments rolled in blood." And now I turn my face towards Italy.

It is a happy day in every one's life when he commences his journey into Italy. That glorious land, "rich with the spoils of time" above all others, endeared to every heart possessing any sense of the beautiful in poetry and art, or of the heroic in history, rises up before him as it was wont to do in the days of his youth, when Childe Harold's glowing numbers gave a tone of enthusiasm to his every thought, and filled him with longings, for the realization of which he hardly dared to hope. For the time, the commonest actions of the traveller seem to catch something of the indescribable charm of the land to which he is journeying. The ticketing of luggage and the securing of a berth on board a steamer—occupations which are not ordinarily considered particularly agreeable—become invested with an attractiveness that makes him wonder how he could ever have found them irksome. If he approaches Italy by land from France or Switzerland, with what curiosity does he study the varied features of the Piedmontese landscape! He recognizes the fertile fields which he read about in Tacitus years ago, and endeavours to find in the strange dialect which he hears spoken in the brief stops of the diligence to change horses, something to remind him even faintly of the melodious tongue with whose accents Grisi and Bosio had long since made him familiar. Meanwhile his imagination is not idle, and his mind is filled with historical pictures drawn from the classical pages which he once found any thing but entertaining. Though he may be fresh from the cloudless atmosphere of fair Provence, he fancies that the sky is bluer and the air more pure than he ever saw before.

It is a great advantage to enter Italy from the sea. In this way you perceive more clearly the national characteristics, and enter at once into the Italian way of life. You avoid in this way that gradual change from one pure nationality to another, which is eminently unsatisfactory. You do not weary yourself with the mixed population and customs of those border towns which bear about the same relation to Italy that Boulogne, with its multitude of English residents, bears to France. It was my good fortune when I first visited Italy, years ago, to make the voyage from America direct to the proud city of Genoa. Fifty-five weary days passed away before the end of the voyage was reached. Twenty-six of those days were spent in battling with a terrible north-easter, before whose might many a better craft than the one I was in went down into the insatiable depths. My Italian anticipations kept me up through all the cheerlessness of that time. The stormy sky, the wet, the cold, and all the discomfort could not keep from my mind's eye the vineyards, palaces, churches, and majestic ruins which made up the Italy I had looked forward to from childhood. My first sight of that romantic land did somewhat shock, I must acknowledge, my preconceived notions. I was called on deck early one December morning to see the land which is associated in most minds with perpetual sunshine. Facing a biting, northerly blast, I saw the maritime range of the Alps covered with snow and looking as relentless as arctic icebergs. My disappointment was forgotten, however, two mornings after, when Genoa, wearing "the beauty of the morning," lay before our weather-beaten bark. It was something to remember to my dying day—that approach to the city of palaces. Surrounded by its amphitheatre of hills crested on every side with heavy fortifications, its palaces, and towers, and domes, and terraced gardens rising apparently from the very edge of that tideless sea, there sat Genoa, surpassing in its splendour the wildest imaginings of my youth. I shall never forget the thrill that ran through every fibre of my frame, when the sun rose above those embattled ridges, and poured his flood of saffron glory over the whole wonderful scene, and the bells from a hundred churches and convents rang out as cheerily as if the sunbeams made them musical, like the statue in the ancient fable, and there was no further need of bell ropes. The astonishment of Aladdin when he rubbed the lamp and saw the effects of that operation could not have equalled mine, when I saw Genoa put on the light and life of day like a garment. It was like a scene in a theatrical pageant, or one of the brilliant changes in a great firework, so instantaneous was the transition from the subdued light and calmness of early morning to the activity and golden light of day. All the discomfort of the eight preceding weeks was forgotten in the exultation of that moment. I had found the Italy of my young dreams, and my happiness was complete.

This time, however, I entered Italy from the north. I pass by clean, prosperous-looking Milan, with its elegant churches, and its white-coated Austrian soldiers standing guard in every public place. I have not a word of lament to utter at seeing a stranger force sustaining social order there. It is better that it should be sustained by a despotism far more cruel than that of Austria, than to become the prey of that sanguinary anarchy which is dignified in Europe with the name of republicanism. The most absolute of all absolute monarchies is to be preferred to the best government that could possibly be built upon such a foundation as Mazzini's stiletto. Far better is the severest military despotism than the irresponsible tyranny of those who deny the first principles of government and common morality, and who seem to consider assassination the chief of virtues and the most heroic of actions. I pass by that magnificent cathedral, with its thousands of pinnacles and shining statues piercing the clear atmosphere like the peaks of a stupendous iceberg, and its subterranean chapel, glittering with precious metals and jewels, where, in a crystal shrine, repose the relics of the great St. Charles, and the lamps of gold and silver burn unceasingly, and symbolize the shining virtues of the self-forgetful successor of St. Ambrose, and the glowing gratitude of the faithful Milanese for his devotion to the welfare of their forefathers.

I lingered among the attractions of Genoa for a few days. I enjoy not only those magnificent palaces with their spacious quadrangles, broad staircases, and sculptured faÇades, but those narrow, winding streets of which three quarters of the city are composed—so narrow indeed that a carriage never is seen in them, and a donkey, pannier-laden, after the manner of Ali Baba's faithful animal, compels you to keep very close to the buildings. Genoa is the very reverse of Philadelphia. Its streets are as narrow and crooked as those of Philadelphia are broad and straight. The Quaker City was always a wearisome place to me. Its rectangular avenues—so wide that they afford no protection from the wintry blast nor shelter from the canicular sunshine, and as interminable as a tale in a weekly newspaper—tire me out. They make me long for something more social and natural than their straight lines. Man is a gregarious animal. It is his nature to snuggify himself. But the Quaker affects a contempt for snugness, and includes Hogarth's line of beauty among the worldly vanities which his religion obliges him to shun. Every time I think of Philadelphia my disrespect for the science of geometry is increased, and I find myself more and more inclined to believe the most unkind things that Lord Macaulay can say about Mr. Penn, its founder. Cherishing such sentiments as these, is it wonderful that I find Genoa a pleasant city? I enjoy its gay port, its thronged market place, its sumptuous churches, with gilded vaults and panels, and checkered exteriors, its well-dressed people, from the bluff coachman, who laughed at my attempts to understand the Genoese dialect, to the devout feminines in their graceful white veils, which give the whole city a peculiarly festive and nuptial appearance: but it must be acknowledged, that the up-and-down-stairsy feature of the town is not grateful to my gouty feet.

I must not weary you, dear reader, with any attempts to describe the delightful four days' journey from Genoa to Florence, in a vettura. The Cornice road, with its steep cliffs or trim villas on one side, and the clear blue Mediterranean on the other,—those pleasant old towns, pervaded with an air of respectable antiquity, Chiavari, Sestri, Sarzana, Spezzia, with its beautiful gulf, whose waters looked so pure and calm that it was difficult to think that they could ever have swallowed poor Percy Shelley, and robbed English literature of one of its brightest ornaments,—Pietra Santa, Carrara, with its queer old church, its quarries, its doorsteps and window-sills of milk-white marble, and its throng of artists,—the little marble city of Massa Ducale, nestling among the mountains,—the vast groves of olives, whose ash-coloured leaves made noontide seem like twilight,—all these things would require a great expenditure of time and rhetoric, and therefore I will not even allude to them.

Neither will I tire you with any reference to my brief sojourn in Pisa. I will not tell how delightful it was to perambulate the clean streets of that peaceful city,—how I enjoyed the view from the bridges, the ancient towers and domes, and the lofty palaces, whose fair fronts are mirrored in the soft-flowing Arno. I will not attempt to describe the enchantment produced by that noble architectural group,—the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Campanile, and the Campo Santo,—nor the joy I felt on making a closer acquaintance with that graceful tower, whose inexplicable dereliction from the perfect uprightness which is inculcated as a primary duty in all similar structures, was made familiar to me at an early age, through the medium of a remarkable wood-cut in my school Geography. I will not tell how I fatigued my sense with the forms of beauty with which that glorious church is filled,—how refreshing its holy quiet and subdued light were to my travel-worn spirit,—nor how the majestic cloisters of the Campo Santo, with their delicate traceries, antique frescoes, and constantly varying light and shade, elevated and purified my heart of the sordid spirit of this mean, practical age, until I felt that to live amid such scenes, and to be buried at last in the earth of Palestine, under the shade of those solemn arches, was the only worthy object of human ambition.

I entered Florence late in the afternoon, under cover of a fog that would have done credit to London in the depths of its November nebulosity. It was rather an unbecoming dress for the style of beauty of the Tuscan capital,—that mantle of chill vapour,—but it was worn but a few hours, and the sun rose the next morning in all his legitimate splendour, and darted his rays through as clear and frosty an atmosphere as ever fell to the lot of even that favoured country. I have once or twice heard the epithet "beautiful" applied to this city; indeed, I will not be sure that I have not met with it in some book or other. It is, in fact, the only word that can be used with any propriety concerning this charming place. It is not vast like Rome, nor is the soul of its beholder saddened by the sight of mighty ruins, or burdened with the weight of thousands of years of heroic history. It does not possess the broad Bay of Naples, nor is it watched over by a stupendous volcano, smoking leisurely for want of some better occupation. But it lies in the valley of the Arno, one of the most harmonious and impressive works of art that the world has ever seen, surrounded by natural beauties that realize the most ecstatic dreams of poesy.

Firenze la bella! Who can look at her from any of the terraced hills that enclose her from the rude world, and deny her that title? That fertile plain which stretches from her very walls to the edge of the horizon—those picturesque hills, dotted with lovely villas—those orchards and vineyards, in their glory of gold and purple—that river, stealing noiselessly to the sea—and far away the hoary peaks of the Apennines, changing their hue with every hour of sunlight, and displaying their most gorgeous robes, in honour of the departing day,—I pity the man who can look upon them without a momentary feeling of inspiration. The view from Fiesole is consolation enough for a life of disappointment, and ought to make all future earthly trials seem as nothing to him who is permitted to enjoy it.

And then, those domes and towers, so eloquent of the genius of Giotto and Brunelleschi and of the public spirit and earnest devotion of ages which modern ignorance stigmatizes as "dark,"—who can behold them without a thrill? The battlemented tower of the Palazzo Vecchio—which seems as if it had been hewn out of solid rock, rather than built up by the patient labour of the mason—looks down upon the peaceful city with a composure that seems almost intelligent, and makes you wonder whether it appeared the same when the signiory of Florence held their councils under its massive walls, and in those dark days when the tyrannous factions of Guelph and Ghibelline celebrated their bloody carnival. The graceful Campanile of the cathedral, with its coloured marbles, seems too much like a mantel ornament to be exposed to the changes of the weather. Amid the other domes and towers of the city rises the vast dome of the cathedral, the forerunner of that of St. Peter's, and almost its equal. It appears to be conscious of its superiority to the neighbouring architectural monuments, and merits Hallam's description—"an emblem of the Catholic hierarchy under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, unbroken, unchangeable, radiating in equal expansion to every part of the earth, and directing its convergent curves to heaven."

There is no city in the world so full of memories of the middle ages as Florence. Its very palaces, with their heavily barred basement windows, look as if they were built to stand a siege. Their sombre walls are in strong contrast with the bloom and sunshine which we naturally associate with the valley of the Arno. Their magnificent proportions and the massiveness of their construction oppress you with recollections of the warlike days in which they were erected. You wonder, as you stand in their courtyards, or perambulate the streets darkened by their overhanging cornices, what has become of all the cavaliers; and if a gentleman in "complete steel" should lift his visor to accost you, it would not startle you so much as to hear two English tourists with the inevitable red guide-books under their arms, conversing about the "Grand Juke." Wherever one may turn his steps in Florence, he meets with some object of beauty or historical interest; yet among all these charms and wonders there is one building upon which my eyes and mind are never tired of feeding. The Palazzo Riccardi, the cradle of the great Medici family, is not less impressive in its architecture than in its historic associations. Its black walls have a greater charm for me than the variegated marbles of the Duomo. It was built by the great Cosmo de' Medici, and was the home of that family of merchant princes in the most glorious period of its history, when a grateful people delighted to render to its members that homage which is equally honourable to "him that gives and him that takes." The genius of Michel Angelo and Donatello is impressed upon it. It was within those lofty halls that Cosmo and his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, welcomed pontiffs and princes, and the illustrious but untitled nobility of literature and art, which was the boast of their age. The ancient glories of the majestic pile are kept in mind by an inscription which greets him who enters it with an exhortation to "reverence with gratitude the ancient mansion of the Medici, in which not merely so many illustrious men, but Wisdom herself abode—a house which was the nurse of revived learning."

I wonder whether any one ever was tired of strolling about these old streets and squares. At my time of life, walking is not particularly agreeable, even if it be not interfered with by either of those foes to active exercise and grace of movement—rheumatism or gout; but I must acknowledge that I have found such pleasure in rambling through the familiar streets of this delightful city, that I have taken no note of bodily fatigue, and have forgotten the crutch or cane which is my inseparable companion. It is all the same to me whether I walk about the streets, or loiter in the Boboli Gardens, or listen to the delicious music of the full military band that plays daily for an hour before sunset under the shade of the Cascine. They all afford me a kind of vague pleasure—very much that sort of satisfaction which springs from hearing a cat purr, or from watching the fitful blaze of a wood fire. I have no fondness for jewelry, and the great Kohinoor diamond and all the crown jewels of Russia could not invest respectable uselessness or aristocratic vice with any beauty for me, nor add any charm to a bright, intelligent face, such as lights up many a home in this selfish world; yet I have spent hours in looking at the stalls on the Jeweller's Bridge, and enjoying the covetous looks bestowed by so many passers-by upon their glittering contents.

There are some excellent bookstalls here, and I have renewed the joys of past years and the memory of Paternoster Row, Fleet Street, Holborn, the Strand, and of the quays of Paris, in the inspection of their stock. I have a strong affection for bookstalls, and had much rather buy a book at one than in a shop. In the first place it would be cheaper; in the second place it would be a little worn, and I should become the possessor, not only of the volume, but of its associations with other lovers of books who turned over its leaves, reading here and there, envying the future purchaser. For books, so long as they are well used, increase in value as they grow in age. Sir William Jones's assertion, that "the best monument that can be erected to a man of literary talents is a good edition of his works," is not to be denied; but who would think of reading, for the enjoyment of the thing, a modern edition of Sir Thomas Browne, or Izaak Walton? Who would wish to read Hamlet in a volume redolent of printers' ink and binders' glue? Who would read a clean new copy of Robinson Crusoe when he might have one that had seen service in a circulating library, or had been well thumbed by several generations of adventure-loving boys? A book is to me like a hat or coat—a very uncomfortable thing until the newness has been worn off.

It is in the churches of Florence that my enthusiasm reaches its meridian. This solemn cathedral, with its richly dight windows,—whose warm hues must have been stolen from the palette of Titian or Tintoretto,—makes me forget all earthly hopes and sorrows; and the majestic Santa Maria Novella and San Lorenzo, with their peaceful cloisters and treasures of literature and art, appeal strongly to my religious sensibilities, while they completely satisfy my taste. And then Santa Croce, solemn, not merely as a place of worship, but as the repository of the dust of many of those illustrious men whose genius illumined the world during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries! I have enjoyed Santa Croce particularly, because I have seen more of the religious life of the Florentine people there. For more than a week I have been there every evening, just after sunset, when the only light that illuminated those ancient arches came from the high altar, which appeared like a vision of heaven in the midst of the thickest darkness of earth. The nave and aisles of that vast edifice were thronged: men, women, and children were kneeling upon that pavement which contains the records of so much goodness and greatness. I have heard great choirs; I have been thrilled by the wondrous power of voices that seemed too much like those of angels for poor humanity to listen to; but I have never before been so overwhelmed as by the hearty music of that vast multitude.

The galleries of art need another volume and an abler pen than mine. Free to the people as the sunlight and the shade of the public gardens, they make an American blush to think of the niggardly spirit that prevails in the country which he would fain persuade himself is the most favoured of all earthly abodes. The Academy, the Pitti, the Uffizi, make you think that life is too short, and that art is indeed long. You wish that you had more months to devote to them than you have days. Great as is the pleasure that I have found in them, I have found myself lingering more fondly in the cloisters and corridors of San Marco than amid the wonderful works that deck the walls of the palaces. The pencil of Beato Angelico has consecrated that dead plastering, and given to it a divine life. The rapt devotion and holy tranquillity of those faces reflect the glory of the eternal world. I ask no more convincing proof of the immortality of the soul, than the fact that those forms of beauty and holiness were conceived and executed by a mortal.

It is enough to excite the indignation of any reflective Englishman or American to visit Florence, and compare—or perhaps I ought rather to say contrast—the facts which force themselves upon his attention, with the prejudices implanted in his mind by early education. Surely, he has a right to be astonished, and may be excused if he indulges in a little honest anger, when he looks for the first time at the masterpieces of art which had their origin in those ages which he has been taught to consider a period of ignorance and barbarism. He certainly obtains a new idea of the "barbarism" of the middle ages, when he visits the benevolent institutions which they have bequeathed to our times, and when he sees the admirable working of the Compagnia della Misericordia, which unites all classes of society, from the grand duke to his humblest subject, in the bonds of religion and philanthropy. He may be pardoned, too, if he comes to the conclusion that the liberal arts were not entirely neglected in the age that produced a Dante and a Petrarch, a Cimabue and a Giotto,—not to mention a host of other names, which may not shine so brightly as these, but are alike superior to temporal accidents,—and he cannot be considered unreasonable if he refuses to believe that the ages which witnessed the establishment of universities like those of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Prague, Bologna, Salamanca, Vienna, Ferrara, Ingolstadt, Louvain, Leipsic, &c., were quite so deeply sunk in darkness, or were held in an intellectual bondage so utterly hopeless, as the eulogists of the nineteenth century would persuade him. The monuments of learning, art, and benevolence, with which Florence is filled, will convince any thinking man that those who speak of the times I have alluded to as the "dark ages," mean thereby the ages concerning which they are in the dark; and admirably exemplify in their own shallow self-sufficiency the ignorance they would impute to the ages when learning and all good arts were the handmaids of religion.

The moment in which one takes his first look at Rome is an epoch in his life. Even if his education should have been a most illiberal one, and he himself should be as strenuous an opponent of pontifical prerogatives as John of Leyden or Dr. Dowling, he is sure to be, for the time, imbued in some measure with the feelings of a pilgrim. The sight of that city which has exercised such a mighty influence on the world, almost from its very foundation, fills his mind with "troublings of strange joy." His vague notions of ancient history assume a more distinct form. The twelve CÆsars pass before his mind's eye like the spectral kings before the Scotch usurper. The classics which he used to neglect so shamefully at school, the historical lessons which he thought so dull, have been endowed with life and interest by that one glance of his astonished eye. But if he loved the classics in his youth,—if the wanderings of Æneas and the woes of Dido charmed instead of tiring him,—if "Livy's pictured page," the polished periods of Sallust and Tacitus, and the mighty eloquence of Cicero, were to him a mine of delight rather than a task,—how does his eye glisten with renewed youth, and his heart swell as his old boyish enthusiasm is once more kindled within it! He feels that he has reached the goal to which his heart and mind were turned during his purest and most unselfish years; and if he were as unswayed by human respect as he was then, he would kneel down with the travel-worn pilgrims by the wayside to give utterance to his gratitude, and to greet the queen city of the world: Salve, magna parens!

I shall not easily forget the cloudless afternoon when I first took that long, wearisome ride from Civita Vecchia to Rome. There was no railway in those days, as there is now, and the diligence was of so rude and uncomfortable a make that I half suspected it to be the one upon the top of which Hannibal is said to have crossed the Alps, (summ diligentiÂ.) I shared the coupÉ with two other sufferers, and was, like them, so fatigued that it seemed as if a celestial vision would be powerless to make me forgetful of my aching joints, when (after a laborious pull up a hill which might be included among the "everlasting hills" spoken of in holy writ) our long-booted postilion turned his expressive face towards us, and banished all our weariness by exclaiming, as he pointed into the blue distance with his short whip-handle, "Ecco! Roma! San Pietro!"

A single glance of the eye served to overcome all our fatigue. There lay the world's capital, crowned by the mighty dome of the Vatican basilica, and we were every moment drawing nearer to it. It was evening before we found ourselves staring at those dark walls which have withstood so many sieges, and heard the welcome demand for passports, which informed us that we had reached the gate of the city.

I was really in Rome,—I was in that city hallowed by so many classical, historical, and sacred associations,—and it all seemed to me like a confused dream. Twice, before the diligence had gone a hundred yards inside the gate, I had pinched myself to ascertain whether I was really awake; and even after I passed through the lofty colonnade of St. Peter's, and had gazed at the front of the church and the vast square which art has made familiar to every one, and had seen the fountains with the moonbeams flashing in their silvery spray, I feared lest something should interrupt my dream, and I should wake to find myself in my snug bedroom at home, wondering at the weakness which allowed me to be seduced into the eating of a bit of cheese the evening before. It was not so, however; no disorganizing cheese had interfered with my digestion; it was no dream; and I was really in Rome. I slept soundly when I reached my hotel, for I felt sure that no hostile Brennus lay in wait to disturb the city's peace, and the grateful hardness of my bed convinced me that all the geese of the capital had not been killed, if the enemy should effect an entrance.

There are few people who love Rome at first sight. The ruins, that bear witness to her grandeur in the days of her worldly supremacy, oppress you at first with an inexpressible sadness. The absence of any thing like the business enterprise and energy of this commercial age makes English and American people long at first for a little of the bustle and roar of Broadway and the Strand. The small paving stones, which make the feet of those who are unaccustomed to them ache severely, the brick and stone floors of the houses, and the lack of the little comforts of modern civilization, render Rome a wearisome place, until one has caught its spirit. Little does he think who for the first time gazes on those gray, mouldering walls, on which "dull time feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand," or walks those streets in which the past and present are so strangely commingled,—little does he realize how dear those scenes will one day be to him. He cannot foresee the regret with which he will leave those things that seem too common and familiar to deserve attention, nor the glowing enthusiasm which their mention will inspire in after years; and he would smile incredulously if any one were to predict to him that his heart, in after times, will swell with homesick longings as he recalls the memory of that ancient city, and that he will one day salute it from afar as his second home.

I make no claims to antiquarian knowledge; for I do not love antiquity for itself alone. It is only by force of association that antiquity has any charms for me. The pyramids of Egypt would awaken my respect, not so much by their age or size, as by the remembrance of the momentous scenes which have been enacted in their useless and ungraceful presence. Show me a scroll so ancient that human science can obtain no key to the mysteries locked up in the strange figures inscribed upon it, and you would move me but little. But place before me one of those manuscripts (filled with scholastic lore, instinct with classic eloquence, or luminous with the word of eternal life) which have come down to us from those nurseries of learning and piety, the monasteries of the middle ages, and you fill me with the intensest enthusiasm. There is food for the imagination hidden under those worm-eaten covers and brazen clasps. I see in those fair pages something more than the results of the patient toil which perpetuated those precious truths. From those carefully penned lines, and brilliant initial letters, the pale, thoughtful face of the transcriber looks upon me—his contempt of worldly ambition and sacrifice of human consolations are reflected there—and from the quiet of his austere cell, he seems to dart from his serene eyes a glance of patient reproach at the worldlier and more modern age which reaps the fruit of his labour, and repays him by slandering his character. Show me a building whose stupendous masonry seems the work of Titan hands, but whose history is lost in the twilight of the ages, so that no record remains of a time when it was any thing but an antique enigma, and its massive columns and Cyclopean proportions will not touch me so nearly as the stone in Florence where Dante used to stand and gaze upon that dome which Michel Angelo said he would not imitate, and could not excel.

Feeling thus about antiquities, I need not say that those of Rome, so crowned with the most thrilling historical and personal associations, are not wanting in charms for me. Yet I do not claim to be an antiquarian. It is all one to me whether the column of Phocas be forty feet high or sixty,—whether a ruin on the Palatine that fascinates me by its richness and grandeur, was once a Temple of Minerva or of Jupiter Stator; or whether its foundations are of travertine or tufa. I abhor details. My enjoyment of a landscape would be at an end if I were called upon to count the mild-eyed cattle that contribute so much to its picturesqueness; and I have no wish to disturb my appreciation of the spirit of a place consecrated by ages of heroic history, by entertaining any of the learned conjectures of professional antiquarians. It is enough for me to know that I am standing on the spot where Romulus built his straw-thatched palace, and his irreverent brother leaped over the walls of the future mistress of the nations. Standing in the midst of the relics of the grandeur of imperial Rome, the whole of her wonderful history is constantly acting over again in my mind. The stern simplicity of those who laid the foundations of her greatness, the patriotic daring of those who extended her power, the wisdom of those who terminated civil strife by compelling the divided citizens to unite against a foreign foe, are all present to me. In that august place where Cicero pleaded, gazing upon that mount where captive kings did homage to the masters of the world, your mere antiquarian, with his pestilent theories and measurements, seems to me little better than a profaner. When I see such a one scratching about the base of some majestic column in the Forum (although I cannot but be grateful to those whose researches have developed the greatness of the imperial city,) I do long to interrupt him, and remind him that his "tread is on an empire's dust." I wish to recall him from the petty details in which he delights, and have him enjoy with me the grandeur and dignity of the whole scene.

The triumphal arches,—the monuments of the cultivation of those remote ages, no less than of the power of the state which erected them,—the memorials of the luxury that paved the way to the decline of that power—all these things impress me with the thought of the long years that intervened between that splendour and the times when the seat of universal empire was inhabited only by shepherds and their flocks. It wearies me to think of the long centuries of human effort that were required to bring Rome to its culminating point of glory; and it affords me a melancholy kind of amusement to contrast the spirit of those who laid the deep and strong foundations of that prosperity and power, with that of some modern sages, to whom a hundred years are a respectable antiquity, and who seem to think that commercial enterprise and the will of a fickle populace form as secure a basis for a state as private virtue, and the principle of obedience to law. I know a country, yet in the first century of its national existence, full of hope and ambition, and possessing advantages such as never before fell to the lot of a young empire, but lacking in those powers which made Rome what she was. If that country, "the newest born of nations, the latest hope of mankind," which has so rapidly risen to a power surpassing in extent that of ancient Rome, and bears within itself the elements of the decay that ruined the old empire,—wealth, vice, corruption,—if she could overcome the vain notion that hers is an exceptional case, and that she is not subject to that great law of nature which makes personal virtue the corner-stone of national stability and the lack of that its bane, and could look calmly upon the remains of old Rome's grandeur, she might learn a great lesson. Contemplating the patient formation of that far-reaching dominion until it found its perfect consummation in the age of Augustus, (TantÆ molis erat Romanam condere gentem,) she would see that true national greatness is not "the hasty product of a day"; that demagogues and adventurers, who have made politics their trade, are not the architects of that greatness; and that the parchment on which the constitution and laws of a country are written, might as well be used for drum-heads when reverence and obedience have departed from the hearts of its people.

A gifted representative of a name which is classical in the history of the drama, some years ago gave to the world a journal of her residence in Rome. She called her volume "A Year of Consolation"—a title as true as it is poetical. Indeed I know of nothing more soothing to the spirit than a walk through these ancient streets, or an hour of meditation amid these remains of fallen majesty. To stand in the arena of the Coliseum in the noonday glare, or when those ponderous arches cast their lengthened shadows on the spot where the first Roman Christians were sacrificed to make a holiday for a brutalized populace,—to muse in the Pantheon, that changeless temple of a living, and monument of a dead, worship, and reflect on the many generations that have passed beneath its majestic portico from the days of Agrippa to our own,—to listen to the birds that sing amid the shrubbery which decks the stupendous arches of the Baths of Caracalla,—to be overwhelmed by the stillness of the Campagna while the eye is filled with that rolling verdure which seems in the hazy distance like the waves of the unquiet sea—what are all these things but consolations in the truest sense of the word? What is the bitterest grief that ever pierced a human heart through a long life of sorrows, compared to the dumb woe of that mighty desolation? What are our brief sufferings, when they are brought into the august presence of a mourner who has seen her hopes one by one taken from her, through centuries of war and rapine, neglect and silent decay?

Among all of Rome's monuments of antiquity, there are few that impress me so strangely as those old Egyptian obelisks, the trophies of the victorious emperors, which the pontiffs have made to contribute so greatly to the adornment of their capital. It is almost impossible to turn a corner of one of the principal streets of the city without seeing one of these peculiar shafts that give a fine finish to the perspective. If their cold granite forms could speak, what a strange history they would reveal! They were witnesses of the achievements of a power which reached its noonday splendour centuries before the shepherd Faustulus took the foundling brothers into his cottage on the banks of the Tiber. The civilization of which they are the relics had declined before the Roman kings inaugurated that which afterwards reclaimed all Europe from the barbarians. Yet there they stand as grim and silent as if they had but yesterday been rescued from the captivity of the native quarry, and had never seen a nobler form than those of the dusty artisans who wrought them—as dull and unimpressible as some of the stupid tourists whom I see daily gazing upon these glorious monuments, and seeing only so much brick and stone.

Acknowledging as I do the charms which the Rome of antiquity possesses for me, it must still be confessed that the Rome of the present time enchants me with attractions scarcely less potent. Religion has consecrated many of the spots which history had made venerable, and thus added a new lustre to their associations. I turn from the broken columns and gray mouldering walls of old Rome to those fanes, "so ancient, yet so new," in which the piety of centuries has found its enduring expression. Beneath their sounding arches, by the mild light of the lamps that burn unceasingly around their shrines, who would vex his brain with antiquarian lore? We may notice that the pavement is worn away by the multitudes which have been drawn thither by curiosity or devotion; but we feel that Heaven's chronology is not an affair of months and years, and that Peter and Paul, Gregory and Leo, are not mere personages in a drama upon the first acts of which the curtain long since descended. Who thinks of antiquity while he inhabits that world of art which Rome encloses within her walls? Those are not the triumphs of a past age alone; they are the triumphs of to-day. The Apollo's bearing is not less manly, its step not less elastic, than it was in that remote age when its unknown sculptor threw aside his chisel and gazed upon his finished work. To-day's sunshine is not more clear and golden than that which glows in the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, though he who thus made the sunbeams his servants has been sleeping for nearly two centuries in the dusty vaults of Trinita de' Monti. Were Raphael's deathless faces more real while he was living than they are now? Were Guido's and Domenichino's triumphs more worthy of admiration while the paint was wet upon them? or were the achievements of that giant of art, Michel Angelo, ever more wonderful than now? No; these great works take no note of time, and confer upon the city which contains them something of their own immortality.

I have heard people regret that so many of our artists should expatriate themselves, and spend their lives in Rome or Florence. To me, however, nothing seems more natural; and if I were a painter, or a sculptor, I feel certain that I should share the common weakness of the profession for a place of residence in harmony with my art. What sympathy can a true artist feel with a state of society in which he is regarded by nine people out of ten as a useless member, because he does not directly aid in the production of a given quantity of grain or of cloth? Every stroke of his brush, every movement of his hands in moulding the obedient clay, is a protest against the low, mean, materialistic views of life which prevail among us; and it is too much to ask of any man that he shall spend his days in trying to live peaceably in an enemy's camp. When figs and dates become common articles of food in Lapland, and the bleak sides of the hills of New Hampshire are adorned with the graceful palm tree and the luxuriant foliage of the tropics, you may expect art to flourish in a community whose god is commerce, and whose chief religious duty is money-getting.

Truly the life of an artist in Rome is about as near the perfection of earthly happiness as is commonly vouchsafed to mortal man. The tone of society, and all the surroundings of the artist, are so congenial that no poverty nor privation can seriously interfere with them. The streets, with their architectural marvels, the trim gardens and picturesque cloisters of the old religious establishments, the magnificent villas of the neighbourhood of the city, and the vast, mysterious Campagna, with its gigantic aqueducts and its purple atmosphere, and those glorious galleries which at the same time gratify the taste of the artist and feed his ambition,—these are things which are as free to him as the blessed sunlight or the water that sparkles in the countless fountains of the Holy City. I do not wonder that artists who have lived any considerable time in Rome are discontented with the feverish restlessness of our American way of life, and that, after "stifling the mighty hunger of the heart" through two or three wearisome years in our western world, they turn to Rome as to a fond mother, upon whose breast they may find that peace which they had elsewhere sought in vain.

The churches of Rome impress me in a way which I have never heard described by any other person. I do not speak of St. Peter's, (that "noblest temple that human skill ever raised to the honour of the Creator,") nor do I refer to those other magnificent basilicas in which the Christian glories of eighteen centuries sit enthroned. These have a dignity and majesty peculiarly their own, and the most thoughtless cannot tread their ancient pavement without being for the time subdued into awe and veneration. But the parish churches of Rome, the churches of the various religious orders and congregations, and those numerous little temples which are so thickly scattered through the city, attract me in manner especially fascinating. There is an air of cosiness and at-home-ativeness about them which cannot be found in the grander fanes. Some of them seem by their architectural finish to have been built in some fine street or square, and to have wandered off in search of quiet to their present secluded positions. It is beneath their arches that the Roman people may be seen. Before those altars you may see men, women, and children kneeling, their lips scarcely moving with the petitions which are heard only in another world. No intruding tourists, eye-glassed and Murrayed, interfere with their devotions, and the silence of the sacred place is unbroken, save by the rattling of a rosary, or at stated times by the swell of voices from the choir chapel. These are the places where the real power of the Catholic religion makes itself felt more unmistakably than in the grandest cathedrals, where every form and sound is eloquent of worship. I remember with pleasure that once in London, as I was passing through that miserable quarter which lies between Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, I was attracted by the appearance of a number of people who were entering a narrow doorway. One or two stylish carriages, with crests upon their panels, and drivers in livery, stood before the dingy building which seemed to wear a mysterious air of semi-cleanliness in the midst of the general squalour. I followed the strange collection of the representatives of opulence and the extremest poverty through a long passage-way, and found myself in a large room which was tastefully fitted up for a Catholic chapel. The simplicity of the place, joined with its strictly ecclesiastical look, the excellent music, the crowded and devout congregation, and the almost breathless attention which was paid to the simple and persuasive eloquence of the preacher, who was formerly one of the chief ornaments of the established church, whose highest honours he had cast aside that he might minister more effectually to the poor and despised,—all these things astonished and delighted me. To see that church preserving, even in its hiddenness and poverty, its regard for the comeliness of God's worship, and adorning that humble chapel in a manner which showed that the spirit which erected the shrines of Westminster, Salisbury and York, had not died out, carried me back in spirit to the catacombs of Rome, where the early Christians left the abiding evidences of their zeal for the beauty of the house of God. I was at that time fresh from the continent, and my mind was occupied with the remembrance of the gorgeous churches of Italy. Yet, despite my recollection of those "forests of porphyry and marble," those altars of lapis lazuli, those tabernacles glittering with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and those mosaics and frescoes whose beauty and variety almost fatigue the sense of the beholder,—I must say that it gave me a new sense of the dignity and grandeur of the ancient Church, to see her in the midst of the poverty and obscurity to which she is now condemned in the land which once professed her faith, and was once thickly planted with those institutions of learning and charity which are the proudest monuments of her progress. A large ship, under full sail, running off before a pleasant breeze, is a beautiful sight; but it is by no means so grandly impressive as that of the same ship, under close canvas, gallantly riding out the merciless gale that carried destruction to every unseaworthy craft which came within its reach.

I am not one of those who lament over the millions which have been expended upon the churches of Rome. I am not inclined to follow the sordid principle of that apostle who is generally held up rather as a warning than an example, and say that it had been better if the sums which have been devoted to architectural ornament had been withheld and given to the poor. Religion has no need, it is true, of these visible splendours, any more than of set forms and modes of speech. For it is the heart that believes, and loves, and prays. But we, poor mortals, so enslaved by our senses, so susceptible to external appearances, need every thing that can inspire in us a respect for something higher than ourselves, or remind us of the glories of the invisible, eternal world. And can we doubt that He who praised the action of that pious woman who poured the precious ointment upon His sacred head, looks with complacency upon the sacrifices which are made for the adornment of the temples devoted to His worship? Is it a right principle that people who are clad in expensive garments, who are not content unless they are surrounded by carved or enamelled furniture, and whose feet tread daily on costly tapestries, should find fault with the generous piety which has made the churches of Italy what they are, and should talk so impressively about the beauty of spiritual worship? I have no patience with these advocates for simplicity in every thing that does not relate to themselves and their own comforts.

"Shall we serve Heaven with less respect
Than we do minister to our gross selves?"

I care not how simple our private houses may be, but I advocate liberality and splendour in our public buildings of all kinds, for the sake of preserving a due respect for the institutions they enshrine. I remember, in reading one of the old classical writers,—Sallust, I think,—in my young days, being greatly impressed by his declaration that private luxury is a sure forerunner of a nation's downfall, and that it is a fatal sign for the dwellings of the citizens to be spacious and magnificent, while the public edifices are mean and unworthy. Purely intellectual as we may think ourselves, we are, nevertheless, somewhat deferential to the external proprieties of life, and I very much doubt whether the most reverential of us could long maintain his respect for the Supreme Court if its sessions were held in a tap-room, or for religion, if its ministers prayed and preached in pea-jackets and top-boots.

Displeasing as is the presence of most of the English-speaking tourists one meets in Rome, there are two places where they delight to congregate, which yet have charms for me that not even Cockney vulgarity or Yankee irreverence can destroy. The church of the convent of TrinitÀ de' Monti wins me, in spite of the throng that fills its nave at the hour of evening every Sunday and festival day. Some years since, when I first visited Rome, the music which was heard there was of the highest order of merit. At present the nuns of the Sacred Heart have no such great artistes in their community as they had then, but the music of their choir is still one of those things which he who has once heard can never forget. It is the only church in Rome in which I have heard female voices; and, though I much prefer the great male choirs of the basilicas, there is a soothing simplicity in the music at TrinitÀ de' Monti which goes home to almost every heart. I have seen giddy and unthinking girls, who laughed at the ceremonial they did not understand, subdued to reverence by those strains, and supercilious Englishmen reduced to the humiliating necessity of wiping their eyes. Indeed, the whole scene is so harmoniously impressive that its enchantment cannot be resisted. The solemn church, lighted only by the twilight rays, and the tapers upon the high altar,—the veiled forms of the pious sisterhood and their young pupils in the grated sanctuary,—the clouding of the fragrant incense,—the tinkling of that silvery bell and of the chains of the swinging censer,—those ancient and dignified rites,—and over all, those clear, angelic voices praying and praising, in litany and hymn—all combine to make up a worship, one moment of which would seem enough to wipe away the memory of a lifetime of folly, and disappointment, and sorrow.

The Sistine Chapel is another place to which I am bound by an almost supernatural fascination. My imperfect eyesight will not permit me to enjoy fully the frescoes that adorn its lofty walls; but I feel that I am in the presence of the great master and some of his mightiest conceptions. I do not know whether the chapel is most impressive in its empty state, or when thronged for some great religious function. In the former condition, its fine proportions and its simplicity satisfy me so completely, that I hardly wish for the pomp and splendour which belong to it on great occasions. I know of nothing more grand than the sight of that simple throne of the Sovereign Pontiff, when it is occupied by that benignant old man, to whom more than two hundred millions of people look with veneration as to a father and a teacher,—and surrounded by those illustrious prelates and princes who compose a senate of moral and intellectual worth, such as all the world beside cannot parallel. Those venerable figures—those gray hairs—those massive foreheads, and those resplendent robes of office, seem to be a part of some great historical picture, rather than a reality before my eyes. There is nothing more severe in actual experience, or more satisfactory in the recollection, than Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel. The crowd, the fatigue, and the presence of so many sight-seers, who have come with the same feeling that they would attend an opera or a play, are not calculated to increase one's bodily comfort, or to awaken the sentiments proper to so sacred a season as that which is then commemorated. But after these have passed away, there remains the recollection, which time does not diminish, but makes more precious, of that darkening chapel and the bowed-down heads of the Pope and cardinals, of the music, "yearning like a god in pain," of the melodious woe of the Miserere, the plaintive majesty of the Lamentations and the Reproaches, and the shrill dissonance of the shouts of the populace in the gospel narrative of the crucifixion. These are things which would outweigh a year of fatigue and pain. I know of no greater or more sincere tribute to the perfections of the Sistine choir, and the genius of Allegri and Palestrina, than the patience with which so many people submit to be packed, like herring in a box, into that small chapel. But old and gouty as I am, I would gladly undergo all the discomforts of that time to hear those sounds once more.

I hear some people complain of the beggars, and wonder why Rome, with her splendid system of charities for the relief of every form of suffering, permits mendicancy. For myself, I am not inclined to complain either of the beggars or of the merciful government, which refuses to look upon them as offenders against its laws. On the contrary, it appears to me rather creditable than otherwise to Rome, that she is so far behind the age, as not to class poverty with crime among social evils. I have a sincere respect for this feature of the Catholic Church; this regard for the poor as her most precious inheritance, and this unwillingness that her children should think that, because she has organized a vast system of benevolence, they are absolved of the duty of private charity. In this wisdom, which thus provides for the exercise of kindly feelings in alms-giving, may be found one of the most attractive characteristics of the Roman Church. This, no less than the austere religious orders which she has founded, shows in what sense she receives the beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." And the same kind spirit of equality may be seen in her churches and cathedrals, where rich and poor kneel upon the same pavement, before their common God and Saviour, and in her cloisters, and universities, and schools, where social distinctions cannot enter.

When I walk through the cloisters of these venerable institutions of learning, or gaze upon the ancient city from Monte Mario, or the Janiculum, it seems to me that never until now did I appreciate the world's indebtedness to Rome. Dislike it as we may, we cannot disguise the fact, that to her every Christian nation owes, in a great measure, its civilization, its literature, and its religion. The endless empire which Virgil's muse foretold, is still hers; and, as one of her ancient Christian poets said, those lands which were not conquered by her victorious arms are held in willing obedience by her religion. When I think how all our modern civilization, our art, letters, and jurisprudence, sprang originally from Rome, it appears to me that a narrow religious prejudice has prevented our forming a due estimate of her services to humanity. To some, the glories of the ancient empire, the memory of the days when her sovereignty extended from Britain to the Ganges, and her capital counted its inhabitants by millions, seem to render all her later history insignificant and dull; but to my mind the moral dignity and power of Christian Rome is as superior to her old military omnipotence as it is possible for the human intellect to conceive. The ancient emperors, with all their power, could not carry the Roman name much beyond the limits of Europe; the rulers who have succeeded them have made the majestic language of Rome familiar to two hemispheres, and have built up, by spiritual arms, the mightiest empire that the world has ever seen. For me, Rome's most enduring glories are the memories of the times when her great missionary orders civilized and evangelized the countries which her arms had won, when her martyrs sowed the seed of Christianity with their blood, and her confessors illumined the world with their virtues; when her pontiffs, single-handed, turned back barbarian invasions, or mitigated the severities of the feudal age, or protected the people by laying their ban upon the tyrants who oppressed them, or defended the sanctity of marriage, and the rights of helpless women against divorce-seeking monarchs and conquerors. These things are the true fulfilment of the glowing prophecy of Rome's greatness, which Virgil puts into the mouth of Anchises, when Æneas visits the Elysian Fields, and hears from his old father that the mission of the government he is about to found is to rule the world by moral power, to make peace between opposing nations, to spare the subject, and to subdue the proud:

"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
HÆ tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos."

The weather was fearfully hot the day of my departure from Rome. The sun was staring down, without winking, upon that wonderful old city, as if he loved the sight. The yellow current of old Father Tiber seemed yellower than ever in the glare. Except from sheer necessity, no person moved abroad; for the atmosphere, which early in the morning had seemed like airs from heaven, before noon had become most uncomfortably like a blast from the opposite direction. The Piazza di Spagna was like Tadmor in the wilderness. Not a single English tourist, with his well-read Murray under his arm, was to be seen there; not a carriage driver broke the stillness of the place with his polyglot solicitations to ride. The great staircase of TrinitÀ de' Monti seemed an impossibility; to have climbed up its weary ascent under that broiling sun would have been poor entertainment for man or beast. The squares of the city were like furnaces, and made one mentally curse architecture, and bless the narrow, shady streets. The soldiers on guard at the gates and in the public places looked as if they couldn't help it. Now and then a Capuchin monk, in his heavy, brown habit, girded with the knotted cord, toiled along on some errand of benevolence, and made one marvel at his endurance. Occasionally a cardinal rolled by in scarlet state, looking as if he gladly would have exchanged the bondage of his dignity and power for a single day of virtuous liberty in linen pantaloons.

Traffic seemed to have departed this life; there were no buyers, and the shopkeepers slumbered at their counters. The cafÉs were shrouded in their long, striped awnings, and seemed to invite company by their well-wet pavement. A few old Romans found energy enough to call for an occasional ice or lemonade, and talked in the intervals about Pammerstone, and his agent, Mazzini. How the sun blazed down into the Coliseum! Not a breath of air stirred the foliage that clothes that mighty ruin. Even the birds were mute. To have crossed that broad arena would have perilled life as surely as in those old days when the first Roman Christians there confessed their faith. On such a day, one's parting visits must necessarily be brief; so I left the amphitheatre, and walked along the dusty Via Sacra, pausing a moment to ponder on the scene of Cicero's triumphs, and of so many centuries of thrilling history, and coming to the conclusion that, if it were such a day as that when Virginius in that place slew his dear little daughter, the blow was merciful indeed. The market-place in front of the Pantheon, usually so thronged and lively, was almost deserted. The fresh, bright vegetables had either all been sold, or had refused to grow in such a heat. But the Pantheon itself was unchanged. There it stood, in all its severe grandeur, majestic as in the days of the CÆsars, the embodiment of heathenism, the exponent of the worship of the old, inexorable gods,—of justice without mercy, and power without love. Its interior seemed cool and refreshing, for no heat can penetrate that stupendous pile of masonry,—and I gathered new strength from my short visit. It was a fine thought in the old Romans to adapt the temples of heathenism to the uses of Christianity. The contrasts suggested to our minds by this practice are very striking. When we see that the images of the old revengeful and impure divinities have given place to those of the humble and self-denying heroes of Christianity, that the Saviour of the world stretches out His arms upon the cross, in the place from which the haughty Jupiter once hurled his thunderbolts, we are borne at once to a conclusion more irresistible than any that the mere force of language could produce. One of our own poets felt this in Rome, and expressed this same idea in graceful verse:—

"The goddess of the woods and fields,
The healthful huntress undefiled,
Now with her fabled brother yields
To sinless Mary and her Child."

But I must hurry on towards St. Peter's. There are three places in Rome which every one visits as soon as possible after he arrives, and as short a time as may be before his departure—the Coliseum, the Pantheon, and St. Peter's. The narrow streets between the Pantheon and the Bridge of St. Angelo were endurable, because they were shady. It was necessary to be careful, however, and not trip over any of the numerous Roman legs whose proprietors were stretched out upon the pavement in various picturesque postures, sleeping away the long hours of that scorching day. At last the bridge is reached Bernini's frightful statues, which deform its balustrades, seem to be writhing under the influence of the sun. I am quite confident that St. Veronica's napkin was curling with the heat. The bronze archangel stood as usual upon the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo. I stopped a few moments, thinking that he might see the expediency of sheathing his sword and retreating, before he should be compelled, in the confusion of such a blaze as that, to run away; but it was useless. I moved on towards St. Peter's, and he still kept guard there as brazen-faced as ever. The great square in front of the basilica seemed to have scooped up its fill of heat, and every body knows that it is capable of containing a great deal. The few persons whom devotion or love of art had tempted out in such a day, approached it under the shade of its beautiful colonnades. I was obliged to content myself with the music of one of those superb fountains only, for the workmen were making a new basin for the other. St. Peter's never seemed to me so wonderful, never filled me up so completely, as it did then. The contrast of the heat I had been in with that atmosphere of unchangeable coolness, the quiet of the vast area, the fewness of people moving about, all conspired to impress me with a new sense of the majesty and holiness of the place. The quiet, unflickering blaze of the numerous lamps that burn unceasingly around the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles seemed a beacon of immortality. To one who could at that hour recall the bustle and turmoil of the Boulevards of Paris, or of the Strand, or of Broadway, the vast basilica itself seemed to be an island of peace in the tempestuous ocean of the world. I am not so blind a lover of Gothic architecture that I can find no beauty nor religious feeling in the Italian churches. I prefer, it is true, the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault," and the "storied windows richly dight"; but I cannot for that reason sneer at the gracefully turned arches, the mosaic walls and domes rich in frescoes and precious marbles, that delight one's eyes in Italy. Both styles are good in their proper places. The Gothic and Norman, with their high-pitched roofs, are the natural growth of the snowy north, and to attempt to transplant them to a land where heat is to be guarded against, were as absurd as to expect the pine and fir to take the place of the fig tree and the palm. Talk as eloquently as we may about being superior to external impressions, I defy any man to breathe the quiet atmosphere of any of these old continental churches for a few moments, without feeling that he has gathered new strength therefrom to tread the thorns of life. Lamartine has spoken eloquently on this theme: "Ye columns who veil the sacred asylums where my eyes dare not penetrate, at the foot of your immovable trunks I come to sigh! Cast over me your deep shades, render the darkness more obscure, and the silence more profound! Forests of porphyry and marble! the air which the soul breathes under your arches is full of mystery and of peace! Let love and anxious cares seek shade and solitude under the green shelter of groves, to soothe their secret wounds. O darkness of the sanctuary! the eye of religion prefers thee to the wood which the breeze disturbs! Nothing changes thy foliage; thy still shade is the image of motionless eternity!"

There was not time to linger long. The pressure of worldly engagements was felt even at the shrine of the apostles. I walked about, and tried to recall the many splendid religious pageants I had there witnessed, and wondered sorrowfully whether I should ever again listen to that matchless choir, or have my heart stirred to its depths by the silver trumpets that reËcho under that sonorous vault in the most solemn moment of religion's holiest rite. Once more out in the clear hot atmosphere which seemed hotter than before. The Supreme Pontiff was absent from his capital, and the Vatican was comparatively empty. The Swiss guards, in their fantastic but picturesque uniform, were loitering about the foot of the grand staircase, and sighing for a breath of the cool air of their Alpine home. I took a last long gaze at that grand old pile of buildings,—the home of all that is most wonderful in art, the abode of that power which overthrew the old Roman empire, inaugurated the civilization of Europe, and planted Christianity in every quarter of the globe,—and then turned my unwilling feet homewards. In my course I passed the foot of the Janiculum Hill: it was too hot, however, to think of climbing up to the convent of Sant' Onofrio—though I would gladly have paid a final visit to that lovely spot where the munificence of Pius IX. has just completed a superb sepulchre for the repose of Tasso. So I crossed the Tiber in one of those little ferry boats which are attached to a cable stretched over the river, and thus are swung across by the movement of the current,—a labour-saving arrangement preËminently Roman in its character,—and soon found myself in my lodgings However warm the weather may be in Rome, one can keep tolerably comfortable so long as he does not move about,—thanks to the thick walls and heavy wooden window shutters of the houses,—so I found my room a cool asylum after my morning of laborious pleasure.

At last, the good byes having all been said, behold me, with my old portmanteau, (covered with its many-coloured coat of baggage labels, those trophies of many a hard campaign of travel,) at the office of the diligence for Civita Vecchia. The luggage and the passengers having been successfully stowed away, the lumbering vehicle rolled down the narrow streets, and we were soon outside the gate that opens upon the old Aurelian Way. Here the passports were examined, the postilions cracked their whips, and I felt indeed that I was "banished from Rome." It is a sad thing to leave Rome. I have seen people who have made but a brief stay there shed more tears on going away than they ever did on a departure from home; but for one who has lived there long enough to feel like a Roman citizen—to feel that the broken columns of the Forum have become a part of his being—to feel as familiar with St. Peter's and the Vatican as with the King's Chapel and the Tremont House—it is doubly hard to go away. The old city, so "rich with the spoils of time," seems invested with a personality that appeals most powerfully to every man, and would fain hold him back from returning to the world. The lover of art there finds its choicest treasures ever open to him; the artist there finds an abundance of employment for his chisel or his brush; the man of business there finds an asylum from the vexing cares of a commercial career; the student of antiquity or of history can there take his fill amid the "wrecks of a world whose ashes still are warm," and listen to the centuries receding into the unalterable past with their burdens of glory or of crime; the lover of practical benevolence will there be delighted by the inspection of establishments for the relief of every possible form of want and suffering; the enthusiast for education finds there two universities and hundreds of public schools of every grade, and all as free as the bright water that sparkles in Rome's countless fountains; the devout can there rekindle their devotion at the shrines of apostles and martyrs, and breathe the holy air of cloisters in which saints have lived and died, or join their voices with those that resound in old churches, whose pavements are furrowed by the knees of pious generations; the admirer of pomp, and power, and historic associations can there witness the more than regal magnificence of a power, compared to which the houses of Bourbon or of Hapsburg are but of yesterday; the lover of republican simplicity can there find subject for admiration in the facility of access to the highest authorities, and in the perfection of his favourite elective system by which the supreme power is perpetuated. There is, in short, no class of men to whom Rome does not attach itself. People may complain during their first week that it is dull, or melancholy, or dirty; but you generally find them sorry enough to go away, and looking back to their residence there as the happiest period of their existence. Somebody has said,—and I wish that I could recall the exact words, they are so true,—that when we leave Paris, or Naples, or Florence, we feel a natural sorrow, as if we were parting from a cherished friend; but on our departure from Rome we feel a pang like that of separation from a woman whom we love!

At last Rome disappeared from sight in the dusk of evening, and the discomforts of the journey began to make themselves obtrusive. The night air in Italy is not considered healthy, and we therefore had the windows of the diligence closed. Like Charles Lamb after the oyster pie, we were "all full inside," and a pretty time we had of it. As to respiration, you might as well have expected the performance of that function from a mackerel occupying the centre of a well-packed barrel of his finny comrades, as of any person inside that diligence. Of course there was a baby in the company, and of course the baby cried. I could not blame it, for even a fat old gentleman who sat opposite to me would have cried if he had not known how to swear. But it is useless to recall the anguish of that night: suffice it to say that for several hours the only air we got was an occasional vocal performance from the above-mentioned infant. At midnight we reached Palo, on the sea coast, where I heard "the wild water lapping on the crag," and felt more keenly than before that I had indeed left Rome behind me. The remainder of the journey being along the coast, we had the window open, though it was not much better on that account, as we were choking with dust. It was small comfort to see the cuttings and fillings-in for the railway which is destined soon to destroy those beastly diligences, and place Rome within two or three hours of its seaport.

At five o'clock in the morning, after ten toilsome hours, I found myself, tired, dusty, and hungry, in Civita Vecchia, a city which has probably been the cause of more profanity than any other part of the world, including Flanders. I was determined not to be fleeced by any of the hotel keepers; so I staggered about the streets until I found a barber's shop open. Having repaired the damage of the preceding night, I hove to in a neighbouring cafÉ long enough to take in a little ballast in the way of breakfast. Afterwards I fell in with an Englishman, of considerable literary reputation, whom I had several times met in Rome. He was one of those men who seem to possess all sorts of sense except common sense. He was full of details, and could tell exactly the height of the dome of St. Peter's, or of the great pyramid,—could explain the process of the manufacture of the MiniÉ rifle or the boring of an artesian well, and could calculate an eclipse with Bond or Secchi,—but he could not pack a carpet-bag to save his life. That he should have been able to travel so far from home alone is a fine commentary on the honesty and good nature of the people of the continent. I could not help thinking what a time he would have were he to attempt to travel in America. He would think he had discovered a new nomadic tribe in the cabmen of New York. He had come down to Civita Vecchia in a most promiscuous style, and when I discovered him he was trying to bring about a union between some six or eight irreconcilable pieces of luggage. I aided him successfully in the work, and his look of perplexity and despair gave way to one of gratitude and admiration for his deliverer. Delighted at this escape from the realities of his situation, he launched out into a profound dissertation on the philosophy of language and the formation of provincial dialects, and it was some time before I could bring him down to the common and practical business of securing his passage in the steamer for Marseilles. Ten o'clock, however, found us on board one of the steamers of the Messageries Imperiales, and we were very shortly after under way. We were so unfortunate as to run aground on a little spit of land in getting out of port, as we ran a little too near an English steamer that was lying there. But a Russian frigate sent off a cable to us, and thus established an alliance between their flag and the French, which drew the latter out of the difficulty in which it had got by too close a proximity to its English neighbour.

It was a beautiful, cloudless day, and reminded me of many halcyon days I had spent on that blue Mediterranean in other times. It reminded me of some of my childhood's days in the country in New England,—days described by Emerson where he says that we "bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba,"—when "the day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm, wide fields,"—when "the cattle, as they lie on the ground, seem to have great and tranquil thoughts." It was on such a day that I used to delight to pore over my Shakspeare, undisturbed by any sound save the hum of the insect world, or the impatient switch of the tail, or movement of the feet, of a horse who had sought the same shade I was enjoying. To a man who has been rudely used by fortune, or who has drunk deep of sorrow or disappointment, I can conceive of nothing more grateful or consoling than a summer cruise in the Mediterranean. "The sick heart often needs a warm climate as much as the sick body."

My English friend, immediately on leaving port, took some five or six prescriptions for the prevention of seasickness, and then went to bed, so that I had some opportunity to look about among our ship's company. There were two men, apparently companions, though they hardly spoke to each other, who amused me very much One was a person of about four feet and a half in height, who walked about on deck with that manner which so many diminutive persons have, of wishing to be thought as tall as Mr. George Barrett. He boasted a deportment that would have made the elder Turveydrop envious, while it was evident that under that serene and dignified exterior lay hidden all the warm-heartedness and geniality of that eminent philanthropist who was obliged to play a concerto on the violin to calm his grief at seeing the conflagration of his native city. The other looked as if "he had not loved the world, nor the world him"; he was a thin, bilious-looking person, and seemed like a whole serious family rolled into one individuality. I felt a great deal of curiosity to know whether he was reduced to that pitiable condition by piety or indigestion. I felt sure that he was meditating suicide as he gazed upon the sea, and I stood by him for some time to prevent his accomplishing any such purpose, until I became convinced that to let him take the jump, if he pleased, would be far the more philanthropic course of action. There was a French bishop, and a colonel of the French staff at Rome, among the passengers, and by their genial urbanity they fairly divided between them the affections of the whole company. Either of them would have made a fog in the English Channel seem like the sunshine of the Gulf of Egina. I picked up a pleasant companion in an Englishman who had travelled much and read more, and spent the greater part of the day with him. When he found that I was an American, he at once asked me if I had ever been to Niagara, and had ever seen Longfellow and Emerson. I am astonished to find so many cultivated English people who know little or nothing about Tennyson; I am inclined to think he has ten readers in America to one in England, while the English can repeat Longfellow by pages.

After thirty hours of pleasant sailing along by Corsica and Elba, and along the coast of France, until it seemed as if our cruise (like that of the widow of whom we have all read) would never have an end, we came to anchor in the midst of a vast fleet of steamers in the new port of Marseilles. The bustle of commercial activity seemed any thing but pleasant after the classical repose of Rome; but the landlady of the hotel was most gracious, and when I opened the window of my room looking out on the Place Royale, one of those peripatetic dispensers of melody, whose life (like the late M. Mantalini's after he was reduced in circumstances) must be "one demnition horrid grind," executed "Sweet Home" in a manner that went entirely home to the heart of at least one of his accidental audience.

If the people of Marseilles do not love the Emperor of the French, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. He has so completely changed the aspect of that city by his improvements, that the man who knows it as it existed in the reign of Louis Philippe, would be lost if he were to revisit it now. The completion of the railway from Paris to Marseilles is an inestimable advantage to the latter city, while the new port, in magnitude and style of execution, is worthy of comparison with the splendid docks of London and Liverpool. The flags of every civilized nation may be seen there; and the variety of costumes and languages, which bewilder one's eyes and ears, assure him that he is in the commercial metropolis of the Mediterranean. The frequency of steam communication between Marseilles and the various ports of Spain, Italy, Africa, and the Levant, draws to it a large proportion of the travellers in those directions. I believe that Marseilles is only celebrated for having been colonized by the PhocÆans, or some such people, for having several times been devastated by the plague, and for having been very perfectly described by Dickens in his Little Dorrit. The day on which I arrived there was very like the one described by Dickens; so if any one would like further particulars, he had better overhaul his Little Dorrit, and, "when found, make note of it."

The day after my arrival I saw a grand religious procession in the streets of the city. The landlady of my hotel had told me of it, but my expectations were not raised very high, for I thought that after the grandeur of Rome, all other things in that way would be comparatively tame. But I was mistaken; the procession fairly rivalled those of Rome. There were the same gorgeous vestments, the same picturesque groupings of black robes and snowy surplices, of mitres and crosiers and shaven crowns, of scarlet and purple and cloth of gold, the same swinging censers and clouds of fragrant incense, the same swelling flood of almost supernatural music. The municipal authorities of the city, with the staff of the garrison, joined in the procession, and the military display was such as can hardly be seen out of France. I have often been struck with the facility with which the Catholic religion adapts itself to the character of every nation. I have had some opportunity of observation; I have seen the Catholic Church on three out of the four continents, and have every where noticed the same phenomenon. Mahometanism could never be transplanted to the snowy regions of Russia or Norway; it needs the soft, enervating atmosphere of Asia to keep it alive; the veranda, the bubbling fountain, the noontide repose, are all parts of it. Puritanism is the natural growth of a country where the sun seldom shines, and which is shut out by a barrier of water and fog from kindly intercourse with its neighbours. It could never thrive in the bright south. The merry vine-dressers of Italy could never draw down their faces to the proper length, and would be very unwilling to exchange their blithesome canzonetti for Sternhold and Hopkins's version. But the Catholic Church, while it unites its professors in the belief of the same inflexible creed, leaves them entirely free in all mere externals and national peculiarities. When I see the light-hearted Frenchman, the fiery Italian, the serious Spaniard, the cunning Greek, the dignified Armenian, the energetic Russian, the hard-headed Dutchman, the philosophical German, the formal and "respectable" Englishman, the thrifty Scotchman, the careless and warm-hearted Irishman, and the calculating, go-ahead American, all bound together by the profession of the same faith, and yet retaining their national characteristics,—I can compare it to nothing but to a similar phenomenon that we may notice in the prism, which, while it is a pure and perfect crystal, is found on examination to contain, in their perfection, all the various colours of the rainbow.

The terminus of the Lyons and Mediterranean Railway is one of the best things of its kind in the world. I wish that some of our American railway directors could take a few lessons from the French. The attention paid to securing the comfort and safety of the passengers and the regularity of the trains would quite bewilder him. Instead of finding the station a long, unfinished kind of shed, with two small, beastly waiting rooms at one side, and a stand for a vender of apples, root beer, and newspapers, he would see a fine stone structure, several hundred feet in length, with a roof of iron and glass. He would enter a hall which would remind him of the Doric hall of the State House in Boston, only that it is several times larger, and is paved with marble. He would choose out of the three ticket offices of the three classes, where he would ride, and he would be served with a promptness and politeness that would remind him of Mr. Child in the palmy days of the old Tremont Theatre, while he would notice that an officer stood by each ticket office to see that every purchaser got his ticket and the proper change, and to give all necessary information. Having booked his luggage, he would be ushered into one of the three waiting rooms, all of them furnished in a style of neatness and elegance that would greatly astonish him. He might employ the interval in the study of geography, assisted by a map painted on one side of the room, giving the entire south of France and Piedmont, with the railways, &c., and executed in such a style that the names of the towns are legible at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet. Two or three minutes before the hour fixed for the starting of the train, the door would be opened, and he would take his seat in the train with the other passengers. The whole affair would go on so systematically, with such an absence of noise and excitement, that he would doubt whether he had been in a railway station at all, until he found himself spinning along at a rapid rate, through long tunnels, and past the beautiful panorama of ProvenÇal landscape.

The sun was as bright as it always is in fair Provence, the sky as blue. The white dusty roads wound around over the green landscape, like great serpents seeking to hide their folds amid those hills. The almond, the lemon, and the fig attracted the attention of the traveller from the north, before all other trees,—not to forget however, the pale foliage of that tree which used to furnish wreaths for Minerva's brow, but now supplies us with oil for our salads. Arles, with its old amphitheatre (a broken shadow of the Coliseum) looming up above it, lay stifled with dust and broiling in the sun, as we hurried on towards Avignon. It does not take much time to see that old city, which, from being so long the abode of the exiled popes, seems to have caught and retained something of the quiet dignity and repose of Rome itself. That gloomy old palace of the popes, with its lofty turrets, seems to brood over the town, and weigh it down as with sorrow for its departed greatness. Centuries have passed, America has been discovered, the whole face of Europe has changed, since a pontiff occupied those halls; and yet there it stands, a monument commemorating a mere episode in the history of the see of St. Peter.

Arriving at Lyons, I found another palatial station, on even a grander scale than that of Marseilles. The architect has worked the coats of arms of the different cities of France into the stone work of the exterior in a very effective manner. Lyons bears witness, no less than Marseilles, to the genius of the wonderful man who now governs France. It is a popular notion in England and America, that the enterprise of Napoleon III. has been confined to the improvement of Paris. If persons who labour under this error would extend their journeyings a little beyond the ordinary track of a summer excursion, they would find that there is scarcely a town in the empire that has not felt the influence of his skill as a statesman and political economist. The Rue Imperiale of Lyons is a monument of which any sovereign might be justly proud. The activity of Lyons, the new buildings rising on every side, and its look of prosperity, would lead one to suppose that it was some place that had just been settled, instead of a city with twenty centuries of history. The Sunday, I was glad to see, was well observed; perhaps not exactly in the style which Aminadab Sleek would commend, but in a very rational, Christian, un-Jewish manner. The shops were, for the most part, closed, the churches were crowded with people, and in the afternoon and evening the entire population was abroad enjoying itself—and a cleaner, better-behaved, happier-looking set of people I never saw. The excessive heat still continues. It is now more than two months since I opened my umbrella; the prospects of the harvest are good, but they are praying hard in the churches for a little rain. During my stay at Lyons, I lived almost entirely on fresh figs, and plums and ices. How full the cafÉs were those sultry evenings! How busy must the freezers have been in the cellars below! I read through all the newspapers I could lay my hands on, and then amused myself with watching the gay, chattering throng around me. How my mind flew across the ocean that evening to a quiet back parlour at the South End! I could see the venerable Baron receiving a guest on such a night as that, and making the weather seem cool by contrast with the warmth of his hospitality. I could see him offering to his perspiring visitor a release from the slavery of broadcloth, in the loan of a nankeen jacket, and then busying himself in the preparation of a compound of old Cochituate, (I had almost said old Jamaica,) of ice, of sugar, yea, of lemons, and commending the grateful chalice to the parched lips of his guest. Such an evening in the Baron's back parlour is the very ecstasy of hospitality. It is many months since that old nankeen jacket folded me in its all-embracing arms, but the very thought of it awakes a thrill of pleasure in my heart. When I last saw it, "decay's effacing fingers" had meddled with the buttons thereof, and it was growing a trifle consumptive in the vicinity of the elbows; but I hope that it is good for many a year of usefulness yet, before the epitaph writer shall commence the recital of its merits with those melancholy words, Hic jacet! Pardon me, dear reader, for this digression from the recital of my wanderings; but this jacket, the remembrance of which is so dear to me, is not the trifle it may seem to you. It is, I believe, the only institution in the world of the same age and importance, which has not been apostrophized in verse by that gifted bard, Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper. If this be not celebrity, what is it?

In one of the narrow streets of Lyons I found a barber named Melnotte. He was a man somewhat advanced in life, and I feel sure that he addressed a good-looking woman in a snowy white cap, who looked in from a back room while I was having my hair cut, as Pauline. Be that as it may, when he had finished his work, and I walked up to the mirror to inspect it, he addressed to me the language of Bulwer's hero, "Do you like the picture?" or words to that effect. I cannot help mistrusting that Sir Edward may have misled us concerning the ultimate history of the Lady of Lyons and her husband. But the heat was too intolerable for human endurance; so I packed up, and leaving that fair city, with its numerous graceful bridges, and busy looms whose fabrics brighten the eyes of the beauties of Europe and America, and lighten the purses of their chivalry,—leaving Our Lady of FourviÈres looking down with outstretched hands from the dome of her lofty shrine, and watching over her faithful Lyonnese,—I turned my face towards the Alpine regions.

The Alps have always been to me what Australia was to the late Mr. Micawber—"the bright dream of my youth, and the fallacious aspiration of my riper years." I remember when I was young, long before the days of railways and steamers, in the times when a man who had travelled in Europe was invested with a sort of awful dignity—I remember hearing a travelled uncle of mine tell about the Alps, and I resolved, with all the enthusiasm of boyhood, thenceforward to "save up" all my Fourth of July and Artillery Election money, until I should be able to go and see one. When the Rev. James Sheridan Knowles (he was a wicked playactor in those days) produced his drama of William Tell, how it fed the flame of my ambition! How I longed to stand with the hero once again among his native hills! How I loved the glaciers! How I doted on the avalanches! But age has cooled the longings of my heart for mountain excursions, and robbed my legs of all their climbing powers, so that if it depends upon my own bodily exertions, the Vale of Chamouni will be entirely unavailable for me, and every mount will be to me a blank. The scenery along the line of railway from AmbÉrieu to Culoz on the Rhone is very grand. The ride reminded me of the ride over the Atlantic and St. Lawrence road through the White Mountains, only it is finer. The boldness of the cliffs and precipices was something to make one's heart beat quick, and cause him to wonder how the peasants could work so industriously, and the cattle feed so constantly, without stopping to look up at the magnificence that hemmed them in.

At Culoz I went on board one of those peculiar steamers of the Rhone—about one hundred and fifty feet in length by ten or twelve in width. Our way lay through a narrow and circuitous branch of the river for several miles. The windings of the river were such that men were obliged to turn the boat about by means of cables, which they made fast to posts fixed in the banks on either side for that purpose. The scenery along the banks was like a dream of Paradise. To say that the country was smiling with flowers and verdure does not express it—it was bursting into a broad grin of fertility. Such vineyards! Not like the grape vine in your back yard, dear reader, nailed up against a brick wall, but large, luxuriant vines, seeming at a loss what to do with themselves, and festooned from tree to tree, just as you see them in the scenery of Fra Diavolo. And then there were groups of people in costumes of picturesque negligence, and women in large straw hats, and dresses of brilliant colours, just like the chorus of an opera. The deep, rich hue of the foliage particularly attracted my notice. It was as different from the foliage of New England as Winship's Gardens are from an invoice of palm-leaf hats. Beyond the immediate vicinity of the river rose up beautiful hills and cliffs like the Palisades of the Hudson. Let those who will, prefer the wild grandeur of our American mountain scenery; there is a great charm for me in the union of nature and art. The careful cultivation of the fields seems to set off and render more grand and austere the gray, jagged cliffs that overlook them. As the elder Pliny most justly remarks, (lib. iv. cap. xi. 24,) "It requires the lemon as well as the sugar to make the punch."

After about an hour's sail upon the river, we came out upon the beautiful Lake of Bourget. It was stirred by a gentle breeze, but it seemed as if its bright blue surface had never reflected a cloud. All around its borders the trees and vines seemed bending down to drink of its pure waters. Far off in the distance rose up the mighty peaks of the Alps—their snow-white tops contrasting with the verdure of their sides. They seemed to be watching with pleasure over the glad scenes beneath them, like old men whose gray hairs have been powerless to disturb the youthful freshness and geniality of their hearts.

At St. Innocent I landed, and underwent the custom house formalities attendant upon entrance into a new territory. The officials were very expeditious, and equally polite. I at first supposed that the letters V. E., which each of them bore conspicuously on his cap, meant "very empty,"—but it afterwards occurred to me that they were the initials of his majesty, the King of Sardinia. A few minutes' ride over the "Victor Emmanuel Railway" brought me to the beautiful village of Aix. It is situated, as my friend the Lyonnese barber would say, in "a deep vale shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world." It possesses about 2500 inhabitants; but that number is considerably augmented at present, for the mineral springs of Aix are very celebrated, and this is the height of "the season." There is a great deal of what is called "society" here, and during the morning the baths are crowded. It is as dull as all watering places necessarily are, and twice as hot. I think that the French manage these things better than we do in America. There is less humbug, less display of jewelry and dress, and a vast deal more of common sense and solid comfort than with us. The cafÉs are like similar establishments in all such places—an abundance of ices and ordinary coffee, and a plentiful lack of newspapers. I have found a companion, however, who more than makes good the latter deficiency. He is an Englishman of some seventy years, who is here bathing for his gout. His light hair and fresh complexion disguise his age so completely that most people, when they see us together, judge me, from my gray locks, to be the elder. He is one of the most entertaining persons I have ever met—he knows the classics by heart,—is familiar with English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish literature,—speaks nine languages,—and has travelled all over the world. He is as familiar with the Steppes of Tartary as with Wapping Old Stairs,—has imbibed sherbet in Damascus and sherry cobblers in New York, and seen a lion hunt in South Africa. But his heart is the heart of a boy—"age cannot wither nor custom stale" its infinite geniality. He cannot pass by a beggar without making an investment for eternity, and all the babies look over the shoulders of their nurses to smile at him as he walks the streets. I mention him here for the sake of recording one of his opinions, which struck me by its truth and originality. We were sitting in a cafÉ last evening, and, after a long conversation, I asked him what he should give as the result of all his reading and observation of men and things, and all his experience, if he were to sum it up in one sentence. "Sir," said he, removing his meerschaum from his mouth, and turning towards me as if to give additional force to his reply, "it may all be comprised in this: the world is composed of two classes of men—natural fools and d—d fools; the first class are those who have never made any pretensions, or have reached a just appreciation of the nothingness of all human acquirements and hopes; the second are those whose belief in their own infallibility has never been disturbed; and this class includes a vast number of every rank, from the profound German philosopher, who thinks that he has fathomed infinity, down to that young fop twirling his moustache at the opposite table, and flattering himself that he is making a great impression."

Savoy, as every body knows, was once a part of France, and it still retains all of its original characteristics. I have not heard ten words of Italian since I arrived here, and, judging from what I do hear and from the tone of the newspapers, it would like to become a part of France again. The Savoyards are a religious, steady-going people, and they have little love either for the weak and dissolute monarch who governs them, or for the powerful, infidel prime minister who governs their monarch. The high-pitched roofs of the houses here are suggestive of the snows of winter; but the heat reminds me of the coast of Africa during a sirocco. How true is Sydney Smith's remark, "Man only lives to shiver or perspire"! The thermometer ranges any where from 80° to 90°. Can this be the legitimate temperature of these mountainous regions? I am "ill at these numbers," and nothing would be so invigorating to my infirm and shaky frame as a sniff of the salt breezes of Long Branch or Nantasket.

There is no need of telling how disgusted I became with Aix-les-Bains and all that in it is, after a short residence there. How I hated those straw-hatted people who beset the baths from the earliest flush of the aurora! How I detested those fellows who were constantly pestering me with offers (highly advantageous, without doubt) of donkeys whereon to ride, when they knew that I didn't want one! How I abominated the sight of a man (who seemed to haunt me) in a high velvet-collared coat and a bell-crowned hat just overtopping an oily-looking head of hair and bushy whiskers—who looked, for all the world, as if he were made up for Sir Harcourt Courtly! How maliciously he held on to the newspapers in the cafÉ! How constantly he sat there and devoured all the news out of them through the medium of a double tortoise-shell eye-glass, which always seemed to be just falling off his nose! How I abhorred the sight of those waiters, who looked as if the season were a short one, and time (as B. Franklin said) was money! How stifling was the atmosphere of that "seven-by-nine" room for which I had to pay so dearly! How hot, how dusty, how dull it was, I need not weary you by telling; suffice it to say, that I never packed my trunk more willingly than when I left that village. I am very glad to have been there, however, for the satisfaction I felt at leaving the place is worth almost any effort to obtain. The joy of departure made even the exorbitant bills seem reasonable; and when I thought of the stupidity and discomfort I was escaping from, I felt as if, come what might, my future could only be one of sunshine and content. Aix-les-Bains is one of the pleasantest places to leave that I have ever seen. I can never forget the measureless happiness of seeing my luggage ticketed for Paris, and then taking my seat with the consciousness that I was leaving Aix (not aches, alas!) behind me.

The Lake of Bourget was as beautiful and smiling as before—only it did seem as if the sun might have held in a little. He scorched and blistered the passengers on that steamboat in the most absurd manner. He seemed never to have heard of Horace, and was consequently entirely ignorant of the propriety of maintaining a modus in his rebuses. The scenery along the banks of the Rhone had not changed in the least, but was as romantic and theatrical as ever. At Culoz I was glad to get on shore, for like Hamlet, I had been "too much i' the sun"; so I left the "blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone," (which the late Lord Byron, with his usual disregard of truth, talks about, and which is as muddy as a Medford brick-yard,) and took refuge in the hospitality of a custom house. Here I fell into a meditation upon custom house officers. I wonder whether the custom house officers of France are in their leisure hours given to any of the vanities which delight their American brethren. There was one lean, thoughtful-looking man among those at Culoz who attracted my attention. I tried ineffectually to make out his bent from his physiognomy. I could not imagine him occupying his leisure by putting any twice-told tales on paper—or cultivating Shanghai poultry—or riding on to the tented field amid the roar of artillery at the head of a brigade of militia,—and I was obliged, in the hurry of the examination of luggage, to give him up.

I had several times, during the journey from Aix, noticed a tall, eagle-eyed man, in a suit of gray, and wearing a moustache of the same colour, and while we were waiting for the train at Culoz, I observed that he attracted a great deal of attention: his bearing was so commanding, that I had set him down as being connected with the military interest, before I noticed that he did not bear arms, for the left sleeve of his coat hung empty and useless by his side; so I ventured to inquire concerning him, and learned that I was a fellow-traveller of Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers. I must do him the justice to say that he did not look like a man who would leave his arms on the field.

We were soon whirling, and puffing, and whistling along through the tame but pleasing landscape of France. Those carefully-tilled fields, those vineyards almost overflowing with the raw material of conviviality, those interminable rows of tall trees which seem to give no shade, those farm-houses, whose walls we should in America consider strong enough for fortifications, those contented-looking cattle, those towns that seem to consist of a single street and an old gray tower, with a dark-coloured conical top, like a candle extinguisher,—all had a good, familiar look to me; and the numerous fields of Indian corn almost made me think that I was on my way to Worcester or Fitchburg. I stopped for a while at Macon, (a town which I respect for its contributions to the good cheer of the world,) and hugely enjoyed a walk through its clean, quiet streets. While I was waiting at the station, the express train from Paris came along; and many of the passengers left their places (like Mr. Squeers) to stretch their legs. Among them was a man whose acquisitive eye, black satin waistcoat, fashionable hat, (such as no man but an American would think of travelling in,) and coat with the waist around his hips, and six or eight inches of skirt, immediately fixed my attention. Before I thought, he had asked me if I could speak English. I set him at his ease by answering that I took lessons in it once when I was young, and he immediately launched out as follows: "Well, this is the cussedest language I ever did hear. I don't see how in the devil these blasted fools can have lived so long right alongside of England without trying to learn the English language." The whistle of the engine cut short the declaration of his sentiments, and he was whizzing on towards Lyons a moment after. Whoever that man may have been, he owes it to himself and his country to write a book. His work would be as worthy of consideration as the writings of two thirds of our English and American travellers, who think they are qualified to write about the government and social condition of a country because they have travelled through it. Fancy a Frenchman, entirely ignorant of the English tongue, landing at Boston, and stopping at the Tremont House or Parker's; he visits the State House, the AthenÆum, Bunker Hill, the wharves, &c. Then on Sunday he wishes to know something about the religion of these strange people; so he goes across the street to the King's Chapel, and finds that it is closed; so he walks down the street in the burning sun to Brattle Street, where he hears a comfortable, drony kind of sermon, which seems to have as composing an effect upon the fifty or a hundred persons who are present as upon himself. In the afternoon he finds his way to Trinity Church, (somebody having charitably told him that that is the most genteel place,) and there he hears "our admirable liturgy" sonorously read out to twenty or thirty people, all of whom are so engrossed in their devotions that the responses are entirely neglected. Having had enough of what the Irishman called the English lethargy, he returns to his lodgings, and writes in his note-book that the Americans seldom go to church, and when they do, go there to sleep in comfortable pews. Then he makes a little tour of a fortnight to New Haven, Providence, Springfield, &c., and returns to France to write a book of travels in New England. And what are all his observations worth? I'll tell you. They are worth just as much, and give exactly as faithful a representation of the state of society in New England, as four fifths of the books written by English and American travellers in France, Spain, and Italy, do of the condition of those countries.

I have encountered many interesting studies of humanity here on the continent in my day. I have met many people who have come abroad with a vague conviction that travel improves one, and who do not see that to visit Europe without some preparation is like going a-fishing without line or bait. They appear to think that some great benefit is to be obtained by passing over a certain space of land and water, and being imposed upon to an unlimited extent by a horde of commissionnaires, ciceroni, couriers, and others, who find in their ignorance and lack of common sense a source of wealth. I met, the other day, a gentleman from one of the Western States, who said that he was "putting up" at Meurice's Hotel, but didn't think much of it; if it had not been for some English people whom he fell in with on the way from Calais, he should have gone to the HÔtel de Ville, which he supposed, from the pictures he had seen, must be a "fust class house"! I have within a few hours seen an American, who could not ask the simplest question in French, but thinks that he shall stop three or four weeks, and learn the language! I have repeatedly met people who told me that they had come out to Europe "jest to see the place." But it is not alone such ignoramuses as these who merit the pity or contempt of the judicious and sensible. Their folly injures no one but themselves. The same cannot be said, however, of the authors of the numerous duodecimos of foreign travel which burden the booksellers' counters. They have supposed that they can sketch a nation's character by looking at its towns from the windows of an express train. They presume to write about the social life of France or Italy, while they are ignorant of any language but their own, and do not know a single French or Italian family. Victims of a bitter prejudice against those countries and their institutions, they are prepared beforehand to be shocked and disgusted at all they see. Like Sterne's Smelfungus, they "set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object they pass by is discoloured or distorted." Kenelm Digby wisely remarks that one of the great advantages of journeying beyond sea, to a man of sense and feeling, is the spectacle of general travellers: "it will prevent his being ever again imposed upon by these birds of passage, when they record their adventures and experience on returning to the north."

Dijon is a fine old city. Every body knows that it used to be the capital of Burgundy, but to the general reader it is more particularly interesting as being the place to which Mrs. Dombey and Mr. Carker fled after the elopement. There is a fine cathedral and public library, and the whole place has an eminently Burgundian flavour which makes one regret that he got tired so soon when he tried to read Froissart's Chronicles. There is a church there which was desecrated during the old revolution, and is now used as a market-house. It bears an inscription which presents a satirical commentary on its recent history: "Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuÆ!" The Dijon gingerbread (which the people, in their ignorance and lack of our common school advantages, call pain d'Épice) would really merit a diploma from that academy of connoisseurs, the Massachusetts House of Representatives. But Dombey and Dijon are all forgotten in our first glimpse of the "gay capital of bewildering France." There lay Paris, sparkling under the noonday sun. The sight of its domes and monuments awoke all my fellow-travellers: shabby caps and handkerchiefs were exchanged for hats and bonnets, which gave their wearers an air of respectability perfectly uncalled for. We were soon inside the fortifications, which have been so outgrown by the city that one hardly notices them; and, after the usual luggage examination, I found myself in an omnibus, and once more on the Boulevards.

And what a good, comfortable home-feeling it was! There were the old, familiar streets, the well-known advertisements, painted conspicuously, in blue, and green, and gold, on what would else have been a blank, unsightly wall, and inviting me to purchase cloths and cashmeres; there were the same ceaseless tides of life ebbing and flowing through those vast thoroughfares, the same glossy beavers, the same snowy caps and aprons, the same blouses, the same polite, s'il vous-plaÎt, pardon, m'sieur, take-it-easy air, that Paris, as seen from an omnibus window, always presents. We rolled through the Rue St. Antoine, and it was hard to realize that it had ever been the theatre of so much appalling history. I tried to imagine the barricades, the street ploughed up by artillery, and that heroic martyr, Archbishop Affre, falling there, and praying that his blood might be the last shed in that fratricidal strife; but it was useless; the lively present made the past seem but the mere invention of the historian. All traces of the frightful scenes of 1848 have been effaced, and the facilities for barricades have been disposed of in a way that must make red republicanism very disrespectful to the memory of MacAdam. As we passed a church in that bloody locality, a wedding party came out; the bridegroom looked as if he had taken chloroform to enable him to get through his difficulties, and the effect of it had not entirely passed off. The bride (for women, you know, have greater power of endurance than men) seemed to take it more easily, and, beaming in the midst of a sort of wilderness of lace, and gauze, and muslin, like a lighthouse in a fog, she tripped briskly into the carriage, with a bouquet in her hand, and happiness in her heart. Before the bridal party got fairly out of sight, a funeral came along. The white pall showed that it was a child who slept upon the bier; for the Catholic church does not mourn over those who are removed from the temptations of life before they have known them. The vehicles all gave way to let the little procession pass, the hum seemed to cease for a moment, every head was uncovered, even the porter held his burden on his shoulder with one hand that he might pay his respects to that sovereign to whom even republicans are obliged to bow, and the many-coloured hats of the omnibus drivers were doffed. I had often before noticed those striking contrasts that one sees in a capital like Paris; but to meet such a one at my very entrance impressed me deeply. Such is Paris. You think it the liveliest place in the world, (and so it is;) but suddenly you come upon something that makes you thoughtful, if it does not sadden you. Life and death elbow and jostle each other along these gay streets, until it seems as if they were rivals striving to drive each other out. I entered a church a day or two since. There was a funeral at the high altar. The black vestments and hangings, the lighted tapers, the solemn chant of the De profundis were eloquent of death and what must follow it. I was startled by hearing a child's cry, and looking round into the chapel which served as a baptistery, there stood two young mothers who had just received their infants from that purifying laver which made them members of the great Christian family. I never before had that beautiful thought of Chateaubriand's so forced upon me—"Religion has rocked us in the cradle of life, and her maternal hand shall close our eyes, while her holiest melodies soothe us to rest in the cradle of death."

There are, without doubt, many persons, who can say that in their pilgrimage of life they have truly "found their warmest welcome at an inn." My experience outstrips that, for I have received one of my most cordial greetings in a cafÉ. The establishment in question is so eminently American, that I should feel as if I had neglected a sacred duty, if I did not describe it, for the benefit of future sojourners in the French capital, who are hereby requested to overhaul their memorandum books and make a note of it. It does not boast the magnificence and luxury of the CafÉ de Paris, VÉry's, the Trois FrÈres ProvenÇaux, nor of Taylor's; nor does it thrust itself forward into the publicity of the gay Boulevards, or of the thronged arcades of the Palais Royal. It does not appeal to those who love the noise and dust of fashion's highway; for them it has no welcome. But to those who love "the cool, sequestered path of life," it offers a degree of quiet comfort, to which the "slaves of passion, avarice, and pride," who view themselves in the mirrors of the Maison DorÉe, are strangers. You turn from the Boulevard des Italiens into the Rue de la MichodiÈre, which you perambulate until you come to number six, where you will stop and take an observation. Perhaps wonder will predominate over admiration. The front of the establishment does not exceed twelve feet in width, and the sign over the door shows that it is a CrÊmerie. The fact is also adumbrated symbolically by a large brass can, which is set over the portal. In one of the windows may be observed a neatly-executed placard, to this effect:—

Aux AmÉricains
SpÉcialitÉ.
Pumpkin Pie.

"Enter—its vastness overwhelms thee not!" On the contrary, having passed through the little front shop, you stand in a room ten or twelve feet square—just the size of Washington Irving's "empire," in the Red Horse Inn, at Stratford. This little room is furnished with two round tables, a sideboard, and several chairs, and is decorated with numerous crayon sketches of the knights of the aforesaid round tables. You make the acquaintance of the excellent Madame Busque, and order your dinner, which is served promptly and with a motherly care, which will at first remind you of the time when your bib was carefully tied on, and you were lifted to a seat on the family Bible, which had been placed on a chair, to bring the juvenile mouth into proper relations with the table.

Nothing can surpass the home feeling that took possession of me when I found myself once more in Madame Busque's little back room at No. 6, Rue de la MichodiÈre. How cordial was that estimable lady's welcome! She made herself as busy as a cat with one chicken, and prepared for me a "tired nature's sweet restorer" in the shape of one of her famous omelets. The old den had not changed in the least. Madame Busque used to threaten occasionally to paint it, and otherwise improve and embellish it; but we always told her that if she did any thing of that kind, or tried to render it less dingy, or snug, or unpretending, we would never eat another of her pumpkin pies. Not all the mirrors and magnificence of the resorts of fashion can equal the quiet cosiness of Madame Busque's back room. You meet all kinds of company there. The blouse is at home there, as well as its ambitious cousin, the broadcloth coat. Law and medicine, literature and art, pleasure and honest toil, meet there upon equal terms. Our own aristocratic Washington never dreamed of such a democracy as his calm portrait looks down upon in that room. Then we have such a delightful neighbourhood there. I feel as if the charcoal woman of the next door but one below was some relation to me—at least an aunt; she always has a pleasant word and a smile for the frequenters of No. 6; and then it is so disinterested on her part, for we can none of us need any of her charcoal. I hope that no person who reads this will be misled by it, and go to Madame Busque's crÊmerie expecting to find there the variety which the restaurants boast, for he will be disappointed. But he will find every thing there of the best description. My taste in food (as in most other matters) is a very catholic one: I can eat beef with the English, garlic and onions with the French, sauerkraut with the Germans, macaroni with the Italians, pilaf with the Turks, baked beans with the Yankees, hominy with the southerners, and oysters with any body. But as I feel age getting the better of me day by day, I think I grow to be more and more of a pre-Raphaelite in these things. So I crave nothing more luxurious than a good steak or chop, with the appropriate vegetables; and these are to be had in their perfection at Madame Busque's. My benison upon her!

The canicular weather I suffered from in the south followed me even here. I found every body talking about the extraordinary chaleur. Shade of John Rogers! how the sun has glared down upon Paris, day after day, without winking, until air-tight stoves are refrigerators compared to it, and even old-fashioned preaching is outdone! How the asphalte sidewalks of the Boulevards have melted under his rays, and perfumed the air with any thing but a SabÆan odour! The fragrance of the linden trees was entirely overpowered. The thought of the helmets of the cavalry was utterly intolerable. Tortoni's and the cafÉs were crowded. Great was the clamour for ices. Greater still was the rush to the cool shades of the public gardens, or the environs of Bougival and Marly. At last, the welcome rain came hissing down upon these heated roofs; and malheur to the man who ventures out during these days without his umbrella. It has been a rain of terror. It almost spoilt the great national fÊte of the 15th; but the people made the best of it, and, between the free theatrical performances at sixteen theatres, the superb illuminations, and the fireworks, seemed to have a very merry time. I went in the morning to that fine lofty old church, (whose Lady Chapel is a splendid monument of Couture's artistic genius,) St. Eustache, where I heard a new mass, by one M. L'HÔte. It was well executed, and the orchestral parts were particularly effective. After the mass, the annual Te Deum for the Emperor was sung. The effect of the latter was very grand; indeed, when it was finished, I was just thinking that it was impossible for music to surpass it, when the full orchestra and two organs united in a burst of harmony that almost lifted me off my feet. I recognized the old Gregorian anthem that is sung every Sunday in all the churches, and when it had been played through, the trumpets took up the air of the chant, above the rest of the accompaniment, and the clear, alto voice of one of those scarlet-capped choir-boys rang out the words, Domine, salvum fac imperatorem nostrum, Napoleonem, in a way that seemed to make those old arches vibrate, and wonderfully quickened the circulation in the veins of every listener. It was like the gradual mounting and heaving up of a high sea in a storm on the Atlantic, which, when it has reached a pitch you thought impossible, curls majestically over, and, breaking into a creamy foam, loses itself in a transitory vision of emerald brilliancy, that for the moment realizes the most gorgeous and improbable fables of Eastern luxury. It made even me, notwithstanding my prejudices in favour of republicanism, forget the spread eagle, and my free (and easy) native land, and for several hours I found myself singing that solemn anthem over in a most impressive manner. Vive l'Empereur!

This is a wonderful city. It seems to me, as I ride up and down the gay Boulevards on the roof of an omnibus, or gaze into the brilliant shop-windows of the Palais Royal, or watch the happy children in the garden of the Tuileries, or stand upon the bridges and take in as much as I can at once of gardens, palaces, and church towers—it seems to me like a great theatre, filled with gay company, to whom the same grand spectacle is always being shown, and whose faces always reflect something of that brilliancy which lights up the gorgeous, never-ending, last scene of the drama. I know that the play has its underplot of vicious poverty and crime, but they shrink from the glare of the footlights and the radiance of the red fire that lights up the scene. Taken in the abstract—taken as it appears from the outside—Paris is the most perfect whole the world can show. It was a witty remark of a well-known citizen of Boston, touching the materialistic views of many of his friends, that "when good Boston people die, they go to Paris." I know many whose highest idea of heaven would find its embodiment in the sunshine of the Place de la Concorde or the gas light of the Rue de Rivoli. Paris captivates you at once. In this it differs from Rome. You do not grow to love it; you feel its charms before you have recovered from the fatigue of your journey—before you have even reached your hotel, as you ride along and recognize the buildings and monuments which books and pictures have made familiar. In Rome all is different. Michel Angelo's mighty dome, to be sure, does impress you, as you come to the city; but when you enter, the narrow streets are such a contrast to the broad, free campagna you have just left, that you feel oppressed and cramped as you ride through them. You find one of the old temples kept in repair and serving as a custom house; this is a damper at the outset, and you sigh for something to revive the ancient customs of the world's capital. You walk into the Forum the next day, musing upon the line of the twelve CÆsars, and your progress is arrested, and your sense of the dramatic unities of your position deeply wounded, by an unamusing and prosaic clothes-line. You keep on and try to recall Cicero, and Catiline, and Jugurtha, and Servius Tullius, and Brutus, and Virginius,—but it is useless, for you find a cow feeding there as quietly as if she were on the hills of Berkshire. The whole city seems sad and mouldy, and out of date, and you think you will "do the sights" as rapidly as possible, and then be off. But before many days you find that all is changed. The moss that clothes those broken walls becomes as venerable in your sight as the gray hairs upon your mother's brow; the ivy that enwreathes those old towers and columns seems to have wound itself around your heart and bound it forever to that spot. Clothes-lines, dirt, and all the inconveniences inseparable from the older civilization of Rome, fade away. The Forum, the Palace of the CÆsars, the Appian Way, all become instinct with a new—or rather with their old life; and you feel that you are in the Rome of Livy and Sallust,—you have found the Rome of which you dreamed in boyhood, and you are happy. With Paris, as I have said, you are not obliged to serve such an apprenticeship. You have read of Paris in history, in novels, in guide-books, in the lucubrations of the whole tribe of correspondents—you recognize it at once on seeing it, and accept it for all that it pretends to be. And you are not deceived. And this, I apprehend, is the reason why we never feel that deep, clinging affection for Paris that we do for that "goddess of all the nations, to whom nothing is equal and nothing second"—that city which (as one of her prophet-poets said) shall ever be "the capital of the world, for whatever her arms have not conquered shall be hers by religion." You feel that Paris is the capital of Europe, and you bow before it as you would before a sovereign whose word was law.

I wonder whether every body judges of all new things by the criterion of childhood, as I find myself constantly doing. Whatever it may be, I apply to it the test of my youthful recollections of something similar, and it almost always suffers by the process. Those beautiful architectural wonders that pierce the sky at Strasburg and Antwerp will bear no comparison, in point of height, with the steeple of the Old South as it exists in the memory of my childhood. I have never seen a picture gallery in Europe which awakened any thing like my old feelings on visiting one of the first AthenÆum exhibitions many years ago. Those wonderful productions of Horace Vernet, in which one may read the warlike history of France, are nothing compared to my recollections of Trumbull's "Sortie of Gibraltar," as seen through an antediluvian tin trumpet which considerably interfered with my vision, but which I thought it was necessary to use. I have visited libraries which antedated by centuries the discovery of America,—I have rambled over castles which seemed to reËcho with the clank of armour and the clarion calls of the old days of chivalry,—I have walked through the long corridors and halls of the Vatican with cardinals and kings,—I have mused in church-crypts and cloisters, in whose silent shade the dead of a thousand years reposed,—but I have never yet been impressed with any thing like the awe which the old AthenÆum in Pearl Street used to inspire into my boyish heart. Pearl Street in those days was as innocent of traffic and its turmoil as the quiet roads around Jamaica Pond are now. A pasture, in which the Hon. Jonathan Phillips kept a cow, extended through to Oliver Street, and handsome old-fashioned private houses with gardens around them occupied the place of the present rows of granite warehouses. The AthenÆum, surrounded by horse-chestnut trees, stood there in aristocratic dignity and repose, which it seemed almost sacrilegious to disturb with the noise of our childish sports. There were a few old gentlemen who used to frequent its reading-room, whose white hair, (and some of them even wore knee breeches and queues and powder,) always stilled our boyish clamour as we played on the grass-plots in the yard. To some of these old men our heads were often uncovered,—for children were politer in those days than now,—and to our young imagination it seemed as if they were sages, who carried about with them an atmosphere of learning and the fragrance of academic groves. They seemed as much a part of the mysterious old establishment as the books in the library, the dusty busts in the entries, or the old librarian himself. Sometimes I used to venture into those still passages, and steal a look into that reading-room whose quiet was never broken, save by the wealthy creak of some old citizen's boots, or by the long breathing of some venerable frequenter of the place, enjoying his afternoon nap. In later years I came to know the AthenÆum more familiarly; the old gentlemen lost the character of sages and became estimable individuals of quiet tastes, who were fatiguing the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company by their long-continued perusal of the Daily Advertiser and the Gentleman's Magazine; but my old impression of the awful mystery of the building remains to this day. I mourned over the removal to the present fine position, and I seek in vain amid the stucco-work and white paint of the new edifice for the charm which enthralled me in the old home of the institution. Some people, carried away by the utilitarian spirit of the age, may think that it is a great improvement; but to me it seems nothing but an unwarrantable innovation on the established order of things, and a change for the worse. Where is the quiet of the old place? Younger and less reverential men have risen up in the places of the old, and have destroyed all that rendered the old library respectable. The good old times when Dr. Bass, the librarian, sat on one side of the fireplace, and the late John Bromfield (with his silk handkerchief spread over his knees) on the other, and read undisturbed for hours, have passed away. A hundred persons use the library now for one who did then; and I am left to feed upon the memory of better times, when learning was a quiet, comfortable, select sort of thing, and mutter secret maledictions on the revolutionary spirits who have made it otherwise.

But pardon me, dear reader,—all this has little to do with Paris, except by way of illustration of my remark that the youthful standard of intellectual weights and measures is the only infallible one we ever know. But Paris is something by itself: it overrides all standards of greatness or beauty, and all preconceived notions of itself, and addresses itself with confidence to every taste. Ladies love Paris as a vast warehouse of jewelry and all the rich stuffs that hide the crinoline from eyes profane. Physicians revel in its hospitals, and talk of "splendid operations," such as make the unscientific change colour.

Paris is a world in itself. Here may the Yankee find his pumpkin-pie and sherry-cobblers, the Englishman his rosbif, the German his sauerkraut, the Italian his macaroni. Here may the lover of dramatic art choose his performance among thirty theatres, and he who, with Mr. Swiveller, loves "the mazy," will find at the Jardin Mabille a bower shaded for him. Here the bookworm can mouse about, in more than twenty large public libraries, and spend weeks in the delightful exploration of countless book-stalls. Here the student of art can read the history of France on the walls of Versailles, or, revelling in the opulence of the Louvre, forget his studies, his technicalities, his criticisms, in contemplation of the majestic loveliness of Murillo's "sinless Mother of the sinless Child." Here may "fireside philanthropists, great at the pen," compare their magnificent theories with the works of delicate ladies who have left the wealth they possessed and the society they adorned, for the humble garb of the Sister of Charity and a laborious ministry to the poor, the diseased, and the infirm, and meditate in the cool quadrangles of hospitals and benevolent institutions, founded by saints, and preserved in their integrity by the piety of their disciples. Here may the man who wishes to look beyond this brilliant world, find churches ever open, inviting to prayer and meditation, where he may be carried beyond himself by the choicest strains of Haydn and the solemn grandeur of the Gregorian Chant,—or may be thrilled by the eloquent periods of Ravignan or Lacordaire, until the unseen eternal fills his whole soul, and the visible temporal glories of the gay capital seem to him the transient vanities they really are.

How few people really know Paris! To most minds it presents itself only as a place of general pleasure-seeking and dissipation. I have seen many men whose only recollections of Paris were such as will give them no pleasure in old age, who flattered themselves that they knew Paris. They thought that the whole city was given up to the folly that captivated them, and so they represent Paris as one vast reckless masquerade. I have seen others who, walking through the thronged cafÉs and restaurants, have felt themselves justified in declaring that the French had no domestic life, and were as ignorant of family joys as their language is destitute of a single Word to express our good old Saxon word "home"; not knowing that there are in Paris thousands of families as closely knit together as any that dwell in the smoky cities of Old England, or amid the bustle and activity of our new world. Good people may turn up their eyes, and talk and write as many jeremiads as they will about the vanity and wickedness of Paris; but the truth is, that this great Babel has even for them its cheering side, if they would but keep their eyes open to discover it. Let them visit the churches on the vigils of great feasts, and every Saturday, and see the crowds that throng the confessionals: let them rise an hour or two earlier than usual, and go into any of the churches, and they will find more worshippers there on any common weekday morning than half of the churches in New England collect on Sundays. Let them visit that magnificent temple, the Madeleine, and see the freedom from social distinctions which prevails there: the soldier, the civilian, the rich and the poor, the high-bred lady, the servant in livery, and the negress with her bright yellow and red kerchief wound around her head, are there met, on an equality that free America knows not of.

The observance of the Sunday is a sign of the times which ought not to be overlooked. Only a few years ago, and suspension of business on Sunday was so uncommon that notice was given by a sign to that effect on the front of the few shops whose proprietors indulged in that strange caprice. The signs (like certain similar ones on apothecary shops in Boston, to the effect that prescriptions are the only business attended to on the first day of the week) used to seem to me like a bait to catch the custom of the godly. But the signs have passed away before this movement, inaugurated by the Emperor, who forbade labour on the public works on Sunday, and preached up by the late Archbishop of Paris and the parish clergy. There are few shops in Paris that do not close on Sunday now—at least in the afternoon. And this is done by the free will of the trades-people: it is not the result of a legislative enactment. The law here leaves all people free in regard to their religious duties. The shops of the Jews, of course, are open on Sunday, for they are obliged to close on Saturday, and of course ought not to be expected to observe two days. Of course, too, the public galleries, and gardens, and places of amusement are all open; God forbid that the hard-faring children of toil should be cheated out of any innocent recreation on the only free day they have by any attempts to judaize the Christian Sunday into a sabbath. It is a great mistake to suppose that people can be made better by diminishing the sources of innocent pleasure. No; if the Sunday be made a hard, uninteresting day, when smiling is a grave impropriety, and a hearty laugh a mortal sin, children will begin by disliking the day, and end by despising the religion that made it gloomy. But provide the people with music in the public parks on Sunday afternoon and evening,—make the day a cheerful, happy time to those who are ingulfed in the carking cares of life all the rest of the week,—make it a day which children shall look forward to with longing, and you will find that the people are better, and happier, and thriftier for the change. You will find that the mechanic or labourer, instead of lounging away his Sunday in a grog-shop, (for the business goes on even though the front door may be barred and the shutters closed,) will be ambitious to take his wife and children to hear the music, and will after a time become as well behaved as the common run of people. It is better to use the merest worldly motives to keep men in the path of decency, than to let them slide away to perdition because they refuse to listen to the more dignified teachings of religion.

I have been much impressed by a visit to a large, but unpretentious-looking house in the Rue du Bac—the "mother-house" of that admirable organization, the Sisters of Charity. It was not much of a visit, to be sure—for not even my gray hairs and respectable appearance could gain for me an admission beyond the strangers' parlour, the courtyard, and the cool, quiet chapel. But that was enough to increase my respect and admiration for those devoted women. The community there consists of six hundred Sisters of Charity, whose whole time is occupied in taking care of the sick, and needy, and neglected in the hospitals and asylums, and in every quarter of the city. You see them at every turn, going quietly about their work of benevolence, and presenting a fine contrast to some of our noisy theorists at home. I may be in error, but it strikes me that that community is doing more in its present mode of action to advance the true dignity and "rights" of the sex, than if it were to resolve itself into a convention, after the American fashion. I was somewhat anxious to inquire whether any of the sisters of the community had ever taken to lecturing or preaching in public; but the modest and unassuming manner of all those whom I saw, rendered such a question unnecessary. I fear that oratory is sadly neglected among them; with this exception, and perhaps the absence of a certain strong-mindedness in their characters, I think that they will compare very favourably with any of our distinguished female philanthropists. They wear the same gray habit and odd-shaped white bonnet that the Sisters of Charity wear in Boston. While we praise the self-forgetful heroism of Florence Nightingale as it deserves, let us not forget that France sent out her Florence Nightingales to the Crimea by fifties and hundreds—young and delicate women, hiding their personality under the common dress of a religious order, casting aside the names that would recall their rank in the world, unencouraged in their beneficence by any newspaper paragraphs, and unrewarded save by the sweet consciousness of duty done. The Emperor Alexander, struck by the part played in the Crimean campaign by the Sisters of Charity, has recently asked the superior of the order to detail five hundred of the sisters, for duty in the hospitals of Russia. It is understood that the request will be complied with so far as the number of the community will permit.

If I were asked to sum up in one sentence the practical result of my observations of men and manners here on the continent, I should say that it was this: We have a great deal to learn in America concerning the philosophy of life. I do not mean that philosophy which teaches us that "it is not all of life to live," but the philosophy of making ninety-three cents furnish the same amount of comfort in America that five francs do in Paris. The spirit of centralization is stronger here than in any American city: (it is too true, as Heine said, that to speak of the departments of France having a political opinion as distinguished from Paris, "is to talk of a man's legs thinking;") and there is no reason why people of moderate means should not be able to live as respectably, comfortably, and economically in our cities as here, if they will only use a little common sense. The model-lodging-house enterprise was a most praiseworthy one, but it seems to have been confined only to the wants of the most necessitous class in the community. There is, however, a large class of salesmen, and book-keepers, and mechanics, on salaries of six hundred to twelve or fourteen hundred dollars, whose position is no less deserving of commiseration. When the prices of beefsteak and potatoes went up so amazingly a few years ago, there were few salaries that experienced a similar augmentation. The position of the men on small salaries therefore became peculiar, not to say unpleasant, as rents rose in the same proportion as every thing else. Any person, familiar with the rents of brick houses for small families in most of the Atlantic cities, will see how difficult it is for such people as these to live within their means. Now, the remedy for this evil is a simple one, but it requires some public-spirited men to initiate it. Suppose that a few large, handsome houses, on the European plan, (that is, having a suite of rooms, comprising a parlour, dining-room, two or three bedrooms, and a kitchen, on each floor,) were built in any of our great thoroughfares,—the ground floors might be used for shops,—for there is no reason why respectable people should any more object to living over shops there, than on the Boulevards. Such houses, it is easy to see, would be good paying property to their owners, as soon as people got into that way of living; and when salaried men saw that they could get the equivalent, in comfort and available room, to an ordinary five hundred dollar house for half that rent, in a central situation, depend upon it, they would not be long in learning how to live in that style. The advantages of this plan of domestic life are numerous and striking. Housekeeping would be disarmed of half its difficulties; the little kitchen would furnish the coffee and eggs in the morning and the tea and toast at night—the dinner might be ordered from a neighbouring restaurant for any hour—for such establishments would increase with the increase of apartments. The dangers of burglary would be diminished, for the housekeeper would have only the door leading to the staircase to lock up at night. The washing would be done out of the house, and the steam of boiling suds, and all anxiety about clothes-lines, and sooty chimneys, and windy weather would thereby be avoided. Thousands of people would be liberated from the caprice and petty tyranny of the railroad directors, whose action has so often filled our newspapers with resolutions and protests, and, so far as Boston is concerned, its peninsula might be made the home of a population of three hundred thousand instead of a hundred and eighty thousand persons. The most rigidly careless person can hardly fail to become a successful housekeeper, when the matter is made so easy as it is by the European plan. The plan, too, not only simplifies the mysteries of domestic economy, but it snuggifies one's establishment wonderfully, and gives it a home feeling, such as what are called genteel houses nowadays wot not of. The change has got to come—and the sooner it does, the better it will be for our cities, and many of their people, who have been driven into remote and unpleasant suburbs by high rents, or who are held back from marriage by the expenses of housekeeping conducted on the present method.

It is an inestimable advantage to an idle man to have such a place as the Louvre ever open to him. The book-stalls and print-shops of the quays, those never-failing sources of pleasure and of extravagance in a small way, cannot be visited with any satisfaction under the meridian sun; the shop windows, a perpetual industrial exhibition, grow tiresome at times; the streets are too crowded, the gardens too empty; the reading rooms are close; the newspapers are stupid; and what remains? Why, the Louvre opens its hospitable doors, and, blessing the memory of Francis I., the tired wanderer enters, and drinks in the refreshing coolness of those quiet and spacious halls. If he is an antiquarian, he plunges deep into the arcana of ancient Egypt, and emulates the great Champollion; if he is a student of history, he muses on the sceptre of Charlemagne, or the old gray coat and coronation robes of the first Napoleon; if he is devoted to art, he travels through that wilderness of paintings and statuary, and thinks and talks about chiaro 'scuro, "breadth of colour," or "bits of foreshortening." But if he be a man of simple tastes, who detests technicalities, and enjoys all such things in a quiet, general sort of way, without knowing exactly what it is that pleases him,—he goes through room after room, now stopping for an instant before a set of antique china, now speculating on the figure he should cut in one of those old suits of armour, and finally settling down in a chair before some landscape by Cuyp or Claude, in which the artist seems to have imprisoned the sunbeams and the warm, fragrant atmosphere of early June; or else he seats himself on that comfortable sofa before Murillo's masterpiece, and contemplates the supernal beauty and holy exaltation of the face of her whom Dante calls the "Virgin Mother, daughter of her Son." He is surrounded by artists, engaged in a work that seems to verify the old maxim, Laborare est orare,—each one striving to reproduce on his canvas the effects of the angel-guided pencil of Murillo.

I find it useless for me to attempt to visit the Louvre systematically, as most people do. I have frequently tried to do it, but it has ended by my walking through one or two rooms, and then taking up my position before Murillo's Conception, and holding it until the hour came for closing the gallery. When I was young, I used to think what a glorious thing it would have been to have felt the thrill of joy that filled the heart of the discoverer of America, or the satisfaction of Shakspeare when he had finished Hamlet or Macbeth, or of Beethoven when he had completed his seventh symphony; but all that covetousness of the impossible is blotted out by my envy of the great Spanish painter. What must have been the deep transport of his heart, when he gazed upon the heavenly vision his own genius had created! He must have felt

"——like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet sails into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes,
He stared at the Pacific.——"

In spite of all my natural New England prejudice, I cannot help admiring and loving that old Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Its humanizing effects can be seen in the history of the middle ages, and they are felt amid all the bustle and roar of this irreverent nineteenth century. Woman cannot again be thought the soulless being heathen philosophy considered her; she cannot again become a slave, for she is recognized as the sister of her who was chosen to make reparation for the misdeeds of Mother Eve. I am strongly tempted to transcribe here some lines written in pencil on the fly-leaf of an old catalogue of the museum of the Louvre, and found on the sofa before Murillo's picture. The writer seems to have had in mind the beautiful conclusion of the life of Agricola by Tacitus, where the great historian says that he would not forbid the making of likenesses in marble or bronze, but would only remind us that such images, like the forms of their originals, are frail and unenduring, while the beauty of the mind is eternal, and can be perpetuated in the manners of succeeding generations better than by ignoble materials and the art of the sculptor. The lines appear to be a paraphrase of this idea.

O blest Murillo! what a task was thine,
That Mother to portray whose beauty mild
Combined earth's comeliness with grace divine,—
To whom our God and Saviour as a child
Was subject—upon whom so oft He smiled!
Yet not less happy also in my part,—
For I, though in a world by sin defiled,
Though lacking genius and unskilled in art,
May paint that blessed likeness in a contrite heart.

Art is the surest and safest civilizer. Popular education may be so perverted as only to minister to new forms of corruption, but art purifies itself; it has no Voltaires, and Rousseaus, and Eugene Sues,—for painting and sculpture, like poetry, refuse to be made the handmaids of vice or unbelief. Open your galleries of art to the people, and you confer on them a greater benefit than mere book education; you give them a refinement to which they would otherwise be strangers. The boor, turned loose into civilized society, soon catches something of its tone of politeness; and those who are accustomed to the contemplation of forms of ideal beauty will not easily be won by the grossness and deformity of vice. A fine picture daily looked at becomes by degrees a part of our own souls, and exerts an influence over us of which we are little aware. Some English writer—Hazlitt, I think—has said, that if a man were thinking of committing some wicked or disgraceful action, and were to stop short and look for a moment at some fine picture with which he had been familiar, he would inevitably be turned thereby from his purpose. It is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when each of our great American cities shall possess its gallery of art, which (on certain days of the week, at least) shall be as free to all well-behaved persons as the public parks themselves. We may not boast the artistic wealth of Rome, Florence, Paris, Dresden, or any of the old capitals of Europe; but the sooner we make a beginning, the better it will be for our galleries and our mob. We need some more effectual humanizer than our educational system. Reading, writing, and ciphering are great things, but they are powerless to overcome the rudeness and irreverence of our people. Our populace seems to lack entirely the sense of the beautiful or the sublime. As Charles Lamb said, "They have, alas! no passion for antiquities—for the tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would no longer be the rabble." It is too true that the attempts which have been made to open private gardens to the enjoyment of the public have resulted in the most shameful abuses of privilege, and that flowers are stolen from the graves in our cemeteries; but there is no reason for giving our people up as past praying for, on the score of politeness and common decency. They must be educated up to it: some abuses may occur at first, but a few salutary lessons on the necessity of submission to authority will rectify it all, and our people will, in the course of time, become as well-behaved as the people of France or Italy.

I am no antiquarian. I do not love the antique for antiquity's sake. It must appeal to me through the medium of history, or not at all. Etruscan relics have no other charm for me than their beauty of form. I care but little for Egyptian sarcophagi or their devices and hieroglyphics, and I would not go half a mile to see a wilderness of mummies. Whenever I feel a longing for any thing in the Egyptian or heathen line, I can resort to Mount Auburn, with its gateway—and this thought satisfies me; so that I pass by all such things without feeling that I am a loser. With such feelings, there are many of the halls of the Louvre which I only walk through with an admiring glance at their elegance of arrangement. A few days since, in wandering about there, I found a room which I had never seen before, and which touched me more nearly than any thing there, except the paintings. It has been opened recently. I had been looking through the relics of royalty with a considerable degree of pleasure,—meditating on the armour of Henry the Great, the breviary of St. Louis, and the worn satin shoe which once covered the little foot of Marie Antoinette,—and was about to leave, when I noticed that a door was open which in past years I had seen closed. I pushed in, and found myself in a vast and magnificent apartment, on the gorgeously frescoed ceiling of which was emblazoned the name—which is a tower of strength to every Frenchman—Napoleon. Around the room, in elegant glass cases, were disposed the relics of the saint whom Mr. Abbott's bull of canonization has placed in red letters in the calendar of Young America. Leaving aside all joking upon the attempts to prove that much-slandered monarch a saint, there was his history, written as Sartor Resartus would have written it, in his clothes. There was a crayon sketch of him at the age of sixteen; there was a mathematical book which he had studied, the case of mathematical instruments he had used; there was the coat in which he rode up and down the lines of Marengo, inspiring every heart with heroism, and every arm with vigour; the sword and coat he wore as First Consul; the glittering robes which decked him when he sat in the chair of Clovis and Charlemagne, the idol of his nation, and the terror of all the world besides; the stirrups in which he stood at Waterloo, and saw his brave legions cut up and dispersed; and, though last, not least, there was the old gray coat and hat in which he walked about at St. Helena, and the very handkerchief which in his dying hour wiped the chill dew of eternity from his brow. There were many things besides—there were his table and chair; his camp bed on which he rested during those long campaigns; his gloves, his razor strap, his comb, the clothes of his little son, the "King of Rome," and the bow he played with; the saddles and other presents which he received during his expedition to the East, and his various court dresses—but the old gray coat was the most attractive of all. It was a consolation to notice that it had lost a button, for it showed that though its wearer was an anointed emperor, he was not exempt from the vicissitudes of common humanity. I sat down and observed the people who visited the room, and I noticed that they all lingered around the old coat. It made no difference whether they spoke English, French, German, or any other tongue; there was something which appealed to them all; there was a common ground, where the student and the enthusiastic lover of high art could join in harmonious feeling, even with the practical man, who would not have cared a three-cent piece if Praxiteles and Canova had never sculptured, or Raphael and Murillo had never seen a brush. It required but a slight effort to fill the room up of the absent hero, and to "stuff out his vacant garments with his form," and perhaps this very thing tended to make the entire exhibition a sad one. It was the most melancholy commentary on human glory that can be imagined. It ought to be placed in the vestibule of a church, or in some more public place, and it would purge a community of ambition. What a sermon might Lacordaire preach on the temporal and the eternal, with the sword and the coronation robes of Napoleon I. before him!

The interest which I have seen manifested by so many people in the relics of Napoleon I. has afforded me considerable amusement. I have lately seen so much ridicule cast upon the relics of the saints preserved in many of the churches of Italy, by people of the same class as those who lingered so reverentially before the glass cases of the Napoleon room in the Louvre, that I cannot help thinking how rare a virtue consistency is.

Perhaps it may be owing to some weakness in my mental organization, but I cannot acknowledge the propriety of honouring the burial-places of successful generals, and, at the same time, think the shrines of the saints worthy of nothing but ridicule and desecration. I found myself, a few years ago, looking with grave interest at an old coat of General Jackson's, which is preserved in the Patent Office at Washington; and I cannot wonder at the reverence which some people pay to the garments of a martyr in the cause of religion. I cannot understand how it may be right and proper to celebrate the birthdays of worldly heroes, and "rank idolatry" to commemorate the self-denying heroes of Christianity. I cannot join in the setting-up of statues of generals and statesmen, and condemn a similar homage to the saints by any allusions to the enormity of making a "graven image." In fine, if it is right to adorn and reverence the tomb of the Father of his Country, (and what American heart does not acknowledge its propriety?) it certainly cannot be wrong to beautify and venerate the tomb of the chief apostle, and the shrines of saints and martyrs who achieved for themselves and their fellow-men an independence from a tyranny infinitely worse than that from which Washington liberated America.

I have recently been visiting the three great monuments of the reign of Napoleon III.—the completed Louvre, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Halles Centrales. As to the first, those who remember those narrow, nasty streets, which within six years were the approaches to the Louvre and the Palais Royal, and those rickety old buildings reminding one too strongly of cheese in an advanced stage of mouldiness, that used to intrude their unsightly forms into the very middle of the Place du Carrousel,—those who recollect the junk shops that seemed more fitting to the neighbourhood of the docks than to the entrance to a palace and a gallery of art,—feel in a manner lost, when they walk about the courtyards of the noble edifice which has taken the place of so much deformity. If the new wings of the Louvre had been built in one range instead of quadrangles, they would extend more than half a mile! Half a mile of palace, and a palace, too, which in building has occupied one hundred and fifty sculptors for the past five years! Those who have not visited Paris within five years will recollect the Bois de Boulogne only as a vast neglected tract of woodland, which seemed a great waste of the raw material in a place where firewood is so expensive as it is here. It is now laid out in beautiful avenues and walks, the extent of which is said to be nearly two hundred miles. You are refreshed by the sound of waterfalls and the coolness of grottos, the rocks for the formation of which were brought from Fontainebleau, more than forty miles distant from Paris. You walk on, and find yourself on the shores of a lake, a mile or two in length, with two or three lovely islands in it, and in whose bright blue waters thousands of trout are sporting. That wild waste, the old Bois de Boulogne, which few persons but duellists ever visited, has passed away, and in its place you find the most magnificent park in the world. It is indeed a perfect triumph of landscape gardening. It is nature itself, not in miniature, but on such a scale as to deceive you entirely, and fill you with the same feeling of admiration that is awakened by any striking natural beauty. The old French notions of landscape gardening seem to have been entirely cast aside. The carriage roads and paths go winding about so that the view is constantly changing, and the trees are allowed to grow as they please, without being tortured into fantastic shapes by the pruning knife. The banks of the lake have been made irregular, now steep, now sloping gently to the water's edge, and in some places huge jagged rocks have been most naturally worked in, while ivy has been planted around them, and in their crevices those weeds and shrubs which commonly grow in such places. You would about as readily take Jamaica Pond to be artificial as this lovely sheet of water and its surroundings. The Avenue de l'ImpÉratrice is the road from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. It is half or three quarters of a mile in length, and is destined to be one of the most striking features of Paris. It is laid out with spacious grass plots, with carriage ways and ways for equestrians and foot passengers, with regular double rows of trees on either side. Many elegant chÂteau-like private residences already adorn it, and others are rapidly rising. An idea of its majestic appearance may be had from the fact that its entire width from house to house is about four hundred feet. The large space around the Arc de Triomphe is already laid out in a square, to be called the Place de l'Europe, and the work has already been commenced of reducing the buildings around it to symmetry. The Halles Centrales, the great central market-house of Paris, has just been opened to the public. It is built mainly of iron and glass. As nearly as I could judge of its size, I should think it would leave but little spare room if it were placed in Union Park, New York. It is about a hundred feet in height, and so well ventilated that it is hard to realize when there that one is under cover. A wide street for vehicles runs through its whole length, crossed by others at equal intervals. I have called these three public improvements the great monuments of the reign of Napoleon III.; not that I would limit his good works to these, but because these may be taken as conspicuous illustrations of his care, no less for the amusements than for the bodily wants of his people, and of his zeal for the promotion of art and the adornment of his capital. But these noble characteristics of the Emperor deserve something more than a mere passing notice, and may well form the subject of my next letter.

There is a period in the life of almost every man which may justly be termed the romantic period. I do not mean the time when a youth, whose heart is as yet unwarped by the selfishness of the world, and his brow unclouded by its trials and its sorrows, thinks that the performance of his life will fully come up to the glowing programme he then composes for it; neither do I refer to the period when, in hungry expectation, we clutched eagerly at the booksellers' announcements of the last productions of the eloquent Bulwer, or of the inexhaustible James. But I refer to the time when childhood forgets its new buttons in reading how poor Ali Baba relieved his wants at the expense of the wicked thieves; how Whittington heard Bow Bells ring out the prophecy of his greatness; how fierce Blue Beard punished his wife's curiosity; and how good King Alfred merited reproof by his forgetfulness of the herdsman's supper. This is the true period of romance in the lives of all of us; for then all the romance that we read is clothed with the dignity of history, and all our history is invested with the charm of romance. This happy period does not lose its attractions, even when we outgrow the credulity of childhood; for the romance of history captivates us when we no longer are subject to the sway of the novelist; and we leave Mr. Thackeray's last uncut, until we can finish a newspaper chapter in the history of these momentous times.

We know how eagerly we pursue the vicissitudes of fortune which have marked the career of so many of the world's heroes; and this will teach us how future generations will read the history of the present century. Surely the whole range of romance presents no parallel to the simple history of the wonderful man who now governs France. It is easy to see that his varied fortunes will one day perform a conspicuous part in that juvenile classical literature of which I have spoken; and perhaps it may not be unprofitable, dear reader, for us to endeavour to raise ourselves above the excitement of partisanship and the influences of old prejudices, and look upon his career as may the writers of the twenty-fifth century.

It is a popular error in America to regard Louis Napoleon as a singular combination of knavery and half-wittedness. Even Mr. Emerson, in his English Traits, so far forgets the kindliness of his nature as to call him a "successful thief." The English journalists once delighted to ridicule him as the "nephew of his uncle," and the shadow of a great name, and Punch used to represent him as a pygmy standing upon the brim of his uncle's hat, and wondering how he could ever fill it; but he has lived down ridicule, and they have long since learned that there is such a thing as the possibility of a mistake in judgment, even among journalists and politicians. It is time that we Americans got over a notion which has long since been exploded on this side of the Atlantic. I know that I am flying in the face of those who believe in the plenary inspiration of the New York Tribune, when I claim for the Emperor any thing like patriotism or capacity as a statesman. I know that the Greeleian, "philanthropic" code exacts that we should not "give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt," and that when any one whom we dislike does any good, we should attribute it to nothing but a selfish or ambitious motive. I know that this new-fangled love of all mankind requires us to hate those who differ from us politically, and never to lose an opportunity to blacken their characters and diminish their reputation; and therefore I make all due allowances for the refusal of the Tribune, and journals of the same amiable family, to see the truth. In April, 1856, I was waiting for a train in a way station on the Worcester Railroad. A sun-burned, hard-working man was reading the news of the proclamation of peace at Paris from a penny paper, and he commented upon it to two or three others who were present, as follows: "Well, I don't know how 'tis, but it seems to me that we've been most almightily mistaken about this 'ere Lewis Napoleon. We used to think he was a shaller kind o' feller any how, but it really looks now, judging from the position of France in European affairs, as if he was turning out to be altogether the biggest dog in that tanyard!" The old fellow's conclusion was a true one, though his rhetoric would not have been commended at Cambridge; and it is to prevent this conclusion forcing itself upon the public sense, that the sympathizers with socialism have been labouring ever since. We are told that it is our duty as Americans and republicans to wish for the overthrow of Napoleon and his empire, and the establishment of the rÉpublique dÉmocratique et sociale. Now, having received my political principles from another source than the Tribune, I may be pardoned for having a prejudice in favour of allowing the people of France to govern France; and, as they elected Louis Napoleon President in 1848 by more than five millions of votes, and in 1851 chose him dictator (in their fear of the very party which the Tribune wishes to see in power) by more than seven millions of votes, and finally, in 1852, made him their Emperor by a vote of more than seven millions against a little more than three hundred thousand, we may suppose France to have expressed a pretty decided opinion on this matter. The French empire rests upon the very principle that forms the basis of true republicanism—universal suffrage. Louis Napoleon restored that principle after it had been suppressed or restricted, and proved himself a truer republican than his opponents. For nine years, Napoleon has been sustained by the people of France with a unanimity such as the United States never knew, except in the election of Washington as first President, and his majority has increased every time that he has appealed to the people. It is idle to say that there are parties here that are opposed to him; it would be a remarkable phenomenon if there were not. But there is a more united support here for the Emperor than there is in our own country for the constitution of the United States, and any right-minded man would regret a revolutionary movement in one country as much as in the other.

If there was ever a position calculated to test the capabilities of its occupant, it was that in which Louis Napoleon found himself when he obeyed the voice of the French people, and accepted the presidency of the French republic. Surrounded by men holding all kinds of political opinions, from the agrarian Proudhon to the impracticable Louis Blanc, and men of no political opinions whatever,—he found himself obliged to use all the power reposed in him by the constitution, to keep the government from falling asunder. History bears witness to the fact that republican governments deteriorate more rapidly than those which are based upon a less changeable foundation than the popular will. But there was little danger of the French republic deteriorating, for it was about as weak and unprincipled as it could be in its very inception. There were a few men of high and patriotic character in the Assembly, but (as is generally the case) their voices were drowned amid the clamourings of a crowd of radical journalists and ambitious littÉrateurs, whose only bond of union was a fierce hatred of law and religion, and a desire for the spoils of office. These were the men with whom Napoleon had to deal. They had favoured his election to the presidency, for, in their misapprehension of his character, they thought him the mere shadow of a name, and expected under his government to have all things their own way. But they were not long in discovering their mistake.

His conduct soon showed that he was the proper man for the crisis. That unflinching republican, General Cavaignac, had before pointed out the dangers to all European governments, and to civilization itself, that would spring from the continuance of the sanguinary and sacrilegious Roman Republic; and Napoleon, accepting his suggestions, took immediate measures to put an end to the atrocities which marked the sway of Mazzini and his assassins in the Roman States.2 The success which attended these measures is now a part of history. There is a kind of historical justice in this part of Napoleon's career which must force itself upon every reflecting mind. From the day when St. Remy told his royal convert, Clovis, to "burn what he had adored, and adore what he had burned," the monarch of France had always been considered the "eldest son of the Church." The Roman Pontiff was indebted to Pepin and Charlemagne for those possessions which rendered him independent of the secular power. In the hour of need it was always to the Kings of France that he looked for aid; and whether he sought aid against the oppressors of the Holy See or the infidel possessors of the Holy Sepulchre, he seldom appealed to them in vain. It was meet, therefore, that Napoleon should inaugurate his power by thus reviving the ancient traditionary spirit of the French monarchy; for he could not better prove his worthiness to sit on the throne which had been occupied by so many generous and heroic spirits, than by fighting the battles of the Church they loved so well.

The foreign and domestic policy which the Prince-President pursued excited at the same time the anger of the ultra republican faction, and the hopes of the religious and conservative portion of society. Order was restored, and an impetus was given to commercial enterprise and to the arts of peace such as France had not known since the outbreak of 1848. Still the discordant elements of which the Assembly was composed, were a just cause of alarm to all friends of good order, and all parties, conservative and radical, regarded the existing state of affairs as a temporary one. Napoleon saw that the only obstacle in the path of the nation to peace and prosperity was the Assembly—the radicals of the Assembly that the Prince-President was the only obstacle to their plans of disorganization and anarchy; and they also saw that, if the question were allowed to go to the people at the expiration of Napoleon's term of office, he would surely be reËlected, and that his policy would be triumphantly confirmed. So, as the time drew near for the new election, the struggle between the President and the Assembly—between order and anarchy—grew more and more severe. Plots were formed against Napoleon, and were just ripening for execution, when, on the second of December, 1851, he terminated the suspense of the nation by seizing and throwing into prison all the chief conspirators against the public peace, and then appealed to the people to sustain him in his efforts to preserve his country from the state of anarchy towards which it seemed to be hastening. The people answered promptly and with good will to the call, and Napoleon gained an almost bloodless victory.

But we are told that by the coup d'État, "Napoleon violated his oath to sustain the constitution of the republic—that he is a perjurer, and all his success cannot diminish his crime." So might one of the old loyalists have said about our own Washington. "He was a British subject—by accepting a commission under Braddock, he formally acknowledged his allegiance to the crown—by drawing his sword in the revolution, he violated not only his fidelity as a subject, but his honour as a soldier." And what would any American reply to this? He would say that Washington never bound himself to violate his conscience, and that conscientiously he felt bound to defend the old English principles of free government even against the encroachments of his own rightful sovereign. And so, with equal reason, it may be said of Louis Napoleon, when the term of his presidency was approaching, and the radical members of the Assembly were forming conspiracies to dispose of him so as to prevent his reËlection, he was bound in conscience, as the chief ruler of his country, to prevent the anarchy that must result from such a movement. And how could he do this save by dissolving the Assembly and appealing to the people as he did? The constitution was nullified by the plots of the Assembly, and France in 1851 was really without a government, until the coup d'État inaugurated the present reign of public prosperity and peace. The coup d'État was not only justifiable—it was praiseworthy. When the prejudices and party spirit of the present time shall have passed away, the historian will grow eloquent in speaking of that fearless and far-sighted statesman, who, when his country was threatened with a repetition of the civil strife which had too often shaken her to her centre, threw himself boldly upon the patriotism of the people with those noble words, "The Assembly, instead of being what it ought to be, the support of public order, has become a nest of conspiracies. It compromises the peace of France. I have dissolved it; and I call upon the whole people to judge between it and myself."—The coup d'État excited the anger only of the socialists and of those partisans of the houses of Bourbon and OrlÉans who loved those families more than they loved their country's welfare; for they saw, by the revival of business, that confidence in the stability of the government was established, and that Napoleon had obtained a place in the affections of the French people from which he could not easily be dislodged.

From this dictatorship, which the dangers of the time had rendered necessary, it was an easy transition to the empire, and Louis Napoleon found his succession to the throne of his uncle confirmed by almost the unanimous vote of the French people. It was a tribute to the man, and to his public policy, such as no ruler in modern times has ever received, and for unanimity is unparalleled in the history of popular elections. His marriage followed quickly upon the proclamation of the empire; and in this, as in all his acts, we can discern his manly and independent spirit. He sought not to ally himself with any of the royal families of Europe, for he felt himself to be so sure of his position, that he could without risk consult his affections rather than policy or ambition.

The skilful diplomacy which led to the alliance with England, the campaign in the Crimea, and the repulse of Russia, are too fresh in every body's recollection to bear any repetition. So far as they concern Napoleon III., the world is a witness to his matchless coolness and determination. What could be grander than the heroic inflexibility he displayed in the face of the accumulated disasters of that campaign, and the murmurs of his allies! Misfortune only seemed to nerve him to more vigorous effort. During that terrible winter of 1854-5, he appeared more like a fixed, unvarying law of nature than a man,—so immovable was he in his opposition to those who, pressed by the unlooked-for difficulties of the time, counselled a change of policy. The successful termination of the siege of Sebastopol, however, proved the justice of his calculations, and, while conquering monarchs in other times have been content to see the negotiations for peace made in some provincial town, or in a city of some neutral state, the proud satisfaction was conceded to him by Russia of having the peace conferences held in his own capital.

But while commemorating the success of his efforts to raise his country to a commanding position among the nations, we must not forget the great enterprises of internal improvement which he has set on foot within his empire. Who can recall what Paris was under Louis Philippe, or the time of the republic, and compare it with the Paris of to-day, without admiring the genius of Napoleon III.? Who does not recognize a wonderful capacity for the administration of government in the Emperor, when he sees that nearly all of these great improvements (unlike those of Louis XIV., which impoverished the nation) will gradually but surely pay for themselves by increasing the amount of taxable property? Indeed, the improvements in the city of Paris alone are on so vast a scale as to be incomprehensible to any one unacquainted with that capital. If Napoleon were to-day to fall a victim to that organization of republican assassins which is known to exist in France, as well as in the other states of Europe, he would leave, in the Louvre, in the Bois de Boulogne, in the new Boulevards, and the extension of the Rue de Rivoli, together with the countless other public works which now adorn Paris, testimonials to the splendour of his brief reign, such as no monarch ever left before: of him, as of Sir Christopher Wren, it might be truly said, "Si quÆris monumentum, circumspice."

But we must not think that Napoleon has confined his exertions to the improvement of Paris alone. Not a single province of his empire has been neglected by him, and there is scarcely a town that has not felt the influence of his policy. The foreign commerce of France has been wonderfully increased by him, and his favourite project for a ship canal through the Isthmus of Suez is now numbered among the probabilities of the age. When it is considered what a narrow strip of land separates the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, and what an immense advantage such a canal would be to all the countries bordering on the latter, it is not wonderful that Napoleon should find so many friends among the sovereigns of Europe. He has not built the magnificent new port of Marseilles merely for the accommodation of the Mediterranean coasting trade of his empire. His far-seeing eye looks upon those massive quays covered with merchandise from every quarter of the Orient, brought, not around the stormy Cape, nor by the toilsome caravan over the parching desert, but by the swift steamers of the Messageries ImpÉriales from every port of India, through the waters which, centuries ago, rolled back and opened a path of safety to the chosen people of God.

If the old proverb be true, that a man is known by the company he keeps, it is equally true, on the other hand, that a statesman may be rightly known by examining the character of his opponents. And who are the opponents of Napoleon III.? With the exception of a few partisans of the Bourbons, (whose opposition to the Napoleon dynasty is an hereditary complaint,) they are radical demagogues, who delight to mislead the fickle multitude with the words, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," on their lips, but the designs of anarchy and bloodshed in their hearts. Their ranks are swelled by a number of visionary "philanthropists," and a large number of newspaper scribblers deprived of their occupation by Napoleon's salutary laws against abuse of the liberty of the press, and lacking ambition to earn an honest livelihood. Among them may be found a few literary men of high reputation, who have espoused some impracticable theory of government, and would blindly throw away their well-earned fame, and shed the last drop of their ink in forcing it upon an unwilling nation.

Slander, like Death, loves a shining mark. The fact cannot be doubted, if we look at the lives of the greatest and best men the world has ever seen. In truth, a large part of the heroism of the noblest patriots, and the purest philanthropists, has been created by the necessity they have been under to bear up against the obloquy with which enmity or envy has assailed them. The Emperor Napoleon is, beyond a doubt, the best abused man in Christendom. There probably never existed a man whose every act and every motive have been more studiously misrepresented and systematically lied about than his. It cannot be wondered at, either; for he exercises too much power in the state councils of Europe, and fills too large a space in the public eye, not to be assailed by those whose evil prophecies have been falsified by his brilliant reign, and whose lawless schemes have been frustrated by his unexampled prudence and firmness.

And what right has he to complain? If St. Gregory VII. were obliged to submit for centuries to being represented as an ambitious self-seeker and unscrupulous politician, instead of a wise and far-seeing pontiff, a vanquisher of tyrants, and a self-denying saint; if St. Thomas of Canterbury be held up, in hundreds of volumes, as a monster of ingratitude towards a beneficent sovereign, and a haughty and overbearing supporter of prelatical tyranny, instead of a martyr, in defence of religious liberty against the encroachments of the civil authority; if Cardinal Wolsey be held up to public scorn as a proud and selfish prince of the Church, a glutton, and a wine-bibber, instead of a skilful administrator of government, a liberal patron of learning, and all good arts, and the sole restrainer of the evil passions of the most shameless tyrant who ever sat upon the English throne; if Cardinal Richelieu be handed down from generation to generation, painted in the blackest colours, as a scheming politician, in whose heart, wile and cruelty were mixed up in equal parts, instead of a sagacious and inflexible statesman, and a patriot who made every thing (even his religion) bend to his devotion to the glory of his beloved France; if these great men have been thus misrepresented in that history which De Maistre aptly calls "a conspiracy against truth," I do not think that Napoleon III. can reasonably complain of finding himself denounced as a tyrant, a perjurer, and a victim of all the bad passions that vex the human heart, instead of a liberator of his country from that many-headed monstrosity, miscalled the RÉpublique FranÇaise, an unswerving supporter of the cause of law and religion, and the architect of the present glory and prosperity of France. It must be a great consolation to the Emperor, under the slanders which have been heaped upon him, to reflect that their authors and the enemies who hate him worst, are, for the most part, infidels and assassins, and enemies of social order. Whatever errors a man may commit, he cannot be far from the course of right so long as he is hated and feared by people of that desperate stamp. The ancient adage tells us that "a cat may look at a king"; and it is, perhaps, a merciful provision of the law of compensation that the base reptiles which fatten on the offal of slander are permitted to trail their slime over a name which is the synonyme of the power and glory of France.

When the prejudices of the present day shall have died out, the historian will relate how devoted Napoleon III. was to every thing that concerned his country's welfare. He will tell of his ceaseless care for the most common wants of his people, and of his vigilance in enforcing laws against those who wronged the poor by their dishonest dealings in the necessaries of life. He will relate how promptly he turned his back upon nobles and ambassadors to visit some of his people who had been overwhelmed by a terrible calamity, and will describe the kind, fatherly manner in which he went among them, carrying succour and consolation to all. He will not compare the Emperor to his great warrior-uncle; he will contrast the two. He will show how the uncle made all Europe fear and hate him, and how the nephew converted his enemies into allies; how the uncle manured the soil of Europe with the bones of his soldiers, and the nephew, having given splendid proofs of his ability to make war, won for himself the title of "the Pacificator of Europe"; how the uncle, through his hot-headed ambition, finally made France the prey of a hostile alliance, and the nephew brought the representatives of all the European powers around him in his capital to make peace under his supervision.

The man who, after thirty years of exile and six years of close imprisonment, can take a country in the chaotic condition in which France found itself after the revolution of 1848, and reorganize its government, place its financial affairs on a better footing than they have been before within the memory of man, double its commerce, and raise it to the highest place among the states of Europe, cannot be an ordinary man. In 1852, the Emperor said, "France, in crowning me, crowns herself;" and he has proved the literal truth of his words. He has given France peace, prosperity, and a stable government. He has imitated Napoleon I. in every one of his great and praiseworthy actions in his civil capacity, while he has not made a single one of his mistakes. And if "he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city," this remarkable man, whose self-control is undisturbed by his most unparalleled success, is destined to be known in history as Napoleon the Great.

The character of Napoleon III. is marked by a unity and a consistency such as invariably have distinguished the greatest men. We can see this consistency in his fidelity to the cause of law and order, whether it be manifested in his services as a special constable against the Chartists of England, or as the chief magistrate of his nation against the Chartists of France. And to this conspicuous virtue of steadfastness he adds a wonderful universality of acquirements and natural genius. We see him contracting favourable loans and averting impending dangers in the monetary affairs of France, and it would seem as if his early life had been spent amid the clamours of the Bourse; we see him concentrating troops in his capital against the threats of the revolutionists, or designing campaigns against the greatest military powers of Europe; we see him maintaining a perfect composure in the midst of deadly missiles which were expected to terminate his reign and dynasty, and it would seem as if the camp had always been his home, and the dangers of the battle-field his familiar associations; we see him buying up grain to prevent speculators from oppressing his people during a season of scarcity, or imprisoning bakers for a deficiency in the weight of their loaves, or regulating the sales of meats and vegetables,—and it would seem as if he always had been a prudent housekeeper and a profound student of domestic economy; we see him laying out parks, projecting new streets and public buildings, and we question whether he has paid most attention to architecture, engineering, or landscape-gardening; we see him visiting his subjects when they have been overwhelmed by a great calamity, and he would seem to have been a disciple of St. Thomas of Villanueva, or of St. Vincent of Paul; we see him taking the lead amid the chief statesmen and diplomatists of the world, we read his powerful state papers and speeches, and we wonder where he acquired his experience; we see him, in short, under all circumstances, and it appears that there is nothing that concerns his country's welfare or glory too difficult for him to grapple with, nor any thing affecting the happiness of his poorest subject trivial enough for him to overlook. By his advocacy of the cause of the Church, he has won a place in history by the side of Constantine and Charlemagne; by his internal policy and care for the needs of his subjects, his name deserves to be inscribed with those of St. Louis and Alfred. The language which Bulwer has put into the mouth of Cardinal Richelieu might be used by Napoleon III., and would from him be only the language of historical truth:—

"I found France rent asunder,
Sloth in the mart and schism within the temple,
Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws
Rotting away with rust— * * * *
I have re-created France, and from the ashes
Civilization on her luminous wings
Soars phoenix-like to Jove!"

Footnotes

[1]

The author must plead guilty to a little hesitation (induced by the present aspect of European affairs) about incorporating this paper on the French Emperor, written some three years since, in his work. He feels, however, that, whatever may be the issue of the present contest in Europe, the services of Napoleon III. to France and to civilization are a part of history; and he has no wish to disguise his satisfaction at having been one of the first Americans who confronted the vulgar prejudices of his countrymen against that remarkable man, and publicly recognized the wonderful talents which have placed France at the head of all civilized nations.

[2]

Lest I should be thought guilty of speaking rashly with regard to the anarchy which Napoleon destroyed in 1849 at Rome, I take the liberty to transcribe a few extracts from the constitution of the Society of "Young Italy," which will give some idea of the principles upon which the Roman Republic rested. I translate from the edition published at Naples, by Benedetto Cantalupo.

"Article I. The Society is established for the entire destruction of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the forming of Italy into a single state, under a republican government.

"Art. II. In consequence of the evils attendant upon absolute government, and the still greater evils of constitutional monarchy, we ought to join all our efforts to establish a single and indivisible republic.

"Art. XXX. Those members who shall disobey the commands of the Society, or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission.

"Art. XXXI. The secret tribunal shall pronounce sentence in such cases as the preceding, and shall designate one or more of the brethren to carry it into instant execution.

"Art. XXXII. The brother who shall refuse to execute a sentence thus pronounced shall be considered as a perjurer, and as such shall be immediately put to death.

"Art. XXXIII. If the victim condemned to punishment should succeed in escaping, he shall be pursued unremittingly into anyplace whatever, and shall be struck as by an invisible hand, even if he shall have taken refuge on the bosom of his mother, or in the tabernacle of Christ.

"Art. XXXIV. Each secret tribunal shall be competent not only to condemn the guilty to death, but also to put to death all persons so sentenced."

Foreign travel is one of the most useful branches of our education, but, like a great many other useful branches, it appears to be "gone through with" by many persons merely as a matter of course. It is astonishing how few people out of the great number constantly making the tour of Europe really carry home any thing to show for it except photographs and laces. Foreign travel ought to rub the corners off a man's character, and give him a polish such as "home-keeping youth" can never acquire; yet how many we see who seem to have increased their natural rudeness and inconsiderateness by a continental trip! Foreign travel ought to soften prejudices, religious or political, and liberalize a man's mind; but how many there are who seem to have travelled for the purpose of getting up their rancour against all that is opposed to their notions, making themselves illustrations of Tom Hood's remark, that "some minds resemble copper wire or brass, and get the narrower by going farther." Foreign travel, while it shows a man more clearly the faults of his own country, ought to make him love his country more dearly than before; yet how often does it have the effect of making a man undervalue his home and his old friends! There must be some general reason why foreign travel produces its legitimate fruits in so few instances; and I have, during several European tours, endeavoured to ascertain it. I am inclined to think that it is a general lack of preparation for travel, and a mistaken notion that "sight-seeing" is the chief end of travelling. The expenses of the passage across the Atlantic are diminishing every year, and when the motive power in electricity is discovered and applied, the expense of the trip will be a mere trifle; and in view of these considerations, I feel that, though I might find a more entertaining subject for a letter, I cannot find a more instructive one than the philosophy of European travel.

Concerning the expense of foreign travel, there are many erroneous notions afloat. There are hundreds of persons in America—artists, and students, and persons of small means—who are held back from what is to them a land of promise, by the mistaken idea that it is expensive to travel in Europe. They know that Bayard Taylor made a tour on an incredibly small sum, and they think that they have not his tact in management, nor his self-denial in regard to the common wants of life; but if they will put aside a few of their false American prejudices, they will find that they can travel in Europe almost as cheaply as they can live at home. In America, we have an aristocracy of the pocket, which is far more tyrannical, and much less respectable, than any aristocracy of blood on this side of the water; for every man feels an instinctive respect for another who can trace his lineage back to some brave soldier whose deeds have shone in his country's history for centuries; but it requires a peculiarly constituted mind to bow down to a man whose chief claim to respect is founded in the fact of his having made a large fortune in the pork or dry goods line. Jinkins is a rich man; he lives in style, and fares sumptuously every day. Jones is one of Jinkins's neighbours; he is not so rich as Jinkins, but he feels a natural ambition to keep up with him in his establishment, and he does so; the rivalry becomes contagious, and the consequence is, that a score of well-meaning people find, to their dismay, at the end of the year, that they have been living beyond their means. Now, if people wish to travel reasonably in Europe, the first thing that they must do is to get rid of the Jones and Jinkins standard of respectability. I have seen many people who were content to live at home in a very moderate sort of way, who, when they came to travel, seemed to require all the style and luxury of a foreign prince. Such people may go all over Europe, and see very little of it except the merest outside crust. They might just as well live in a fashionable hotel in America, and visit Mr. Sattler's cosmoramas. They resemble those unfortunate persons who have studied the classics from Anthon's text-books—they have got a general notion, but of the mental discipline of the study they are entirely ignorant. But let me go into particulars concerning the expenses of travelling. I know that a person can go by a sailing vessel from Boston to Genoa, spend a week or more in Genoa and on the road to Florence, pass two or three weeks in that delightful city, and two months in Rome, then come to Paris, and stay here two or three weeks, then go to London for a month or more, and home by way of Liverpool in a steamer, for less than four hundred dollars; for I did it myself several years ago. During this trip, I lived and travelled respectably all the time—that is, what is called respectably in Europe. I went in the second class cars, and in the forward cabins of the steamers. Jones and Jinkins went in the first class cars and in the after cabins, and paid a good deal more money for the same pleasure that cost me so little. I know, too, that a person can sail from Boston to Liverpool, make a summer trip of two months and a half to Paris, via London and the cities of Belgium, and back to Boston via London and Liverpool, for a trifle over two hundred and fifty dollars. A good room in London can be got for two dollars and a half a week, in Paris for eight dollars a month, in Rome and Florence for four dollars a month, and in the cities of Germany for very considerably less. And a good dinner costs about thirty cents in London, thirty-five in Paris, fifteen to twenty-five in Florence or Rome, and even less in Germany. Breakfast, which is made very little of on the continent, generally damages one's exchequer to the extent of five to ten cents. It will be seen from this scale of prices that one can live very cheaply if he will; and, as the inhabitants of a country may be supposed to know the requirements of its climate better than strangers, common sense would dictate the adoption of their style of living.

I need not say that some knowledge of the French language is absolutely indispensable to one who would travel with any satisfaction in Europe. This is the most important general preparation that can be made for going abroad. Next after it, I should place a review of the history of the countries about to be visited. The outlines of the history of the different countries of Europe, published by the English Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, are admirably adapted to this purpose. This gives a reality to the scenes you are about to visit that they would not otherwise possess; it peoples the very roadside for you with heroes. And not only does it impart a reality to your travels, but history itself becomes a reality to you, instead of being a mere barren record of events, hard to be remembered. At this time, when the neglect of classical studies is apparent in almost every book, newspaper, and magazine, I am afraid that I shall be thought somewhat old-fashioned and out of date, if I say that some acquaintance with the Latin classics is necessary before a man can really enjoy Italy. Yet it is so; and it will be a great satisfaction to any man to find that Horace and Virgil, and Cicero and Livy, are something more than the hard tasks of childhood. Should a man's classical studies, however, be weak, the deficiency can be made up in some measure by the judicious use of translations, and by Eustace's Classical Tour. Murray's admirable hand-books of course will supply a vast amount of information; but it will not do to trust to reading them upon the spot. Some preparation must be made beforehand,—some capital is necessary to start in business. "If you would bring home the wealth of the Indies, you must carry out the wealth of the Indies." It would be well, too, for a person about to visit Europe to prepare himself for a quieter life than he has been leading at home. I mean, to tone himself down so as to be able to enjoy the freedom from excitement which awaits him here. It is now more than a year since I left America, and likewise more than a year since I have seen any disorderly conduct, or a quarrel, or even have heard high words between two parties in the street, or have known of an alarm of fire. In the course of the year, too, I have not seen half a dozen intoxicated persons. When we reflect what a fruitful source of excitement all these things are in America, it will be easy to see that a man may have, comparatively, a very quiet life where they are not to be found. It will not do any harm, either, to prepare one's self by assuming a little more consideration for the feelings of others than is generally seen among us, and by learning to address servants with a little less of the imperious manner which is so common in America. Strange as it may seem, there is much less distinction of classes on the continent, than in republican America. You are astonished to find the broadcloth coat and the blouse interchanging the civilities of a "light" in the streets, and the easy, familiar way of servants towards their masters is a source of great surprise. You seldom see a Frenchman or an Italian receive any thing from a servant without thanking him for it. Yet there appears to be a perfectly good understanding between all parties as to their relative position, and with all their familiarity, I have never seen a servant presume upon the good nature of his employer, as they often do with us. We receive our social habits in a great measure from England, and therefore we have got that hard old English way of treating servants, as if our object was to make them feel that they are inferiors. So the sooner a man who is going to travel on the continent, can get that notion out of his head, and replace it with the continental one, which seems to be, that a servant, so long as he is faithful in the discharge of his duties, is quite as respectable a member of society as his employer, the better it will be for him, and the pleasanter will be his sojourn in Europe.

One of the first mistakes Americans generally make in leaving for Europe is, to take too much luggage. Presupposing a sufficiency of under-clothing, all that any person really needs is a good, substantial travelling suit, and a suit of black, including a black dress coat, which is indispensable for all occasions of ceremony. The Sistine Chapel is closed to frock coats, and so is the Opera—and as for evening parties, a man might as well go in a roundabout as in any thing but a dress coat. Clothing is at least one third cheaper in Europe than it is with us, and any deficiency can be supplied with ease, without carrying a large wardrobe around with one, and paying the charges for extra luggage exacted by the continental railways.

Let us now suppose a person to have got fairly off, having read up his classics and his history, and got his luggage into a single good-sized valise,—let us suppose him to have got over the few days of seasickness, which made him wish that Europe had been submerged by the broad ocean (as Mr. Choate would say) or ever he had left his native land,—and to have passed those few pleasant days, which every one remembers in his Atlantic passage, when the ship was literally getting along "by degrees" on her course,—and to have arrived safely in some European port. The custom house officers commence the examination of the luggage, looking especially for tobacco; and if our friend is a wise man, he will not attempt to bribe the officers, as in nine cases out of ten he will increase his difficulties by so doing, and cause his effects to be examined with double care; but he will open his trunk, and, if he have any cigars, will show them to the examiner, and if he have not, he will undoubtedly be told to close it again, and will soon be on his way to his hotel. I suppose him to have selected a hotel before arriving in port—which would be done by carefully avoiding those houses which make a great show, or are highly commended in Murray's guide-books. He will find a neat, quiet European hotel a delightful place, after the gilding and red velvet of the great caravanseries of his native country. If he is going to stop more than a single night, he will ask the price of the room to which he is shown, and if it seems too expensive, will look until he finds one that suits him. When he has selected a room, and his valise has been brought up, he will probably observe that the servant (if it is evening) has lighted both of the candles on the mantel-piece. He will immediately blow one of them out and hand it to the waiter, with a look that will show him that he is dealing with an experienced traveller, who knows that he has to pay for candles as he burns them. When he leaves the hotel, he will make it a principle always to carry the unconsumed candle or candles with him, for use as occasion may require; for it is the custom of the country, and will secure him against the little impositions which are always considered fair play upon outsiders. It is possible that he will find, when he goes to wash his hands, that there is no soap in the wash stand, and will thank me for having reminded him to carry a cake with him rolled up in a bit of oiled silk. When he wishes to take lodgings in any city, he will be particular to avoid that part of the town where English people mostly do inhabit, and will be very shy of houses where apartments to let are advertised on a placard in phrases which the originator probably intended for English. He will look thoroughly before he decides, and so will save himself a great deal of dissatisfaction which he might feel on finding afterwards that others had done much better than he. Besides, "room-hunting" is not the least profitable, nor least amusing part of a traveller's experience. He will, when settled in his rooms, attend in person to the purchase of his candles and his fuel, and to the delivery of the same in his apartments; for by so doing he will save money, and will see more of the common people of the place.

Of course he will see all the "sights" that every stranger is under a sort of moral obligation to see, however much it may fatigue him; but he must not stop there. He must not think, as so many appear to, that, when he has seen the palaces, and picture galleries, and gardens, and public monuments of a country, he knows that country. He must try to see and know as much as he can of the people of the country, for they (Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding) are the state. Let him cultivate the habit of early rising, and frequent market places and old parish churches in the twilight of the morning, and he will learn more of the people in one month than a year of reading or ordinary sight-seeing could teach him. Let him choose back alleys, instead of crowded and fashionable thoroughfares for his walks; when he falls in with a wandering musician and juggler, exhibiting in public, let him stop, not to see the exhibition, but the spectators; when he goes to the theatre, let him not shut himself up in the privacy of a box, but go into the pit, where all he will see and hear around him will be full as amusing as the performance itself; and when he uses an omnibus, let him always choose a seat by the driver, in preference to one inside. I have learnt more of the religious character of the poorer class in Paris, by a visit to a little out-of-the-way church at sunrise, than could be acquired by hours of conversation with the people themselves. And I have learned equally as much of the brutality and degradation of the same class in England, by going into a gin-shop late at night, calling for a glass of ale, and drinking it slowly, while I was inspecting the company. There is many a man who travels through Europe, communicating only with hotel keepers, couriers, and ciceroni, and learning less of the people than he could by walking into a market-place alone, and buying a sixpence worth of fruit. Yet such men presume to write books, and treat not merely of the governments of these countries, but of the social condition of the people! I once met a man in Italy, who could not order his breakfast correctly in Italian, who knew only one Italian, and he was the waiter who served him in a restaurant; and yet this man was a correspondent of a respectable paper in Boston, and had the effrontery to write column after column upon Italian social life, and to speak of political affairs as if he were Cardinal Antonelli's sole confidant. There are such people here in Paris now, who send over to America, weekly, batches of falsehood about the household of the Tuileries, which the intelligent public of America accepts as being true; for it seems to be a part of some people's republicanism to believe nothing but evil of a ruler who wears a crown. I need not say in this connection, that the traveller who wishes to enjoy Europe must put away the habit (if he be so unfortunate as to have it) of looking upon every thing through the green spectacles of republicanism, and regarding that form of government as the only one calculated to benefit mankind. He must remember that the government of his own country is a mere experiment, compared with the old monarchies of Europe, and he must try to judge impartially between them. He must judge each system by its results, and if on comparison he finds that there is really less slavery in his own country than in Europe; that the government is administered more impartially; that the judiciary is purer; that there is less of mob law and violence, and less of political bargaining and trickery, and that life and property are more secure in his own country than they are here,—why, he will return to America a better republican than before, from the very fact of having done justice to the governments of Europe.

As I have before said, it is better for a traveller to endeavour to live as nearly as possible in the manner of the inhabitants of the country in which he is sojourning. I do not mean that he should feel bound to make as general a use of garlic as some of the people of Europe do, for in some places I verily believe that a custard or a blanc mange would be thought imperfect if they were not seasoned with that savory vegetable; but, ceteris being paribus, if the general manner of living were followed, the traveller would find it conducive to health and to economy. The habits of life among every people are not founded on a mere caprice; and experience proves that under the warm sun of Italy, a light vegetable diet is healthier and more really invigorating than all the roast beef of Old England would be.

In Europe, no man is ever ashamed of economy. Few Englishmen even shrink from acknowledging that they cannot afford to do this or that, and on the continent profuseness in the use of money is considered the sure mark of a parvenu. Every man is free to do as he pleases; he can travel in the first, second, or third class on the railways, and not excite the surprise of any body; and whatever class he may be in, he will be treated with equal respect by all. It is well to bear this in mind, for, taken in connection with the principle of paying for one's room and meals separately according to what one has, it puts it within one's power to travel all over Europe for a ridiculously small sum. You can live in Paris, by going over into the Latin quarter, on thirty cents a day, and be treated by every body, except your own countrymen, with as much consideration as if you abode among the mirrors and gilding of the HÔtel de Louvre. Not that I would advise any one to go over there for the sake of saving money, and live on salads and meats in which it is difficult to have confidence, when he can afford to do better. I only wish to encourage those who are kept from visiting Europe by the idea that it requires a great outlay of money. You can live in Europe for just what you choose to spend, and in a style of independence to which America is a total stranger. Every body does not know here what every body else has for dinner. You may live on the same floor with a man for months and years, and not know any more of him than can be learned from a semi-occasional meeting on the staircase, and an interchange of hat civilities. This seems so common to a Frenchman, that it would be considered by him hardly worth notice; but to any one who knows what a sharp look-out neighbours keep over each other in America, it is a most pleasing phenomenon. It is indeed a delightful thing to live among people who have formed a habit of minding their own business, and at the same time have a spirit of consideration for the rights and feelings of their neighbours.

If, in the above hints concerning the way to travel pleasantly and cheaply in Europe, I have succeeded in removing any of the bugbear obstacles which hold back so many from the great advantages they might here enjoy, I shall feel that I have not tasked my poor eyes and brain for nothing. We are a long way behind Europe in many things, and it is only by frequent communication that we can make up our deficiencies. It cannot be done by boasting, nor by claiming for America all the enterprise and enlightenment of the nineteenth century. Neither can it be done by setting up the United States as superior to every historical precedent, and an exception to every rule. Most men (as the old French writer says) are mortal; and we Americans shall find that our country, with all its prosperity and unequalled progress, is subject to the same vicissitudes as the countries we now think we can afford to despise; and that our history is

"——but the same rehearsal of the past—
First Freedom, and then Glory; when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption,—barbarism at last."

No, we cannot safely scorn the lesson which Europe teaches us; for if we do, we shall have to learn it at the expense of much adversity and wounding of our pride. Every American who comes abroad, if he knows how to travel, ought to carry home with him a new idea of the amenities of life, and of moderation in the pursuit and the use of wealth, such as will make itself felt in the course of time, and make the fast living and recklessness of authority and tendency to bankruptcy of the present day, give way to a spirit of moderation and obedience to law such as always produces private prosperity and public stability.

It was a delicious morning when I packed my trunk to leave Paris. Indeed it was so bright and cloudless that it seemed wrong to go away and leave so fine a combination of perfections. It was more than the "bridal of the earth and sky"; it was the bridal of all the created beings around one and their works with the sky. The deep blue of the heavens, the glittering sunbeams, the clean streets, the fair house fronts, the gay shop windows, the white caps, and shining morning faces of the bonnes and market women, the busy, prosperous look of the passers by, were all blended together in one harmonious whole, more touching and poetical than any scene of mere natural beauty that the dewy morn, "with breath all incense and with cheek all bloom," ever looked upon. "Earth hath not any thing to show more fair." Others may delight in communing with solitary nature, and may rave in rhyme about the glories of woods, lakes, mountains, and Ausonian skies; but what is all that compared to the awakening of a great city to the life of day? What are the floods of golden light that every morning bathe the mountain tops, and are poured down into the valleys and fields below, compared to the playing of the sunbeams in the smoke from ten thousand chimneys, and the din of toil displacing the silence of night? I have seen the sunsets of the Archipelago—I have seen Lesbos and Egina clad in those robes of purple and gold, which till then I had thought were a mere figment of the painter's brain—I have enjoyed that "hush of world's expectation as day died"—I have often drunk in the glory of a cloudless sunrise on the Atlantic, and even now my heart leaps up at the remembrance of it; but after all, commend me to the deeper and more sympathetic feelings inspired by the dingy walls and ungraceful chimney-pots of a metropolis. Thousands of human hearts are there, throbbing with hope, or joy, or sorrow,—weighed down perchance by guilt; and humanity with all its imperfections is a noble thing. A single human heart, though erring, is a grander creation than the Alps or the Andes, for it shall outlive them. It is moved by aspirations that outrun the universe, and possesses a destiny that shall outlive the stars. It is the better side of human nature that we see in the early morning in large cities. Vice flourishes best under the glare of gas-lights, and does not salute the rising sun. The bloated form, the sunken eye, the painted cheek, shrink from that which would make their deformity more hideous, and hide themselves in places which their presence makes almost pestilential. Honest, healthful labour meets us at every step, and imparts to us something of its own hopefulness and activity. We miss the dew-drops glittering like jewels in the grass, but the loss is more than made up to us by the bright eyes of happy children, helping their parents in their work, or sporting together on their way to school.

There was a time when I thought it very poetical to roam the broad fields in that still hour when the golden light seems to clasp every object that it meets, as if it loved it; but of late years a comfortable sidewalk has been more suggestive of poetry and less productive of wet feet. Give me a level pavement before all your groves and fields. The only rus that wears well in the long run is Russ in urbe. Nine tenths of all the fine things in our literature concerning the charms of country life, have been written, not beneath the shade of overarching boughs, but within the crowded city's smoke-stained walls. Depend upon it, Shakespeare could never have written about the moonlight sleeping on the bank any where but in the city; had the realities of country life been present to him, he would have rejected any such metaphor, for he loved the moonlight too dearly to subject it to the rheumatic attack that would inevitably have followed such a nap as that. It is with country life very much as it is with life at sea. Mr. Choate, who pours out his noblest eloquence on the glories and romance of the sea, seldom sees the outside of his state-room while he is out of sight of land, and all his glowing periods are forgotten in the realities of his position. So, too, the man who wishes to destroy the poetry and romance of country life, has only to walk about in the wet grass or the scorching heat, or to be obliged to pick the pebbles out of his shoes, or a caterpillar off his neck, or to be mocked at by unruly cattle, or pestered by any of the myriads of insect and reptiles which abound in every well-regulated country.

The excellent Madame Busque (la dame aux pumpkin pies) had prepared for me a viaticum in the shape of a small loaf of as good gingerbread as was ever made west of Cape Cod—a motherly attention quite in keeping with her ordinary way of taking care of her customers. All who frequent the crÊmerie are her enfans, and if she does not show them every little maternal attention, and tie a bib upon every one's neck, it is only that we may know better how to behave when we are beyond the reach of her kindly hand. Fortified with the gingerbread, I found myself whirling out of the terminus of the Northern Railway, and Paris, with its far-stretching fortifications, its domes and towers, and its windmill-crowned Montmartre, was soon out of sight.

The train was very full, and the weather very warm. Two of my car-companions afforded me a good deal of amusement. They were a fat German and his wife. He was one of the jolliest old gentlemen I ever had the good fortune to travel with. His silvery hair was cropped close to his head, and he rode along with his cuffs turned up and his waistcoat open. He seemed to feel that he was occupying a good deal of room; but he was the only one there who felt it. No one of us would have had his circumference reduced an inch, but we should all of us have delighted to put a thin man who was there out by the roadside. His wife—a bright-eyed little woman, whose hair was just getting a little silvery—had a small box-cage in which she carried a large, intelligent-looking parrot. Before we had gone very far, the bird began to carry on an animated conversation with its mistress, but finally disgusted her and surprised us all by swearing in French and German at the whole company, with all the vehemence of a regiment of troopers. The lady tried hard to stop him, but it was useless. The old gentleman (like a great many good people who would not swear themselves, but rather like to hear a good round oath occasionally) seemed to enjoy it intensely, and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. At noon the worthy pair made solemn preparations for a dinner. A basket, a carpet-bag, and sundry paper parcels were brought out. The lady spread a large checked handkerchief over their laps for a table cloth, and then produced a staff of life about two feet in length, and cut off a good thick slice for each of them. Cheese was added to it, and also a species of sausage about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter. From these they made a comfortable meal—not eating by stealth, as we Americans should have done—but diving in heartily, and chatting together all the while as cosily as if they had been at home. A bottle of wine was then brought out from the magic carpet-bag, and a glass, also a nice dessert of peaches and grapes. There was a charming at-home-ativeness about the whole proceeding that contrasted strongly with our American way of doing such things, and all the other passengers apparently took no notice of it.

We arrived at Boulogne in the midst of a storm as severe as the morning had been serene. So fair and foul a day I have not seen. An omnibus whisked me to a hotel in what my venerable grandmother used to call a jiffy, and I was at once independent of the weather's caprices. A comfortable dinner at the table d'hÔte repaired the damages of the journey, and I spent the evening with some good friends, whose company was made the more delightful by the months that had separated us. The storm raged without, and we chatted within. The old hotel creaked and sighed as the blast assailed it, and I dreamed all night of close-reefed topsails.

"'Tis a wild night out of doors;
The wind is mad upon the moors.
And comes into the rocking town,
Stabbing all things up and down:
And then there is a weeping rain
Huddling 'gainst the window pane;
And good men bless themselves in bed;
The mother brings her infant's head
Closer with a joy like tears,
And thinks of angels in her prayers,
Then sleeps with his small hand in hers."

Having in former years merely passed through Boulogne, I had never known before what a pleasant old city it is. Its clean streets and well-built houses, and the air of respectable antiquity which pervades it, make a very pleasant impression upon the mind. As you stand on the quay, and look across at the white cliffs on the other side of the Channel, which are distinctly visible on a clear day, the differences in the character of the two nations so slightly separated from one another, strike you more forcibly than ever. The very fish taken on the French side of the channel are different from any that you see in England; and as to the fishwomen, whose sunburnt legs, bare to the knee, are the astonishment of all new-comers,—go over all Europe, and you will find nothing like them. That superb cathedral, the shrine of our Lady of Boulogne, upon which the storm of the first French revolution beat with such fury, is now beginning to wear a look of completion. Its dome, one of the loftiest and most graceful in the world, is a striking and beautiful feature in the view of the city. For more than twelve centuries this has been a famous shrine. Kings and princes have visited it, not with the pomp and circumstance of royalty, but in the humble garb of the pilgrim. Henry VIII. made a pilgrimage hither in his unenlightened days, before the pious Cranmer had taught him how wicked it was to honour the Mother whom his Saviour honoured, and how godly and just it was to divorce and put to death the mothers of his children. Here it was that the heroic crusader, Godfrey, kindled the flame of that devotion which nerved his arm against the foes of Christianity, and added a new lustre to his knightly fame. It is a fashion of the present day to sneer at the age of chivalry and the crusades, and some of our best writers have been enticed into the following of it. While we have so many subjects deserving the treatment of the satirist, at our very doors,—while we have the fashionable world to draw upon,—while we can look around on political parsons, professional philanthropists and patriots, politicians who talk of principle, and followers who are weak enough to believe in them—it would really seem as if we might allow the crusaders and troubadours to rest. Supposing, for the sake of argument, Christianity to be a true religion,—supposing it to be a fact that eighteen hundred years ago the plains of Palestine were trodden by the blessed feet that were "nailed for our advantage on the bitter cross"—the redemption of the land which had been the scene of the sacred history, from the sacrilegious hands of the Saracens, was certainly an enterprise creditable to St. Louis, and Richard the lion-hearted, and Godfrey, and the other gentlemen who sacrificed so much in it. It was certainly as respectable an undertaking as any of the crusades of modern times,—as that of the Spaniards in America, the English in India, or the United States in Mexico,—with this exception, that it was not so profitable. I am afraid that some of our modern satirists are lacking in the spirit of their profession, and allow themselves to be made the mouthpieces of that worldly wisdom which it is their office to rebuke. I can see nothing to sneer at in the crusader exiling himself from his native land, and forfeiting his life in the defence of the Holy Sepulchre; indeed, I am inclined to respect a man who makes such a sacrifice to a conscientious conviction: it is a noble conquest of the visible temporal by the unseen eternal. I can well understand how such efforts for the protection of a mere empty tomb would seem worthy of laughter and ridicule to those who can find no food for satire in the auri sacra fames which has been the motive of modern foreign expeditions. It would be well for the world could we bring back something of that age of chivalry which Edmund Burke regretted so eloquently. We need it sorely; for we are every day sliding farther down from its high standard of honour and of unselfish devotion to principle.

There is a little fishing village about a mile and a half from Boulogne, on the sea coast towards Calais, which is celebrated in history as having been the scene of the landing of Prince Louis Napoleon and his companions in their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of Louis Philippe. Napoleon III. has not distinguished the spot by any memorial; but he has erected a colossal statue of Napoleon I. on the spot where that insatiable conqueror, with his mighty army around him, looked longingly at the coast of England. There is something of a contrast between the day thus commemorated and that on which the "nephew of his uncle" received Queen Victoria at Boulogne, when she visited France. It must have been a great satisfaction to Louis Napoleon, after his life of exile, and particularly after the studied neglect which he experienced from the English nobility, to have welcomed the British Queen to his realm with that kiss which is the token of equality among sovereigns. Waterloo must have been blotted out when he saw the Queen—in whose realm he had served the cause of good order in the rank of special constable—bending down at his knee to confer upon him the order of the garter.

In spite of its geographical situation, Boulogne can hardly be considered a French town. The police department and the custom house are in the hands of the French, to be sure; but in the course of a walk through its streets, you hear much more of the English than of the French language. You meet those brown shooting jackets, and checked trousers, and thick shoes and gaiters that are at home every where in the "inviolate island of the sage and free." You cannot turn a corner without coming upon some of those beefy and beery countenances which symbolize so perfectly the genius of British civilization, and hearing the letter H exasperated to a wonderful degree. Every where you see bevies of young ladies wearing those peculiar brown straw hats, edged with black lace, with a brown feather put in horizontally on one side of the crown, a style of head dress to which the French and Italians have given the name of "Ingleesh spoken here." There is a large class among the English population of Boulogne upon which the disinterested spectator will look with interest and with pity. I mean those unfortunate persons who have been obliged by "force of circumstances" and the importunity of creditors to exile themselves for a time from their native land. You see them on every side; and all ranks in society are represented among them, from the distinguished-looking man, with the tortoise-shell spectacles, who ran through his wife's property at the club, to the pale, unhappy-looking fellow in the loose thread gloves and sleepless coat. You can distinguish them at a glance from their fellow-countrymen who have gone over for purposes of recreation, the poor devils walk about with such an evident wish to appear to be doing something or going somewhere. The condition of the prisoners, or rather the "collegians," in the old Marshalsea prison, must have been an enviable one, compared to these unfortunates, condemned to gaze at the cliffs of Old England from a distance, and wait vainly for something to turn up.

The arrival and departure of the English steamers is the only source of excitement that the quiet city of Boulogne possesses. I was astonished to find, after being there a day or two, what an interest I took in those occurrences. I found myself on the quay with the rest of the foreign population of the town, an hour before the departure of the boat, to make sure, like every body else there, that not a traveller for England should escape my notice. Besides the pleasure of inspecting the motley crowd of spectators, I was gratified one day to see the big, manly form and good-natured ugly face of Thackeray, following a leathern portmanteau on its path from the omnibus to the boat. The great satirist took an observation of the crowd through his spectacles as if he were making a mental note, to be overhauled in due season, and then hurried on board, as if he longed to get back to London among his books. He had been spending the warm season at the baths of Hombourg. But the great excitement of the day is the arrival of the afternoon boat from Folkestone. It is better as an amusement than many plays that I have seen, and it has this advantage, (an indispensable one to a large part of the English population of Boulogne,) that it costs nothing. During the days when I was there, the equinoctial gale was in full blow, and, of course, there was a greater rush than usual to the quay. It was necessary to go very early to secure a good place. From the steamer to the passport office, a distance of two or three hundred feet, ropes were stretched to keep back the spectators, forming an avenue some thirty feet wide. Through this the wretched victims of the "chop sea" of the Channel were obliged to pass, and listen to the remarks or laughter which their pitiable condition excited among the crowd of their disinterested countrymen. Any person who has ever been seasick can imagine what it would be to go on shore from a boat that has just been pitching and rolling about in the most absurd manner, and try to walk like a Christian, with the eyes of several hundred amusement-seeking people fixed upon him. Sympathy is entirely out of the question. The pallid countenance and uncertain step, as if the walker were waiting for the pavement to rise to meet his foot, excite nothing but mirth in the spectators. The whole scene, including the lookers-on, was one of the funniest things I ever saw. The observations of the crowd, too, were well calculated to heighten the effect. "Ease her when she pitches," cried out a youngster at my side, as an old lady, who was supported by a gentleman and a maid servant, seemed to be trying to accommodate herself to the motion of the street, and testify her love for terra firma by lying down. "Hard a' starboard," shouted another, as a gentleman, with a felt hat close reefed to his head with a white handkerchief, sidled along up the leeward side of the passage way. "That 'ere must 'a been a sewere case of sickness," said a little old man, in an advanced state of seediness, as a tall man, looking defiance at the crowd, walked ashore with a carpet-bag in his hand, and an expression on his face very like that of Mr. Warren, in the farce, when he says, "Shall I slay him at once, or shall I wait till the cool of the evening?" "Don't go yet, Mary," said a young gentleman in a jacket and precocious hat, to his sister, who seemed to fear that it was about to begin to rain again,—"don't go yet; the best of all is to come; there's a fat lady on board who has been so sick—we must wait to see her!" And so they went on, carrying out in the most exemplary manner that golden rule which, applied to the period of seasickness, enjoins upon us that we shall do unto others just as others would do to us.

It is no joke to most people to cross the Channel at any time, but to cross it on the tail-end of the equinoctial storm is far from being a humorous matter. I had crossed from almost all the ports between Havre and Rotterdam in former years; so I resolved to try a new route in spite of the weather, and booked myself for a passage in the boat from Boulogne to London, direct. The steamer was called the Seine; and when we had once got into the open sea, a large part of the passengers seemed to think that they were insane to have come in her. She was a very good sea-boat, but I could not help contrasting her with our Sound and Hudson River steamers at home. If the "General Steam Navigation Company" were to import a steamer from America like the Metropolis or the Isaac Newton, there would be a revolution in the travelling world of England. The people here would no longer put up with steamers without an awning or any shelter from sun or rain. After they had enjoyed the accommodations of one of our great floating hotels, they would not think of shutting themselves up in the miserable cabins which people pay so dearly for here. But to proceed: when we got fairly out upon the nasty deep, I ventured to gratify my curiosity, as a connoisseur in seasickness, by a visit to the cabin. If I were in the habit of writing for the newspapers, I suppose I should say that the scene "baffled description." It certainly was one that I shall not soon forget. The most rabid republican would have been satisfied with the equality that prevailed there. The squalls that assailed us on deck were nothing compared to the demonstrations of a whole regiment of infantry below, who were illustrating, in a manner worthy of Retsch, one of the first lines in Shakespeare's Seven Ages. Ladies of all ages were keeled up on every side in various postures of picturesque negligence, and with a forgetfulness of the conventionalities of society quite charming to look upon. The floor, where it was unoccupied by prostrate humanity, was nearly covered with hatboxes, and bonnets, and bowls, and anonymous articles of crockery ware, which were performing a lively quadrille, being assisted therein by the motion of the ship. But a little of such sights, and sounds, and smells as these goes a great way with me, and I was glad to return to the wet deck. They had managed to rig a tarpaulin between the paddle-boxes, and there I took refuge until the rain ceased. It was comparatively pleasant weather when we sailed past Walmer Castle, where that old hero died on whom all the world has conferred the title of "The Duke"; and of course there was no rough sea as soon as we got into the Downs. Black-eyed Susan might have gone on board of any of the fleet of vessels that were lying there without discolouring her ribbons by a single dash of spray. Ramsgate and Margate (the Newport and Cape May of England) looked full of company as we sailed by them, and crowds of bathers were battling with the surf. The heavy black yards of the ships of war loomed up at Sheerness in the distance, and suggested thoughts of Nelson, and Dibdin, and Ben Bowlin. Now and then we passed by some splendid American clipper ship towing up or down the river, and I felt proud of my nationality as I contrasted her graceful lines and majestic proportions with the tub-like models of British origin that every where met my eye. The dock-yards of Woolwich seemed like a vast ant-hill for numbers and busy life. Greenwich, with its fine architecture and fresh foliage in the distance, was most grateful to my eyes; and it was pleasing to reflect, as I passed the observatory, that I could begin to reckon my longitude to the westward, for it made me feel nearer home.

No man can really appreciate the grandeur of London until he has approached it from the sea. The sail up the river from Gravesend to London Bridge is a succession of wonders, each one more overwhelming than that which preceded it. There is no display of fortifications; but here and there you see some storm-tossed old hulk, which, having finished its active career, has been safely anchored in that repose which powder magazines always enjoy. As the river grows narrower, the number of ships, steamers, coal barges, wherries, and boats of every description, seems to increase; and as you sail on, the grand panorama of the world-wide commerce of this great metropolis unfolds before you, and you are lost, not so much in admiration as in astonishment. Woolwich, Greenwich, Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Blackwall, Millwall, Wapping, &c., follow rapidly in the vision, like the phantom kings before the eyes of the unfortunate Scotch usurper, until one is temped to inquire with him, whether the "line will stretch out to the crack of doom." The buildings grow thicker and more unsightly as you advance; the black sides of the enormous warehouses seem to be bulging out over the edge of the wharves on which they stand; far off, beyond the reach of the tides, you see the forests of masts that indicate the site of the docks. The bright green water of the Channel has been exchanged for the filthy, drain-like current of the Thames. Hundreds of monstrous chimneys belch forth the smoke that constitutes the legitimate atmosphere of London. Every thing seems to be dressed in the deepest mourning for the cruel fate of nature, and you look at the distant hills and bright lawns, over in the direction of Sydenham, with very much of the feeling that Dives must have had, when he gazed on the happiness of Lazarus from his place of torment. Every thing presents a most striking contrast to the clean, fair cities of the continent. Paris, with its cream-coloured palaces adorning the banks of the Seine, seems more beautiful than ever as you recall it while surrounded by such sights, and sounds, and smells, as offend your senses here. The winding Arno, and the towers, and domes, and bridges, of Florence and Pisa, seem to belong to a celestial vision rather than to an earthly reality, as you contrast them with the monuments of England's commercial greatness. At last, you come in sight of London Bridge, with its never-ceasing current of vehicles and human beings crossing it; and your amazement is crowned by realizing that, notwithstanding the wonders you have seen, you have just reached the edge of the city, and that you can ride for miles and miles through a closely-built labyrinth of bricks and mortar, hidden under the veil of smoke before you.

And what a change it is—from Paris to London! To a Frenchman it must be productive of a suicidal feeling. The scene has shifted from the sunny Boulevards to the blackened bricks and mortar, which neither great Neptune's ocean, nor Lord Palmerston's anti-smoke enactment can wash clean. In the place of the smiling, good-humoured Frenchman, you have the serious, stately Englishman. One misses the wining courtesy of which a Frenchman's hat is the instrument, and the ready pardon or merci is heard no more. The beggary, the drunkenness, and the depravity, so apparent on every side, appall one. Paris may be the most immoral city in the world; but there, vice must be sought for in its own haunts. Here in London, it prowls up and down in the streets, seeking for its victims. Put all the other European capitals together, and I do not believe that you could meet with so much to pain and disgust you as you would in one hour in the streets of London. And yet, with all this staring people in the face here, how do they go to work to remedy it? They pass laws enforcing the suspension of business on Sundays, and when they succeed in keeping all the shutters closed, by fear of the law, they fold their arms, and say, "See what a godly nation is this!" If this is not "making clean the outside of the cup and platter," what is it? For my part, I much prefer that perfect religious liberty which allows each man to keep Sunday as he pleases; and the recent improvement in the observance of the day in France is all the more gratifying, because it does not spring from any compulsory motive. Let the Jews keep the Sabbath as they are commanded to in the Old Testament; but Sunday is the Christian's day, and Sunday is a day of festivity and rejoicing, and not of fasting and penitential sadness.

Despite the smoke, and the lack of continental courtesy which is felt on arriving from France, despite the din and hurry, I cannot help loving London. The very names of the streets have been mad classical by writers whose works are a part of our own intellectual being. The illustrious and venerable names of Barclay and Perkins, of Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton, that meet our eyes at every corner, are the synonymes of English hospitality and cheer. It is a pleasure, too, to hear one's native language spoken on all sides, after so many months of French twang. The hissing and sputtering English seems under such circumstances to be more musical than the most elegant phrases of the Tuscan in the mouth of a dignified Roman. Even the omnibus conductors' talk about the "Habbey," the "Benk," 'Igh 'Olborn, &c., does not offend the ear, so delightful does it seem to be able to say beefsteak instead of biftek. The odour of brown stout that prevails every where is as fragrant as the first sniff of the land breeze after a long voyage. Temple Bar is eloquent of the genius of Hogarth, whose deathless drawings first made its ugly form familiar to your youthful eyes in other lands. The very stones of Fleet Street prate of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. You walk into Bolt Court, and if you feel as I do the associations of the place, you eat a chop in the tavern that stands where stood the house of Dr. Johnson. Then you cross over the way to Inner Temple Lane, and mourn over the march of improvement when you see that its sacrilegious hand is sweeping away a row of four brick houses, which, dilapidated and unsightly as they may appear, are dear to every lover of English literature. In No. 1, formerly dwelt Dr. Johnson; in No. 4, Charles Lamb. You walk into the Temple Church, and muse over the effigies of the knights who repose there in marble or bronze, or go into the quiet Temple Gardens, and meditate on the wars of the red and white roses that were plucked there centuries ago, before the iron fences were built. It would be as difficult to pluck any roses there now as the most zealous member of the Peace Society could wish. You climb up Ludgate Hill, getting finely spattered by the cabs and omnibuses, and find yourself at St. Paul's. You smile when you think that that black pile of architecture, with its twopenny fee of admission, was intended to rival St. Peter's, and your smile becomes audible when you enter it, and see that while the images of the Saviour and the Saints may not be "had and retained," the statues of admirals and generals are considered perfectly in place there. You walk out with the conviction that consistency is a jewel, and tread a pavement that is classical to every lover of books. Paternoster Row receives you, and you slowly saunter through it. Nobody walks rapidly through Paternoster Row. Situated midway between the bustle and turmoil of Ludgate Hill and Cheapside, it is a kind of resting-place for pedestrians. They breathe the more quiet air of bookland there, and the windows are a temptation which few loiterers can withstand.

The old church of St. Mary le Bow reminds you that you are at the very centre of Cockneydom, as you walk on towards the Bank and the Exchange. Crossing the street at the risk of your life through a maze of snorting horses and rattling wheels, you get into Cornhill. Here the faces that you see are a proof that the anxious, money-getting look is not confined to the worshippers of the almighty dollar. You push on until you reach Eastcheap. How great is your disappointment! The very name has called up all your recollections of the wild young prince and his fat friend—but nothing that you see there serves to heighten your Shakespearean enthusiasm. Coal-heavers and draymen make the air vocal with their oaths and slang, which once resounded with the laughter of Jack Falstaff and his jolly companions. No Mistress Quickly stands in the doorway of any of the numerous taverns. The whole scene is a great falling-off from what you had imagined of Eastcheap. The sanded floors, the snowy window curtains, the bright pewter pots, have given way to dirt and general frowsiness. You read on a card in a window that within you can obtain "a go of brandy for sixpence, and a go of gin for fourpence," and that settles all your Falstaffian associations. You stop to look at an old brick house which is being pulled down, for you think that perhaps its heavy timbered ceilings, and low windows, and Guy Fawkesy entries date back to Shakespeare's times; but you are too much incommoded by the dust from its crumbling walls to stop long, and you leave the place carrying with you the only reminder of Falstaff you have seen there—you leave with lime in your sack!

I know of nothing better calculated to take down a man's self-esteem than a walk through the streets of London. To a man who has always lived in a small town, where every second person he meets is an acquaintance, a walk from Hyde Park corner to London Bridge must be a crusher. If that does not convince him that he is really of very little importance in the world, he is past cure. The whirl of vehicles, the throngs upon the sidewalks, seem to overwhelm and blot out our own individuality. Xerxes cried when he gazed upon his assembled forces, and reflected that out of all that vast multitude not one person would be alive in a hundred years. Xerxes ought to have ridden through Oxford Street or the Strand on the top of an omnibus. Spitalfields and Bandanna (two places concerning the geography of which I am rather in the dark) could not have furnished him with handkerchiefs to dry his eyes.

I was never so struck with the lack of architectural beauty in London as I have been during this visit. There are, it is true, a few fine buildings—Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, Somerset House, &c.; but they are all as black as my hat, with this soot in which all London is clothed; so there is really very little beauty about them. The new Houses of Parliament are a fine pile of buildings, certainly, and the lately finished towers are a pleasing feature in the view from the bridges; but they are altogether too gingerbready to wear well. They lack boldness of light and shade; and this lack is making itself more apparent every day as the smoke of the city is enveloping them in its everlasting shade. Buckingham Palace looks like a second rate American hotel, and as to St. James, the barracks at West Point are far more palatial than that. It is not architecture, however, that we look for in London. It has a charm in spite of all its deformities,—in spite of its climate, which is such an encouragement to the umbrella makers—in spite of its smoky atmosphere, through which the sun looks like a great copper ball—in spite of the mud, which the water-carts insure when the dark skies fail in the discharge of their daily dues to the metropolis. London, with all thy fogs, I love thee still! It is this great agglomeration of towns which we call London—this great human family of more than two millions and a half of beings that awakens our sympathy. It is the fact that through England we Americans trace our relationship to the ages that are past. It is the fact that we are here surrounded by the honoured tombs of heroes and wise men, whose very names have become, as it were, a part of our own being. These are the things that bind us to London, and which make the aureola of light that hangs over it at night time seem a crown of glory.

But we must not forget that there is a dark side to the picture. There is a serious drawback to all our enthusiasm. Poverty and vice beset us at every step. Beggary more abject than all the world besides can show appeals to us at every crossing. The pale hollow cheek and sunken eye tell such a story of want as no language can express. The mother, standing in a doorway with her two hungry-looking children, and imploring the passers-by to purchase some of the netting work her hands have executed, is a sight that touches your heart. But walk into some of those lanes and alleys which abound almost under the shadow of the Houses of Parliament and the royal residence,—slums "whose atmosphere is typhus, and whose ventilation is cholera,"—and the sentiment of pity is lost in one of fear. There you see on every side that despair and recklessness which spring from want and neglect. Walk through Regent Street, and the Haymarket, and the Strand in the evening, and you shall be astonished at the gay dresses and painted cheeks that surround you. The rummy atmosphere reËchoes with profanity from female lips. From time to time you are obliged to shake off the vice and crinoline that seek to be companions of your walk.

There is a distinguished prize-fighter here—one Benjamin Caunt. He keeps a gin shop in St. Martin's Lane, and rejoices in a profitable business and the title of the "Champion of England." He transacted a little business in the prize-fighting line over on the Surrey side of the river a few days ago, and is to sustain the honour of England against another antagonist to-morrow. During the entire week his gin shop has been surrounded by admiring crowds, anxious to catch a glimpse of the hero. And such crowds! It would be wronging the lowest of the race of quadrupeds to call those people beastly and brutal wretches. Most Americans think that the Bowery and Five Points can rival almost any thing in the world for displays of all that is disgusting in society; but London leaves us far behind. I stopped several times to note the character of Mr. Caunt's constituents. There were men there with flashy cravats around necks that reminded me of Mr. Buckminster's Devon cattle—their hair cropped close for obvious reasons—moving about among the crowd, filling the air with damns and brandy fumes. There were others in a more advanced stage of "fancy" existence—men with all the humanity blotted out of them, not a spark of intellect left in their beery countenances. There were women drabbled with dirt, soggy with liquor, with eyes artificially black. There were children pale and stunted from the use of gin, or bloated with beer, assuming the swagger of the blackguards around them, and looking as old and depraved as any of them. It seemed as if hell were empty and all the devils were there. The police—those guardians of the public weal, who are so efficient when a poor woman is trying to earn her bread by selling a few apples—so prompt to make the well-intentioned "move on"—did not appear to interfere. They evidently considered the street to be blockaded for a just cause, and looked as if, in aiding people to get a look at the Champion of England, they were sustaining the honour of England herself.

And this is the same England that assumes to teach other nations the science of benevolence. This is the same England that laments over the tyranny of continental governments, and boasts of how many millions of Bibles it has sent to people who could not read them if they would, and would not if they could. This is the same England that turns up the whites of its eyes at American slavery, and wishes to teach the King of Naples how to govern. Why, you can spend months in going about the worst quarters of the continental cities, and not see so much of vice and poverty as you can in the great thoroughfares of London in a single day. There is vice enough in every large city, as we all know; but in most of them it has to be sought for by its votaries—in London it goes about seeking whom it may devour. The press of England may try to advance the interests of a prime minister anxious to get possession of Sicily by slandering Ferdinand of Naples; but every body knows, who has visited that fair kingdom, that there are few monarchs more public spirited and popular with all classes of their subjects than he. Every body knows that there is no class in that community corresponding to the prize-fighting class in London—that the horrors of the mining districts are unknown there, and that an English workhouse would make even an Englishman blush when compared with those magnificent institutions that relieve the poor of Italy. I had rather be sold at auction in Alabama any day than to take my chance as a denizen of the slums of London, or as a worker in the coal mines. I have no patience with this telescopic philanthropy of the English, while there are abuses all around them so much greater than those that disgrace any other civilized country. What can be more disgusting than this pharisaical cant—this thanking God that they are not as others are—extortioners and slaveholders—when you look at the real condition of things? Englishmen always boast that their country has escaped the revolutionary storm which has so many times swept over Europe during this century, and would try to persuade people that there is little or no discontent here. The fact is, the lower classes in this country have been so ground down by the money power and the force of the government, and are so ignorant and vicious, that they cannot be organized into a revolutionary force. Walk through Whitechapel, and observe the people there—contrast them with the blouses in the Faubourg St. Antoine—and you will acknowledge the truth of this. The people in the manufacturing districts in France are, indeed, far from being models of morality or of intellectual culture; but they have retained enough of the powers of humanity to make them very dangerous, when collected under the leadership of demagogues of the school of Ledru Rollin. But the farming districts of France have remained comparatively free from the infection of socialism and infidelity. The late Henry Colman, in his agricultural tour, found villages where almost the entire population went to mass every morning, before commencing the labour of the day. But the degradation of the labouring classes of England is not confined to the manufacturing towns; the peasantry is in a most demoralized condition: the Chartist leaders found nearly as great a proportion of adherents among the farm labourers as among the distressed operatives of Birmingham and Sheffield; and Mormonism counts its victims among both of those neglected classes by thousands. It is, perhaps, all very well for ambitious orators to make the House of Commons or Exeter Hall resound with their denunciations of French usurpations, Austrian tyranny, Neapolitan dungeons, Russian serfdom, and American slavery; but thinking men, when they note these enthusiastic demonstrations of philanthropy, cannot help thinking of England's workhouses, the brutalized workers in her coal mines and factories, and her oppressive and cruel rule in Ireland and in India; and it strikes them as strange that a country, whose eyesight is obstructed by a beam of such extraordinary magnitude, should be so exceedingly solicitous about the motes that dance in the vision of its neighbours.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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