-doing what was right in his own eyes, until the nobles were gravely displeased, when they rose in arms and put him to death. Parliamentary opposition was practically unknownwhat resistance there was, though violent, being intermittent and spasmodic. But in England, from an almost unknown antiquity and by an almost unbroken tradition, the people had been taught to shelter their political liberties and their civic privileges behind the forms of the Constitution. No tax could be levied except with the consent of the Commons; no citizen could be punished except by legal process. The most imperious of the Tudors did not venture to cross the line that inveterate and immemorial usage had drawn; and he knew by an inherited instinct how far he could safely go. On the other hand, the whole domain of English constitutional law was a terra incognita to James and to his It might be said for them (were it any excuse) that they knew not what they did. The principles which were most deeply rooted in the convictions of Englishmen were unintelligible to rulers who had been educated abroad. So Charles entered son. upon a hopeless contest with a light heart. He brushed aside the timehonoured limitations of the Constitution as if they were cobwebs. It is possible that the wisest ruler could not ultimately have averted the conflict. There were theories in the air which made all government impossible. Religion had reacted upon politics; and the Puritan had become the Republican. The sharp antagonism between the men who declared that they would live as their fathers had lived, would believe as their fathers had believed, would worship as their fathers had worshipped, and the men who hated the Church and detested the Monarchy, was certain sooner or later to bring Cavalier and Roundhead into deadly conflict. But although sooner or later an appeal to arms might have been inevitable, it was the incurable perversity of the King that precipitated the crisis. He invited a conflict which might have been delayed. In so far as he did not himself lead, he was led by Laud and Strafford. Laud appears to have been even more insensate, more molelike, than his master; but Wentworth was a man of quick intelligence and profound policy. It is foolish to condemn such a man without a hearing -as most historians have been inclined to do. We may be tolerably sure that he saw more than we are able to see now. He may have felt, and felt truly, that the revolution in men's minds which had taken place, which was taking place, must lead to anarchy. He may have felt, and felt truly, that the revolutionary forces could only be kept in check by rapid and decisive action, and that procrastination would be fatal to the monarchy. Had he succeeded in crushing the Revolution he might possibly have been reckoned a farseeing English statesman; but he failed, and in such circumstances failure cannot be condoned." Between the execution of Charles I. and the rising of the '45 a hundred years intervened; but during that time there was little in the records of the Stuarts on which their partisans can look back with satisfaction. The sæva Pelopis domus was tottering to its fall; yet to the very end the Scots adhered with rare fidelity to the race that had ruled them so long. It was among the barren mountains and the brave men of the western seaboard that the last of the Stuarts bade a final farewell to "the vision of a kingly crown." In the '45 Moidart and Morar were remote and inaccessible; even to-day the land of the Camerons and the Macdonalds a land of wood and water, of crag and glen, of windy seas and rocky islands and Atlantic sunsets-is little known and rarely visited; but it has associations which will not be quickly obliterated; for it is the country lying between Loch Shiel and Loch Arkaig that is most closely identified with the brilliant and daring adventure of Prince Charlie. YANKEE HOMES AND BUFFALO HAUNTS. We had a lucky but almost uneventful voyage to New York in the Cunard s.s. Servia, crossing the Atlantic in the most wonderful way between heavy storms on both sides, and just missing each. The journey after leaving Queenstown took just a week from Sunday, October 18th, to Sunday, 4 P.M., 26th of October, when we disembarked. We left Liverpool, Saturday, 13th, about two. A very amusing incident took place in Queenstown harbour. Two pretty Irish girls who had embarked on our ship, were on the arrival of the Servia in that port soon after joined by a gentleman who had come by mail from England, and who came off from the shore on the steam-tender. This gentleman, with the most excited and pantomimic gestures, begged one of these fair maidens to return to shore with him and become his bride. Before his arrival on board he had, we learned, sent her five telegrams to the same effect, to prevent her departure if possible. But the young lady at first appeared to be obdurate, for the unfortunate man was seen going off again to the shore on the tender, hatless, and holding out his outstretched arms imploringly to the lady of his love. But that man was not to be beat. He returned when the tender came back again with the last mails, and this time he brought a parson with him. This pledge of the honesty of his intentions of marrying her had, I understand, been exacted by this cautious Irish young lady as a condition of her going ashore with him. She now went with him, and the Servia sailed without her. Let us hope they were happy ever after. On landing at New York our first experience of the country was the excessive rudeness of the custom-house officials. Discourtesy was nothing to the very insolent manner in which a customhouse official ordered a delicate English lady to unstrap her numerous boxes herself, and utterly refused either to give her any assistance, or any information as to whether she could get any porter to assist her in her arduous task. I have travelled all over the world, but never saw a custom - house officer behave so badly to a lady before. If it was meant to show that the Americans despise those who belong to their own mother country, it was done in a way only to make contempt fall back upon their own heads. Our own exertions on her behalf not sufficing, a German-American gentleman from New York very kindly came to the rescue, and might soon have been seen voluntarily unstrapping the boxes for her in a way which will make his memory always glad to our remembrance. A gentleman he was indeed! No more need be said. My first idea of New York was, how like the outskirts of London were the streets we passed through from the docks. They gave one a general idea of Hammersmith, and the more one sees of New York, the more English it seems to one. The only thing they have which we have not got in England seems to be the elevated railway running down the Sixth and other avenues. In the hotels they have a clever invention which might well be copied elsewhere. For a bell, is in every room a dial-plate with a needle. This needle on being turned to any one of about forty different divisions, not only rings the bell, but mentions what it is you want at the same time. For instance, you can say, "Bring my boots"; "Apollinaris water"; "Morning or evening papers," &c., &c. It can be imagined what a saving of labour is gained by this device. About the only necessary thing I did not notice on the bellchart was "Bring a cup of tea." Instead one had to ring for "Dining-room waiter," which was a waste of time. There are several other customs in American hotels, some of which have their decided advantages to some folks. One of them is that you can eat nearly all day long, if you so choose, from an enormous variety of dishes, the price paid for your room covering everything. Another habit is that of serving iced water with every meal. This suits some people better than others, and not only the Americans but the Canadians like it. No sooner does a person take a seat at table for breakfast, lunch, or din ner, than a waiter appears instantly with a tumblerful of blocks of ice and water, which is placed by his side, no matter if outside the ground is white with snow. And everything is iced that can be iced: the oysters are served up to you on powdered ice, and at times they even ice the claret. On the other hand, the rooms are kept at a tremendous heat by means of steam-pipes. A strange anomaly this, and not good for the health. The effects of these unhealthy practices are plainly evident in the faces of the women. They are mostly very pallid and rather thinlooking; and though pleasant looks are common, and a certain amount of elegance by no means rare, real beauty, as we understand the word, among the ladies of New York is most conspicuous by its complete absence. This was a disappointment, for having frequently heard of la belle Américaine, and, indeed, having in my time met a few very pretty American ladies on the Continent, it was only natural to expect la belle Américaine existing in New York itself. But after having looked for her in vain, in the Opera, in the hotels, in the streets, in the tram-cars along the avenues, driving in the Central Park, or in the trains in the elevated railways, we were obliged at the end of eight days reluctantly to acknowledge that beauty among New York ladies is a "fraud." During the whole of those eight days we "located" only five handsome women: they turned out to be two English, one French, and two Americans. It is to be hoped that Boston and the other States manufacture a better supply of the article than New York: it is my firm belief that they do. In fact, we found many real beauties afterwards in Chicago and in California, especially at San Francisco. But as regards dress the New York girls are magnificent, many of them spending annually over £1000 on their attire. The elevated railroads that I have mentioned above are a great eyesore to the city of New York, but they are wonderful things all the same: they run chiefly north and south along some of the avenues. By their means, and by the road tram-cars, that also travel chiefly north and south along the avenues, and run exactly underneath them for miles along Sixth Avenue, it is that all the locomotion is done in New York. Cabs are hardly used at all: they are too expensive altogether, the shortest drive costing you a dollar, if it is only the length of one street. It may be as well to mention for the uninitiated that the word "avenue" in American cities is only used in contradistinction to the word street. All of the avenues run one way, sometimes for miles the whole length of the city, and all the streets cut them across at right angles. All the avenues are numbered from east to west: First Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue, (Madison Avenue and Lexington Avenue are two extra ones). Altogether there are about thirteen of these excessively long streets on Manhattan Island, on which is placed New York proper. The streets which run across them are numbered consecutively from One to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street; everything is regular, and you cannot lose your way, except in the oldest part of the town, which follows no rule. The elevated railroads are built overhead, the track laid on iron crossbars held up on double rows of iron pillars, which are made as light as possible. In most places the united double tracks are placed over the centre of the carriage-road at the height of the first-storey windows, which can be looked into, and allowing the light of day to come down freely to the sides of the road and on to the side-walks. But for a long distance along Third Avenue a curious sight is seen. The up and down trains here are disunited, and run along separately on lines of single iron columns, one over each of the pavements or sidewalks. It is just as if the railways were built along the tops of the lamp-posts. The trains run each way less than every half-minute, only stop from five to fifteen seconds at each station, only cost five cents for any distance, and are always crowded. In some places at the north of the city, where depression in the ground makes it necessary, the thin iron columns on which the elevated railways are carried are run up to the level of the fifthstorey windows, and even higher, of the houses alongside. It is not a very pleasant sensation travelling along on these thin supports at such a high altitude at least it requires practice to get accustomed to it. Not until one has actually travelled in America can one form any idea of how enormously the States are, in all parts, constantly being recruited by Englishmen and Scotsmen. I say nothing about the Irish, because every one knows in what quantities both they and the Germans pour over. But it is a matter of fact that in all the largest hotels in New York at the present time nearly the whole of the staff of waiters and other men-servants, also the carriage - drivers ployed, are not "Yankees," but British. course out West Of em they are frequently negroes. They may have picked up Yankee expressions and a nasal twang, that will deceive you at first; but in spite of their saying "I guess," "Sit right there," "I'll fetch it right away," "Is that so?" or constantly using the frequent expression "quite a number" to denote a great many, when you come to question them, you will find their homes are in Devonshire, Edinburgh, or perhaps somewhere in the "shires." And, as a rule, their story is the same. They have married out here an American wife, and can never go back. Have they become naturalised Americans? "No, not yet; but they guess it will be as well to take out their papers some time," is the usual answer. In any case they must do so to open any kind of business. One fact strikes me much, and that is, that all these English waiters and carriagedrivers talk so much about the advantages of a good free education for their children, with everything found, such as books, slates, &c. But most of them say they wish they had gone to Australia instead, because if they are better paid in America, yet the dollar does not go any farther than a shilling, and indeed often not even as far as the shilling does at home. And that this is quite true I can vouch for myself. Another odd thing about these men is, they have nearly all got a brother in the English army, or know some officer or other, of whom they ask for tidings. "The Indian summer." Who that has read books about America or known Americans has not sometimes heard of their Indian summer? It is the brief period of beautiful weather which comes sometimes just as a break between the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. I was fortunate enough just to drop in to this Indian summer in the first week of November, while staying at Niagara Falls City (American side). For three perfect days in the most lovely sunshiny warm weather was I able to roam about Goat Island, or cross over the river on the 1300-feet-long suspension - bridge to the beautiful park on the Canadian side, and with the greatest comfort look at both the falls, and all the rapids from every point of view. And this, too, although there had been a fall of snow the day before the Indian summer set in, and one could stand and drop snowballs down the falls from Luna Island on the first of these summer days. Rhapsodies about Niagara, its spray clouds and rainbows, are out of date. It is now such a well-known fact that nothing can beat either the American fall or VOL. CXLIX. -NO. DCCCCIV. the Canadian Horse-shoe fall, that I shall not dwell on it myself. But I should just like to put on record a bit of advice gratis to enraptured and newly wedded couples. If you want, my turtledoves, to see the place when it is at its very loveliest, when the changing leaves on the trees on all the islands have just reached their most perfect hues, when the "Lovers' Walk," and still more sacred "Lovers' Retreat," among the thick sweet-scented cypress and fir on the Dufferin Islands make love itself, 'midst the roar of the rapids, seem sweeter still,-go and stop a week at Niagara, either on the American or Canadian side, during the Indian summer. Having put the above on record, I have something else about newly married couples and Niagara Falls to make a note of. The head-waiter at my hotel told me that the honeymoon pairs sometimes arrived "quite thick," and then he continued: "I guess we made quite a mistake with two couple here on last fall. They arrived together in the evenin', just about dusk. While the two gents was down-stairs payin' the drivers, the chambermaid she showed the ladies to their rooms right away. About five minutes afterwards I took up one of the gents, and Robert here he took up the other of the gents, and we shows them straight into what we thought was their own young ladies' rooms. But somehow, you see, we'd mixed up them honeymoons. One of 'em he came out again pretty quick, but the other he didn't come out again for quite a time. 'Pears as how he'd found the young lady on'y half-dressed; and when she turned round in the dusk from the basin where she was a-washin', and had kissed him or somethin' before she saw it M |