her culture commenced, I believe the proper objects of travelling to be greatly perverted and misunderstood. Formerly, when scenery was the same and cities were less recollect, it was 'men and cities; ' (I give you the authority of no less a poet than Homer and the example of no less a tourist than Ulysses;) it was 'men and cities,' I repeat, which men set forth from their homes to behold. But, at present, on the contrary, when the picturesque is invaded, and in a measure destroyed by the growth of cities and civilization, we find that nothing but landscapes and ruins, lakes and mountains can meet the predilections of our generation. Why, I ask is this? Once, tourists were men of sense; whether gleaners of pleasure or seekers of information. Why is it they are now degenerated into a herd of 'melancholy Jacques?' It was Bacon who once set forth the purposes of foreign travel; but the Bacon now in Vogue among the Messieurs Anglaises is Byron. Your red guide-books are your books of fate; and because Murray avers that this scene' or 'that cascade' must be admired,' you will bestir yourself for weary leagues to gape with deep-mouthed bathos over ruins that chill you or scenery which inspires ennui. The red guide-book is an ukase of assery; and I never see it without repeating the proverb of the sage Venetian, Guardati de colui che non ha letto che un libro soloBeware of him who reads but one book. Was it for this that Voltaire went abroad- or Peter the Great. -or Sévigné-or Le Sage-or Tavernier-or Télémaque—or the duc de Richelieu? No, parbleu ! for they were men of sense. To Göthe, Chateaubriand, and Rousseau, belongs the distinction of giving the first impulse to this vagrant folie : and your Byron, assuming it at second hand, has sublimated it into a fanaticism. Not that Byron was so beté himself. Did he travel for scenery? Read his life in Italy. But he has made les messieurs Anglais moon-calves and misanthropes. A new satire yet remains to be written against this picturesque knight-errantry. You chevaliers of the guide-book are no better than the hero of Cervantes. And this is in the nineteenth century! Allow me to suggest, Monsieur, that the age for such niaiseries is past.'

So ended this remarkable homily. Despite of the oratorical fault of longuer, it was received with marked approbation by all except the individual for whose benefit it was delivered. Bull diverted himself during its continuance by executing the devil's tattoo on the window, accompanied with a select performance on his repeater.

time-by

'All very fine, no doubt!' quoth he; but, gentlemen, I tell you I have travelled some in my time by schnell post, char-à-banc, eil-wagon and mule-back. I tell you I am an old roadster, too; but I have yet to learn by what right a gentleman on his travels is to be asphyxiated in a fog of tobacco.'

Par le droit du plus fort, ma foi,' hinted the vindictive Frank. 'Bah!' growled the Prussian, mein herr should travel by daylight.' 'Sir,' retorted the ferocious Bull, I appeal to common-sense."

'It is not every one can have common-sense who desires it,' broke in the other.

There is a certain set of ideas which none but an English head can conceive,' added the lecturer, by way of corollary.

But, mein herren, I have a large Danish dog strapped on the outside.

'Mille tonnerres! do you threaten us?' roared a chorus of voices. Not at all, but I should like to hear him bark.'

'Then you had better keep him company,' advised the guttural old monster, lighting a new pipe with an intimidating frown.

In fine, Monsieur, the window cannot be opened, but the door may; that is our ultimatum,' asserted the Pole diplomatically and decisively from behind a cloud.

So the advocate of oxygen was compelled to come to order. The poor fellow turned himself into an impossible attitude and was soon engaged in paying his desperate addresses to Mrs. Morpheus. But the bosom of the unfeeling coquette seemed obdurate to his advances. 'Twas of no use. Presently, I noticed him languishing into life anew, with a stealthy glance at his suffocators, who were all composing themselves into a bonâ-fide state of somnolency, with the fumes of their never-abdicated meerschaums rushing and curling at each stertorous impulse over their well-furred features. That bright dream was the last. The hope of the Briton, as well as the nap of the Saxon, the next moment was in the realm of chimeras: for the last time, the window of contention opened wide upon the fogs of fatality.

'God's thunder-weather!' thundered the old monster, muffling himself in a double allowance of capes and clouds, and protruding his pitiless hand.

'I presume you prefer the devil's brimstone-weather, cochon! retorted Bull, in a murderous voice, and bouncing with excitement. 'Here the windows down - this lung-devouring miasma - Sir-I breathed in hospitals.' Here he was gagged with a thick

have

cough.

And I, in battles!' rejoined the fiery Hun.

'Not so thick as the smoke of Talavera!' suggested the Pole, playing with his cross of the Legion of Honor.

Nor Hohenlinden!' puffed the monster.

Nor Jena!' supplied the Prussian.

'Nor Mont Saint-Jean!' added the Frenchman, with a face revelling in smiles.

'And, with your pockets full of bullets and knives, are you afraid of smoke?' inquired the Prussian, derisively.

'The brave man dies but once. I refuse to expire by inches. I shall

call on the conductor.'

6

'Au diable le conducteur!' swore the Pole. Please to bear in mind Monsieur, that you are in the society of gentlemen, and if you have an appeal to make, it must be made to them. Do you refuse? then I will act for you. It is time to cease your fredaines, and to put this question at rest. Mein herr,' addressing himself to the monster, 'what have you to say?'

Say! I have to say, POTSTAU-Z-Z-ZEND!' buzzed the Austrian, shooting forth a volume which enveloped him like an ancient demi-god. 'I refer the case to you, mein herr.'

The only answer of the Prussian was an absolute retirement into invisibility the top of Mount Pilatus was never more obscure.

'And you, Monsieur. Does our smoke inconvenience you?' Monsieur,' responded the cosmopolite, bowing with grave composure, un Français comme il faut allows nothing to incommode him.'

Thus, il tombait de Caïphe à Pilate. The anguish of the doomed Bull was a sight to have softened a Herod. The side-scowl fled. His fat, frightened face seemed to turn all colors at once. Tears of vexation and tobacco sprang to his eyes. I will not endure it, d if I do! - no, not for all the pipes in heathendom!

n my eyes

!

!

The peroration of curses which rang in after this bold exordium, would consume any thing less than a triple-steeled pen which should attempt to indite them. A regular sinew-wrenching, spine-twisting, joint-snapping, neck-breaking, shin-barking tussle ensued; in the course of which I was only able to discern that the fatal window was now up and now down, like sheet-lightning, or a saw-mill; until at length the pane was dashed to pieces by an irruption of the heels of the strangled Briton, which, after infinite contortions of the body and limbs of their wearer, had somehow attained this altitude, though whether by design or accident, I am unable to decide.

There is a story of an old gentleman who went a-swimming, and kept afloat with such excessive difficulty that when a blue-bottle fly came and settled upon his bald head, it sufficed to sink him. Very similar was the predicament of our Bull. This last mishap was his doom.

With one acclaim. unanimous as the universal hiss of Milton's devils the roar arose, (now quite al fresco,) Out with him! à bas l'Anglais, to keep company with his dog!' And out he went; lighting full six feet from the body of the eil-wagen in the road. Thence, after a reasonable pause, during which the postillion awaited his resuscitation, to beg him to remember the pour-boire,' the Bull was transferred en haut, to the very pinnacle of our great establishment. There they perched, master and dog, immediately in the rear of our honest friends, the conductor, driver, and postillions, whose travelling-pipes

were

6

never plucked from their lips, except to emit a noise of Yaw! yaw!' The Bull, grasping at the slippery handles of the luggage, occasionally jolted half off from this precarious tenure, or fortifying his position by laying hold on the collar of his canine friend; who, at such moments, would make night hideous with his disconsolate howls.

'Potstausend!' gasped the panting Prussian, sinking down upon the shattered fragments of his pipe.

'Monsieur,' exclaimed the radiant Frenchman, 'I esteem you. I do not embrace you, for you are too warm; but I offer you my friendship.' The Pole looked an 'Io Paan!' and the Austrian grinned an assassin-smile. His cloak was badly torn, and his neckcloth-knot was twisted in the scuffle under one ear, so that, phiz included, he looked as if he was going to be hung.

A contribution of clothing was taken up to stop the intrusive air through the shattered window. The scene presented, during the brief remainder of the night, was one which would have been worth a fortune to the incomparable BROUWER, had he chanced to behold it.

It was grizzly day-light when we alighted at the Hotel of the Three Kings' at Bâle. On looking above, I discovered that the Bull and his dog were missing; whither they vanished, I have never learned. Two hours later, and we were all busy rummaging among Hans Holbein's pictures, the museum, the cathedral, the monuments: a day's work.

WHAT are benefits? what is constancy, or merit? One curl of a girl's ringlet, one hair of a whisker, (one good chance for money,) will turn the scale against them all in a minute.' VANITY FAIR.

SUN-SHINE is upon the old BODGERS house, of Newtown; healthful, gay, cheery sun-shine. The air of mourning that lay upon the dead man's home is gone. The closed blinds are flung wide open. The front gates, where the old gardener had driven fastenings above the latch, are ajar half the day. The paths where the 'Squire, in his brown surtout, walked back and forth, are newly trimmed; and the sturdy hollyhocks are all alive with bees and blossoms. The vines that clamber over the porch are trimmed as they were never trimmed before; and the humming-birds which once darted around the trumpet-flowers fearlessly, are frightened away by a wee chorus of voices which comes from the little parlor of the late 'Squire BODGERS.

KITTY FLEMING, with a pretty look of importance, directs the chorus. She plays the mistress charmingly. Mrs. FLEMING and the housekeeper, after an amiable womanly quarrel, have come to terms. I doubt, however, if they continue to agree. Two house-keepers in the same house, never did agree; and it is my opinion that they never will.

Indeed, Mrs. DYKE (for that was the house-keeper's name) was not the person to live without a brush with any body; least of all, with a rival. She had grown old, and bent over, in the BODGERS service. There was not a boy of any butcher's or baker's shop in Newtown, but had some time felt her pitiless, sharp tongue. The old 'Squire himself had winced under it, often. I think he would have changed his housekeeper if he had dared. I think he would have forbidden the periodic house-cleaning of Mrs. DYKE-if he had dared. I think he would have rooted up some of her patches of thyme, and chamomile, and sage, and sweet balm, in the garden - if he had dared. I think he would have dined on pot-luck less often if he had dared. Your town house-keeper is altogether a different body; but your notable, weazen-faced, country house-keeper, who keeps bags of herbs in the garret, and a pet cat, and dresses in bombazine, and is for ever sweeping and dusting, and has money in the bank, and a taste for garlic, is a very terrible creature.

Mrs. DYKE retained her little back-room in the BoDGERS house, by a