wind-bound fishermen (what hundreds may be encountered at times round our industrious ports!), who flitted out of sight at once on the arrival of a fair wind. At the principal places in the town he found many "idlers," but they were porters and cab-drivers waiting for work, and only too glad to get some; in the gardens round the city he found laborers unremitting in their toil, driving their donkeys laden with garden produce many times a day into the city, returning laden with manure, vegetable stalks, or any rubbish that could enlarge the garden dung heap; and he adds, "the rich little think, as they leave the opera at midnight, that before break of day some industrious fellow will have carefully followed up the tracks of their horses with the same object." On the sea-shore he watched little children, some not more than three or four years old, collecting every scrap of driftwood, and packing it in bundles for the market. In the market-place he amused himself with noticing the watchful solicitude of a water-melon merchant, aged about twelve, over his wares, which he sold in slices to some equally watchful customers, who, though perhaps his juniors, looked equally anxious to secure a fair farthing's worth for their farthing.

And you will find in this, as in many other instances, that much wider questions are opened up by using your own powers of observation, and not receiving as gospel the somewhat reckless assertions of preceding travelers. In this case you may be led to inquire whether idleness can exist largely in a state at all emerged from barbarism; whether, in fact, its existence is not a proof of barbarism resulting in great measure from bad government. And yet do not suppose that I undervalue good books of travels; what I say is, "Don't be implicitly guided by them:" much may have been changed between their date and yours. Read some, however, before you start, or rather skim through some, to gather what the writer thought best worth seeing; but far better read (not skim) a good book of the history of any country you are about to visit that is worth a hundred travelers' tales; while a good book of criticism on the chief European galleries is the best cicerone you can hire for them.

Remember, too, that as you go abroad to see foreign countries and foreign people, and to hear foreign languages spoken, so you will do well to avoid the promiscuous swarms of English who fly

yearly up the Rhine, through Switzerland, and escape homeward by some outlet into France, during August and September: you can arrange to be not on the Rhine or near the Alps then; or, if this is impossible, make your way to smaller places (the English always travel in herds), as, for instance, in Switzerland, move on to Lauterbrunnen, instead of cockney Interlachen; to Brunnen, the entrance of the grandest of Swiss water-scenery, the Bay of Uri, instead of Lucerne; to Spietz, a thorough Swiss retreat, instead of Thun; or, better still, get away into St. Gall and the Grisons, and the sublime shores of the lake of Wallenstadt, away from our countrymen's well-beaten tracks, which are lined (as the bottom of the sea from here to India is said to be) by empty beer-bottles.

Few travelers have an idea how much of interest is to be found away from the beaten track, which is followed, not because it is the best, but because the majority of English travelers are limited in point of time, and foolish enough to measure their enjoyment by the distance they have traversed, rather than by the objects of interest they have visited. It is only within quite modern days that Paris has come (to most English travelers) to represent

France. Even down to the revolution, there were nominally many provincial parliaments, and everywhere the provinces still give proofs of their former independence, having, what is totally wanting in England, each a long individual history, at times entirely separate from that of France. A traveler has really seen but little of France who has not visited Rouen and Caen, Tours and Blois, Rennes and Le Mans, Bordeaux and Rheims, and Nancy, and many other ancient cities, over and above Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, which too often represent France to the modern English traveler, as he hurries on to see Italy, equally ill-represented by Genoa, Rome, and Naples.

And pray do not forget that a gentleman can't be too careful not to offend (even unintentionally) the susceptibilities of foreigners. I am afraid that we English have acquired—and what is more, deserved a bad character in this respect. Pray do your best to recover a better opinion of the manners of our countrymen among foreign nations. We expect them in England to behave quietly in our churches; to remain in them and our law-courts bareheaded, and generally to submit to the customs and observances of our country: and they expect

the same of us. We are guests on any soil but our own; and it is ill-manners to set yourself up as a judge of your host's etiquette and regulations. Much of our ill-manners in former days may, I hope, be set down to the score of ignorance; but it is pretty widely known now that they don't like to see people walk arm-in-arm in a church, or turning their backs upon the high altar; and they are somewhat indignant, in the smaller towns especially, if you do not uncover as a religious procession passes. As we know these things, it is a pity that our evil repute has not been long ago erased from the minds of our continental neighbors. "Every mickle makes a muckle." In a year's tour you may do not a little to aid in removing this opprobrium. It is in reference especially to our disregard of the feelings and ideas of others that the common French expression has become stereotyped,-"C'est un Anglais; que voulez-vous ?"