VACATION RAMBLES

Dear C——- So you want me to hunt up and edit all the “Vacuus Viator” letters which my good old friends the editors of The Spectator have been kind enough to print during their long and beneficent ownership of that famous journal! But one who has passed the Psalmist’s “Age of Man,” and is by no means enamoured of his own early lucubrations (so far as he recollects them), must have more diligence and assurance than your father to undertake such a task. But this I can do with pleasure-give them to you to do whatever you like with them, so far as I have any property in, or control over them.

How did they come to be written? Well, in those days we were young married folk with a growing family, and income enough to keep a modest house and pay our way, but none to spare for menus plaisirs, of which “globe trotting” (as it is now called) in our holidays was our favourite. So, casting about for the wherewithal to indulge our taste, the “happy thought” came to send letters by the way to my friends at 1 Wellington Street, if they could see their way to take them at the usual tariff for articles. They agreed, and so helped us to indulge in our favourite pastime, and the habit once contracted has lasted all these years.

How about the name? Well, I took it from the well-known line of Juvenal, “Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,” which may be freely rendered, “The hard-up globe trotter will whistle at the highwayman”; and, I fancy, selected it to remind ourselves cheerfully upon what slender help from the Banking world we managed to trot cheerfully all across Europe.

I will add a family story connected with the name which greatly delighted us at the time. One of the letters reached your grandmother when a small boy-cousin of yours (since developed into a distinguished “dark blue” athlete and M.A. Oxon.) was staying with her for his holidays. He had just begun Latin, and was rather proud of his new lore, so your grandmother asked him how he should construe “Vacuus Viator.” After serious thought for a minute, and not without a modest blush, he replied, “I think, granny, it means a wandering cow”! You must make my peace with the “M.A. Oxon.” if he should ever discover that I have betrayed this early essay of his in classical translation.

Your loving Father,

THOS. HUGHES.

October 1895.

VACATION RAMBLES

EUROPE—1862 to 1866

Foreign parts, 14th August 1862.

Dear Mr. Editor-There are few sweeter moments in the year than those in which one is engaged in choosing the vacation hat. No other garment implies so much. A vista of coming idleness floats through the brain as you stop before the hatter’s at different points in your daily walk, and consider the last new thing in wideawakes. Then there rises before the mind’s eye the imminent bliss of emancipation from the regulation chimney-pot of Cockney England. Two-thirds of all pleasure reside in anticipation and retrospect; and the anticipation of the yearly exodus in a soft felt is amongst the least alloyed of all lookings forward to the jaded man of business. By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir, that herein lies the true answer to that Sphinx riddle so often asked in vain, even of Notes and Queries: What is the origin of the proverb “As mad as a hatter”? The inventor of the present hat of civilisation was the typical hatter. There, I will not charge you anything for the solution; but we are not to be for ever oppressed by the results of this great insanity. Better times are in store for us, or I mistake the signs of the times in the streets and shop windows. Beards and chimney-pots cannot long co-exist.

I was very nearly beguiled this year by a fancy article which I saw in several windows. The purchase would have been contrary to all my principles, for the hat in question is a stiff one, with a low, round crown. But its fascination consists in the system of ventilation—all round the inside runs a row of open cells, which, in fact, keep the hat away from the head, and let in so many currents of fresh air. You might fill half the cells with cigars, and so save carrying a case and add to the tastefulness of your hat at the same time, while you would get plenty of air to keep your head cool through the remaining cells.

My principles, however, rallied in time, and I came away with a genuine soft felt after all, with nothing but a small hole on each side for ventilation. The soft felt is the only really catholic cover, equal to all occasions, in which you can do anything; for instance, lie flat on your back on sand or turf, and look straight up into the heavens—the first thing the released Cockney rushes to do. Only once a year may it be always all our lots to get a real taste of the true holiday feeling; to drop down into some handy place, where no letter can find us; to look up into the great sky, and over the laughing sea, and think about nothing; to unstring the bow, and fairly say: “There shall no fight be got out of us just now; so, old world, if you mean to go wrong, you may go and be hanged!” To feel all the time that blessed assurance which does come home to one at such times, and scarcely ever at any other, that our falling out of the fight is not of the least consequence; that, whatever we may do, the old world will not go wrong but right, and ever righter—not our way, nor any other man’s way, but God’s way. A good deal of sneering and snubbing has been wasted of late, sir (as you have had more occasion than one to remark), on us poor folks, who will insist on holding what we find in our Bibles; what has been so gloriously put in other language by the great poet of our time:—

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroy’d,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete.

I suppose people who feel put out because we won’t believe that the greatest part of creation is going to the bad can never in the nature of things get hold of the true holiday feeling, so one is wasting time in wishing it for them. However, I am getting into quite another line from the one I meant to travel in; so shall leave speculating and push across the Channel. There are several questions which might be suggested with advantage to the Civil Service Examiner, to be put to the next Belgium attachés who come before them. Why are Belgian hop-poles, on an average, five or six feet longer than English? How does this extra length affect the crops? The Belgians plant cabbages too, and other vegetables (even potatoes I saw) between the rows of hops. Does it answer? All the English hop-growers, I believe, scout the idea. I failed to discover what wood their hop-poles are? One of my fellow-travellers, by way of being up to everything, Informed me that they were grown in Belgium on purpose; a fact which did not help me much. He couldn’t say exactly what wood it was. Then a very large proportion of the female population of Belgium spends many hours of the day, at this time of year, on its knees in the fields; and this not only for weeding purposes, for I saw women and girls cutting the aftermath and other light crops in this position. Certainly, they are thus nearer their work, and save themselves stooping; but one has a sort of prejudice against women going about the country on all fours, like Nebuchadnezzar. Is it better for their health? Don’t they get housemaid’s knees? But, above all, is it we or the Belgians who don’t, know in this nineteenth century, how to make corn shocks? In every part of England I have ever been in in harvest time, we just make up the sheaves and then simply stand six or eight of them together, the ears upwards, and so make our shock. But the Belgian makes his shock of four sheaves, ears upwards, and then on the top of these places another sheaf upside down. This crowning sheaf, which is tied near the bottom, is spread out over the shock, to which it thus forms a sort of makeshift thatch. One of the two methods must be radically wrong. Does this really keep the rain out, and so prevent the ears from growing in damp weather? I should have thought it would only have helped to hold the wet and increase the heat. If so, don’t you think it is really almost a casus belli? Quin said to the elderly gentleman in the coffee-house (after he had handed him the mustard for the third time in vain), dashing his hand down on the table, “D——— you, sir, you shall eat mustard with your ham!” and so we might say to the Belgians if they are wrong, “You shall make your shocks properly.” Fancy two highly civilised nations having gone on these thousand years side by side, growing corn and eating bread without finding out which is the right way to make corn shocks.

Bonn, 22nd August 1862.

I am sitting at a table some forty feet long, from which most of the guests have retired. The few left are smoking and talking gesticulatingly. I am drinking during the intervals of writing to you, sir, a beverage composed of a half flask of white wine, a bottle of seltzer water, and a lump of sugar (if you can get one of ice to add it will improve the mixture). I take it for granted that you despise the Rhine, like most Englishmen, but, sir, I submit that a land where one can get the above potation for a fraction over what one would pay for a pot of beer in England, and can, moreover, get the weather which makes such a drink deliciously refreshing, is not to be lightly thought of. But I am not going into a rhapsody on the Rhine, though I can strongly recommend my drink to all economically disposed travellers.

All I hope to do, is, to gossip with you, as I move along; and as my road lay up the Rhine, you must take that with the rest.

Our first halt on the river was at Bonn. A university town is always interesting, and this one more than most other foreign ones, as the place where Prince Albert’s education was begun, and where Bunsen ended his life. I made an effort to get to his grave, which I was told was in a cemetery near the town, but could not find it. I hope it will long remain an object of interest to Englishmen after the generation who knew him has passed away. There is no one to whom we have done more scanty justice, and that unlucky and most unfair essay of W———‘s is the crowning injustice of all. I am not going into his merits as a statesman, theologian, or antiquary, which, indeed, I am wholly incompetent to criticise. The only book of his I ever seriously tried to master, his Church of the Future, entirely floored me. But the wonderful depth of his sympathy and insight!—how he would listen to and counsel any man, whether he were bent on discovering the exact shape of the buckle worn by some tribe which disappeared before the Deluge, or upon regenerating the world after the newest nineteenth century pattern, or anything between the two—we may wait a long time before we see anything like it again in a man of his position and learning. And what a place he filled in English society! I believe fine ladies grumbled about “the sort of people” they met at those great gatherings at Carlton Terrace, but they all went, and, what was more to the purpose, all the foremost men and women of the day went, and were seen and heard of hundreds of young men of all nations and callings; and their wives, if they had any, were asked by Bunsen on the most thoroughly catholic principles. And if any man or woman seemed ill at ease, they would find him by their side in a minute, leading them into the balcony, if the night were fine, and pointing out, as he specially loved to do, the contrast of the views up Waterloo Place on the one hand, and across the Green Park to the Abbey and the Houses, on the other, or in some other way setting them at their ease again with a tact as wise and subtle as his learning. But I am getting far from the Rhine, I see, and the University of Bonn. Of course I studied the titles of the books exposed for sale in the windows of the booksellers, and the result, as regards English literature, was far from satisfactory. We were represented in the shop of the Parker and Son of Bonn, by one vol. of Scott’s Poems; the puff card of the London Society, with a Millais drawing of a young man and woman thereupon, and nothing more; but, by way of compensation I suppose, a book with a gaudy cover was put in a prominent place, and titled Tag und Nacht in London, by Julius Rodenburg. There was a double picture on the cover: above, a street scene, comprising an elaborate equipage with two flunkeys behind, a hansom, figures of Highlanders, girls, blind beggars, etc., and men carrying advertisements of “Samuel Brothers,” and “Cremorne Gardens”; while in the lower compartment was an underground scene of a policeman flashing his bull’s eye on groups of crouching folks; altogether a loathsome kind of book for one to find doing duty as the representative book of one’s country with young Germany. I was a little consoled by seeing a randan named The Lorelei lying by the bank, which, though not an outrigger, would not have disgraced any building yard at Lambeth or at Oxford. Very likely it came out of one of them, by the way. But let us hope it is the first step towards the introduction of rowing at Bonn, and that in a few years Oxford and Cambridge may make up crews to go and beat Bonn, and all the other German Universities, and a New England crew from Cambridge, Massachusetts. What a course that reach of the Rhine at Bonn would make! No boat’s length to be gained by the toss for choice of sides, as at Henley or Putney; no Berkshire or Middlesex shore to be paid for. A good eight-oar race would teach young Germany more of young England than any amount of perusal of Tag und Nacht, I take it. I confess myself to a strong sentimental feeling about Rolandseck. The story of Roland the Brave is, after all, one of the most touching of all human stories, though tourists who drop their H’s may be hurrying under his tower every day in cheap steamers; and it is one of a group of the most characteristic stories of the age of chivalry, all having a connecting link at Roncesvalles. What other battle carries one into three such groups of romance as this of Roland, the grim tragedy of Bernard del Carpio and his dear father, and that of the peerless Durandarté? When I was a boy there were ballads on all these subjects which were very popular, but are nearly forgotten by this time. I used to have great trouble to preserve a serene front, I know, whenever I heard one of them well sung, especially that of “Durandarté” (by Monk Lewis), I believe. Ay, and after the lapse of many years I scarcely know where to go for the beau ideal of knighthood summed up in a few words better than to that same ballad:

Kind in manners, fair in favour,

Mild in temper, fierce in fight,—

Warrior purer, gentler, braver,

Never shall behold the light.

But much as I prize Rolandseck for its memories of chivalric constancy and tenderness, Mayence is my favourite place on the Rhine, as the birthplace of Gutenburg, the adopted home, and centre of the work of our great countryman, St. Boniface, and the most fully peopled and stirring town of modern Rhineland. We had only an hour to spend there, so I sallied at once into the town to search for Gutenburg’s house—the third time I have started on the same errand, and with the same result. I didn’t find it. But there it is; at least the guide-books say so. In vain did I beseechingly appeal to German after German, man, woman, and maid, “Wo ist das Haus von Gutenburg—das Haus wo Gutenburg wohnte?” I got either a blank stare, convincing me of the annoying fact that not a word I said was understood, or directions to the statue, which I knew as well as any of them. At last I fell upon a young priest, and, accosting him in French, got some light out of him. He offered to take me part of the way, and as we walked side by side, suddenly turned to me with an air of pleased astonishment, and said, “You admire Gutenburg, then?” To which I replied, “Father!” Why, sir, how in the world should you and I, and thousands more indifferent modern Englishmen, not to mention those of all other nations, get our bread but for him and his pupil Caxton? However, the young priest could only take me to within two streets, and then went on his way, leaving me with express directions, in trying to follow which I fell speedily upon a German fair. I am inclined to think that there are no boys in Germany, and that, if there were, there would be nothing for them to do; but for children there is no such place. This fair at Mayence was a perfect little paradise for children. Think of our wretched merry-go-rounds, sir, with nothing but some six or eight stupid hobby-horses revolving on bare poles, and then imagine such merry-go-rounds as those of Mayence fair. They look like large umbrella tents ornamented with gay flags and facetious paintings outside, and hung within, round the central post which supports the whole, with mirrors, flags, bells, pictures, and bright coloured drapery. Half concealed by the red or blue drapery, is the proprietor of the establishment, who grinds famous tunes on a first-rate barrel organ when the merry-go-round is set going, and keeps an eye on his juvenile fares. The whole is turned by a pony or by machinery. Then, for mounts, the children have choice of some thirty hobby-horses, or can ride on swans or dragons, richly caparisoned, or in easy vis-à-vis seats. When the complement of youthful riders is obtained, on a signal off goes the barrel organ and the pony and the whole concern—pictures, looking-glasses, bells, drapery, and all begin to revolve, with a fascinating jingling and emphasis! and at twice the pace of any British merry—go-round I ever saw. It is very comical to watch the gravity of the little Deutsch riders. They are of all classes, from the highly dressed little madchen, down to the ragged carter-boy, with a coil of rope over his shoulder, and no shoes, riding a gilded swan, but all impressed with the solemnity of the occasion. But here I am running on about fun of the fair, and missing Gutenburg’s house, as I did in reality, finding in the midst of my staring and grinning that I had only time to get to the boat; so with one look at Gutenburg’s statue I went off.

The crops through all these glorious Rhine valleys right away up to Heidelberg look splendid, particularly the herb pantagruelion, which is more largely grown than when I was last here. Rope enough will be made this year from hemp grown between Darmstadt and Heidelberg to hang all the scoundrels in the world, and the honest men to boot; and the tobacco looks magnificent. They were gathering the leaves as we passed. A half-picked tobacco field, with the bare stumps at one end, and the rich-leaved plants at the other, has a comically forlorn look.

Heidelberg I thought more beautiful than ever; and since I had been there a very fine hotel, one of the best I have ever been in, has been built close to the station, with a glass gallery 100 feet long, and more, adjoining the “Speisesaal,” in which you may gastronomise to your heart’s content, at the most moderate figure. Here we bid adieu to the Rhineland.

Munich, 29th August 1862.

A bird’s-eye view of any country must always be unsatisfactory. Still it is better than nothing, and in the absence of a human view, one may be thankful for it. My view of Wurtemberg was of the most bird’s-eye kind. The first thing that strikes one is the absence of all fences except in the immediate neighbourhood of towns. Even the railway has no fence, except for a few yards where a road crosses the line, and here and there a hedge of acacia, or barberry bushes (the berries were hanging red ripe on the latter), which are very pretty, but would not in any place keep out a seriously-minded cow or pig.

Wurtemberg is addicted to the cultivation of crops which minister to man’s luxuries rather than to his necessities. The proportion of land under fruit, poppies, tobacco, and hops, to that under corn, was very striking. There was a splendid hemp crop here also. They were gathering the poppy-heads, as we passed, into sacks. The women and girls both here and in Bavaria seem to do three-fourths of the agricultural work; the harder, such as reaping and mowing, as well as the lighter. The beds of peat are magnificent, and very neatly managed. At first I thought we had entered enormous black brick-fields, for the peat is cut into small brick-shaped pieces, and stacked in rows, just as one sees in the best managed of our brick-fields. As one nears Stuttgart the village churches begin to show signs of the difference in longitude. Gothic spires and arches give place to Eastern clock-towers, with tops like the cupolas of mosques, tinned over, and glittering in the hot sun. I hear that it was a fancy of the late Emperor Joseph to copy the old enemies of his country in architecture; but that would not account for the prevalence of the habit in his neighbour’s territory. I fancy one begins to feel the old neighbourhood of the Turks in these parts. The houses are all roomy, and there is no sign of poverty amongst the people. They have a fancy for wearing no shoes and scant petticoats in many districts; but it is evidently a matter of choice. Altogether, the whole fine, open, well-wooded country, from Bruchsal to Munich, gives one the feeling that an easy-going, well-to-do people inhabit and enjoy it.

As for Munich itself, it is a city which surprised me more pleasantly than almost any one I ever remember to have entered. One had a sort of vague notion that the late king had a taste for the fine arts, and spent a good deal of his own and his subjects’ money in indulging the taste aforesaid in his capital. But one also knew that he had been tyrannised over by Lola Montes, and had made a countess of her—and had not succeeded in weathering 1848; so that, on the whole, one had no great belief in any good work from such a ruler.

Munich gives one a higher notion of the ex-king; as long as the city stands, he will have left his mark on it. On every side there are magnificent new streets, and public buildings and statues; the railway terminus is the finest I have ever seen; every church, from the Cathedral downwards, is in beautiful order, and highly decorated; and it is not only in the public buildings that one meets with the evidences of care and taste. The hotel in which we stayed, for instance, is built of brick, covered with some sort of cement, which gives it the appearance of terra-cotta, and is for colour the most fascinating building material. The ceilings and cornices of the rooms are all carefully and tastefully painted, and all about the town one sees frescoes and ornamentation of all kinds, which show that the people delight in seeing their city look bright and gay; and every one admits that all this is due to the ex-king Lewis. But he has another claim on the gratitude of the good folk of Munich. The Bavarians were given to beer above all other people, and the people of Munich above all other Bavarians, long before he came to the throne; and former kings, availing themselves of the national taste, had established a “Hof-Breihaus,” where the monarch sold the national beverage to his people. King Lewis found the character of the royal beer not what it should be, and the rest of the metropolitan brewers were also falling away into evil ways of adulterating and drugging. He reformed the “Hof-Breihaus,” so that for many years nothing but the soundest possible beer was brewed there, which is sold to the buyers and yet cheaper than in any other house in Munich. The public taste has been thus so highly educated that there is no selling unwholesome beer now. A young artist took me to this celebrated tap. Unluckily it was a wet evening, so we had to sit at one of the tables, under a long line of sheds, instead of in an adjacent garden. There was a great crowd, some 300 or 400 imbibers jammed together, of all ranks. At our table the company were the artist and myself, a Middlesex magistrate, two privates, and a non-commissioned officer, and a man whom I set down as a small farmer. My back rubbed against a vociferous student, who was hobnobbing with all comers. There were Tyrolese and other costumes about, one or two officers, and a motley crowd of work people and other folk. The royal brew-house is in such good repute that no trouble whatever is taken about anything but having enough beer and a store of stone drinking-mugs, with tops to them forthcoming. Cask after cask is brought out and tapped in the vaulted entrance to the cellars, and a queue of expectant thirsty souls wait for their turn. I only know as I drank it how heartily I wished that my poor overworked brethren at home could see and taste the like. But it would not pay any of our great brewers to devote themselves to the task of selling really wholesome drink to the poor; and I fear the Prince of Wales is not likely to come to the rescue. He might find easier jobs no doubt, but none that would benefit the bodily health of his people more. The beer is so light that it is scarcely possible to get drunk on it. Many of the frequenters of the place sit there boosing for four or five hours daily, and the chance visitors certainly do not spare the liquor; but I saw no approach to drunkenness, except a good deal of loud talk.

The picture collections, which form, I believe, the great attraction of Munich, disappointed me, especially the modern ones in the new Pinacothek, collected by the ex-king, and to which he is constantly adding now that he is living at his ease as a private gentleman. I daresay that they may be very fine, but scarcely any of them bite; I like a picture with a tooth in it—something which goes into you, and which you can never forget, like the great picture of Nero walking over the burning ruins of Rome, or the execution picture in the Spanish department, or the Christian slave sleeping before the opening of the amphitheatre, or Judas coming on the men making the cross, in the International Exhibition. I have read no art criticism for years, so that I do not know whether I am not talking great heresy. But, heresy or not, I am for the right of every man to his own opinion in matters of art, and if an inferior painting gives me real pleasure on account of its subject, I mean to enjoy it and praise it, all the fine art critics in Christendom notwithstanding. The pictures of the most famous places in Greece, made since the election of the Bavarian Prince Otho to the throne of Greece, have a special interest of their own; but apart from these and some half dozen others, I would far sooner spend a day in our yearly exhibition than in the new Pinacothek. The colossal bronze statue of Bavaria is the finest thing of the kind I have ever seen; but the most interesting sight in Munich to an Englishman must be the Church of St. Boniface, not the exquisite colouring proportions, or the magnificent monolithic columns of gray marble, but the frescoes, which tell the story of the saint from the time when he knelt and prayed by his sick father’s bed to the bringing back of his martyred body to Mayence Cathedral. The departure of St. Boniface from Netley Abbey for Rome, to be consecrated Apostle to the Germans, struck me as the best of them; but, altogether, they tell very vividly the whole history of the Englishman who has trodden most nearly in St. Paul’s footsteps. We have reared plenty of great statesmen, poets, philosophers, soldiers, but only this one great missionary. Yet no nation in the world has more need of St. Bonifaces than we just now. The field is ever widening, in India, China, Africa. We can conquer and rule, and teach the heathen to make railways and trade, nut don’t seem to be able to get at their hearts and consciences. One fears almost that were a St. Boniface to come, we should only measure him by our common tests, and probably pronounce him worthless, or a dangerous enthusiast. But one day, when men’s work shall be tested by altogether different tests from ours of the enlightened nineteenth century kind, it will considerably surprise some of us to see how the order of merit will come out. We shall be likely to have to ask concerning St. Boniface—whose name is scarcely known to one Englishman in a hundred—and of others like him in spirit, of whom none of us have ever heard, Who are these countrymen of ours, and whence come they? And we shall hear the answer which St. John heard: “Isti sunt qui venerunt ex magna tribulatione et laverunt stolas suas in sanguine Agni.” I felt very grateful to Munich for having appreciated the great Apostle to the Germans.

The one building in Munich which is quite unworthy of the use to which it is put, is the English Church. The service is performed in a sort of dry cellar, under the Odeon. We had a very small congregation, but it was very pleasant to hear how they all joined in the responses. What a pity it is that we are always ready to do it abroad, and shut up again as soon as we get home. Even the singing prospered greatly, though we had no organ. But, alas! sir, the Colonial Church Society have done their best to spoil this part of our service abroad. They seem to have accepted from the editor as a gift, the stereotyped plates of a hymn-book, copies of which were placed about in the Munich church, and, I daresay, may be found all over the Continent. The editor has thought it desirable to improve our classical hymns. Conceive the following substitution for Bishop Ken’s “Let all thy converse be sincere”—

In conversation be sincere;

Make conscience as the noon-day clear:

Think how th’ all-seeing God thy ways

And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

This is only a fair specimen of the book. Surely the Colonial Church Society had better hastily return the stereotype plates with thanks.

The Tyrol, 2nd September 1862.

Next to meeting an old friend by accident, there is nothing more pleasant than coming in long vacation on some flower or shrub which reminds one of former holiday ramblings. In the Tyrol the other day we came suddenly on a bank in the mountains gemmed over with the creamy white star of the daisy of Parnassus, and it accompanied us, to our great delight, for 200 miles or more, till we got fairly down into the plains again. The last time I had seen it was on Snowdon years ago. When we got a little higher I pounced on a beautiful little gentian, which I had never seen before except on the Alps above Lenk, in Switzerland (the Hauen Moos the pass was called, or some such name—how spelt, goodness knows), which I once crossed with two dear friends on the most beautiful day I ever remember.

The flora of the Tyrol, at least that part of it which lies by the roadside, seems to be much the same as ours. With the above exceptions, I scarcely saw a flower which does not grow on half the hills in England; but their size and colouring was often curiously different. The Michaelmas daisy and ladies’ fingers, for instance, were much brighter and more beautiful; on the other hand, there was the most tender tiny heartsease in the world, and forget-me-nots, which were very plentiful here and there, were quite unlike ours—delicate little creatures, of the palest blue in the world, all the fleshiness and comfortable look, reminding one of marriage settlements and suitable establishments, gone clean out of them. In moving eastward with the happy earth you may easily get from Munich to Strasburg in one day; but, if you do, you will miss one of the greatest treats in the world, and that is a run through the Tyrol, which you may do from Munich with comfort in a week. There is a little rail which runs you down south or so to Homburg, on the edge of the mountain country, from whence you may choose your conveyance, from post carriage down to Shanks’ nag. If you follow my advice, whatever else you do you will take care to see the Finstermunz Pass, than which nothing in the whole world can be more beautiful. I rather wonder myself that the Tyrol has not drawn more of our holiday folk, Alpine Club and all, from Switzerland. The Orteler Spitz and the glaciers of his range are as fine, and I should think as dangerous, as anything in the Swiss Alps—the lower Alps in the Tyrol are quite equal to their western sisters; and there is a soft Italian charm and richness about the look and climate of the southern valleys, that about Botzen especially, which Switzerland has nothing to match. The luxuriance of the maize crops (the common corn of the country) and of the vines trained over trellis work in the Italian fashion, and of the great gourds and vegetable marrows which roll their glorious leaves and flowers and heavy fruit over the spare corners and slips of the platforms on which the vineyards rest—the innumerable fruit-trees, pears, apples, plums, peaches, and pomegranates all set in a framework of beautiful wooded mountains, from which the course of the streams may be traced down through all the richness of the valley by their torrent beds of tumbled rock—. remind us vividly of the descriptions of the Promised Land in the Old Testament. Then the contrast of the people to the Bavarians is as great as that of the countries. The latter seem to live the easiest, laziest life of all nations, in their rich low flats, which the women are quite aide to cultivate, while the men drink beer and otherwise disport themselves. But in the part of the Tyrol next Bavaria it is all grim earnest: “Ernst is das Leben” must be their motto if they are to get in their crops at all, and keep their little patches of valley and hanging fields cultivated—and it does seem to be their motto. After passing through the country one can quite understand how the peasantry came to beat the regular troops of France and Bavaria time after time half a century ago, and the memoirs of that holy war hang almost about every rock. There is no mistake here about battle-fields, and no difficulty in realising the scene: the march of columns along the gorges, the piles of rock and tree above, with Tyrolean marksmen behind, the voices calling across over the heads of the invaders “Shall we begin?”

“In the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose”; and then the crash and confusion, the panic and despair, and the swoop of the mountaineers on the remnant of their foes. A great part of the country must be exceedingly poor, and yet only in the neighbourhood of two or three villages were we asked for alms, and then only by small children, who had apparently been demoralised by the passage of carriages. Except from one of these children, a small boy who flirted his cap in my face, and made a villainous grimace, when he got tired of running, and from the dogs, we had no uncourteous look or word. The dogs, however, are abominable mongrels, and there was scarcely one in the country which did not run barking and snapping after us. The people seem to me very much pleasanter to travel amongst than the Swiss.

I had expected to find them a people much given to the outward forms and ceremonies of religion at any rate—every guide-book tells one thus much; but I was not at all prepared for the extraordinary hold which their Christianity had laid upon the whole external life of the country. You can’t travel a mile in the Tyrol along any road without coming upon a shrine—in general by the wayside, often in the middle of the fields. I examined several hundreds of these; many of them little rough penthouses of plank, some well-built tiny chapels. I wish I had kept an exact account of the contents, but I am quite sure I am within the mark in saying that nine out of ten contain simply a crucifix; of the rest, the great majority contain figures or paintings of the Virgin or Child, and a few those of some patron saint. All bore marks of watchful care; in many, garlands of flowers or berries, or an ear or two of ripe maize, were hung round the Figure on the cross. Then in every village in which we slept, bells began ringing for matins at five or six, and in every ease the congregation seemed to be very large in proportion to the population. I was told, and believe, that in all the houses, even in the inns of most of these villages, there is family worship every evening at a specified hour, generally at seven. We met peasants walking along the road bare-headed, and chanting mass. I came suddenly upon parish priests and poor women praying before the crucifix by the wayside. The ostlers and stable-men have the same habit as our own, of pasting or nailing up rude prints on the stable-doors, and of all those which I examined while we were changing horses, or where we stopped for food or rest, there was only one which was not on a sacred subject. In short, to an Englishman accustomed to the reserve of his own country on such subjects, the contrast is very startling. If a Hindoo or any other intelligent heathen were dropped down in any English country, he might travel for days without knowing whether we have any religion at all; but, most assuredly, he could not do so in the Tyrol. Now which is the best state of things? I believe Her Majesty has no stauncher Protestant than I amongst her subjects, but I own that a week in the Tyrol has made me reconsider a thing or two. Outwardly, in short, the Tyroleans are the most religious people in Europe. Of course I am no judge after a week’s tour whether their faith has gone as deep as it has spread wide. You can only speak of the bridge as it carries you. Our bills were the most reasonable I have ever met with, and I could not detect a single attempt at imposition in the smallest particular. I went into the fruit market at Meran, and, after buying some grapes, went on to an old woman who was selling figs. She was wholly unable to understand my speech, so, being in a hurry, I put a note for the magnificent sum of ten kreutzer (or 3d. sterling) into her hand, making signs to her to put the equivalent in figs into a small basket I was carrying. This she proceeded to do, and when she had piled eight or ten figs on the grapes I turned to go, but by vehement signs she detained me, till she had given me the full tale, some three or four more. She was only a fair specimen of what I found on all sides. The poor old soul had not mastered our legal axiom of caveat emptor, but her trading morality had something attractive about it. They may be educated in time into buying cheap and selling dear, but as yet that great principle does not seem to have dawned on them.

There may be some danger of superstition in this setting up of crucifixes and sacred prints by the wayside and on stable-doors, but, on the other hand, the Figure on the cross, meeting one at every corner, is not unlikely, I should think, to keep a poor man from the commonest vices to which he is tempted in his daily life, if it does no more. He would scarcely like to stagger by it drunk from the nearest pot-house. If stable-boys are to have rough woodcuts on their doors, one of the Crucifixion or of the Mater Dolorosa is likely to do them more good than the winner of the Derby or Tom Sayers.

But my letter is getting too long for your columns, so I can only beg all your readers to seize the first chance of visiting the Tyrol. I shall be surprised if they do not come away with much the same impressions as I have. It is a glad land, above all that I have ever seen—a land in which a psalm of joy and thankfulness seems to be rising to heaven from every mountain top and valley, and, mingled with and beneath it, the solemn low note of a people “breathing thoughtful breath”—an accompaniment without which there is no true joy possible in our world, without which all attempt at it rings in the startled ear like the laugh of a madman. Those words of the old middle-age hymn seemed to be singing in my ears all through the Tyrol:—

Fac me vere tecum flere,

Crucitixo condolere,

Donee ego vixcro.

I shall never find a country in which it will do one more good to travel.

Vienna, 10th September 1862.

The stage Englishman in foreign countries must be always an object of interest to his countrymen. He is a decidedly popular institution in Germany, not the least like the Dundreary type, or the sort of top-booted half fool, half miscreant, one sees at a minor theatre in Paris. The latest Englishmen on the boards of the summer theatres here are a Lord Mixpickl, and his man Jack, but the most popular, and those which appear to be regarded in fatherland as the real thing, are the Englishmen in a piece called “The Four Sailors.” It opens with a yawning chorus. Four young Englishmen are discovered sitting at a German watering-place, reading copies of the Times and Post, and yawning fearfully. The chorus done, one says, “The funds are at 84.”

“I bet you they are at 86,” says another, and on this point they become lively. It appears by the talk which ensues, that they have come abroad resolved on finding some romantic adventure before marrying, which they are all desirous of doing. This they found impossible at home; hitherto have not succeeded here; have only succeeded in trampling on the police arrangements, and getting bored. They all imitate one another in speech and action, saying “Yaas” in succession very slowly, and always looking at one another deliberately before acting. Now the four sailors appear, who are three romantic young women and their maid, disguised as sailors, under the care of their aunt, a stout easy-going old lady, dressed as a boatswain, and of lax habits In the matters of tobacco and drink. After hornpipe dancing and other diversions, the young ladies settle to go and bathe, and cross the stage where the Englishmen are carrying their bathing-dresses. A cry is raised that their boat is upset; whereupon the Englishmen look at one another. At last one gets up, takes off his coat, folds it up, and puts it carefully on his chair, ditto with waistcoat and hat, the others doing the same. They walk off in Indian file, and return each with a half-drowned damsel across his shoulders. Having deposited their burthens, they return to the front of the stage to dress, when one suggests that they have never been introduced, upon which, after a pause, and looking solemnly at each other and the audience, they ejaculate all together, “Got dam!” They then take refuge in beer, silence, and pipes. At last one says, “This is curious!” Three yaas’, and a pause. Another, “This is an adventure!” Three yaas’, and a longer pause. At last, “Dat ist romantisch!” propounds another. Tumultuous yaas’ break forth at this discovery. The object of their journey is accomplished, they marry the four sailors, and return to love and Britain.

The summer theatres are charming institutions, but somewhat casual. For instance, while we were at Ischl, there were no performances because the weather was too fine. Ischl itself is wonderfully attractive, and as he has not the chance of getting a seaside watering-place, the Kaiser Konig has shown much taste in the selection of Ischl. The Traun and Ischl, which meet here, are both celebrated for beauty and trout (a young Englishman was wading about and having capital sport while we were there). You get fine views of glaciers from the hills which rise on all sides close to the town, and the five valleys at the junction of which it lies are all finely wooded and well worth exploring. The town is furnished with a drinking-hall (but no gambling), baths, a casino, pretty promenades, and Herzogs and other grand folk, with Hussar and other officers in plenty to enliven them. You can dance every evening almost if you like, and gloves are fabulously good, and only a florin a pair for men, or with two buttons, for ladies, a florin and ten kreutzers; so, having regard to the number which are now found necessary in London, it would almost pay young persons to visit Ischl once a year to make their purchases. There is also a specialty in the way of pretty old fashioned looking jewellery made and sold here cheap, but the Passau pearls found in the great cockle-shells of these parts are dear, though certainly very handsome. I must not forget the rifle-range amongst the attractions of the place. I fell in with two members of the Inns of Court, and we heard the well-known crack, and soon hunted out the scene of operations. We found some Austrian gentlemen practising at 100 yards at a target with a small black centre, within which was a scarcely distinguishable bull’s-eye. When a centre is made the marker comes out, bows, waves his arms twice, and utters two howls called “yodels.” When the bull’s-eye is struck a shell explodes behind, the Austrian eagle springs up above the target, and a Tyrolean, the size of life, from each side—which performance so fascinated one of my companions that he made interest with the shooters, who allowed him to use one of their rifles. I rejoice to say that he did not disgrace the distinguished corps to which he belongs. At his first shot he obtained the bow and two howls from the marker, and at his fourth the explosion and appearances above described followed, whereupon he wisely retired on his laurels.

You proceed eastwards from Ischl, down the beautiful valley of the Traun to Eben; see the great store-place for the salt and wood of the district. The logs accompany you, in the river, all the way down; and it is amusing to watch their different ways of floating. Such of them as are not stopped in transit by the hooks of the inhabitants are collected by a boom stretched across the head of the Gmünden Lake, on which you take boat at Eben See. The skipper of the steamer is an Englishman, who has been there for thirty years—a quiet matter-of-fact man, who collects his own tickets, wears no uniform, and has a profound disbelief in the accuracy of the information furnished to tourists in these parts by the natives. Long absence from home has somewhat depressed him, but he lights up for a few moments when he gets on his paddle-box and orders the steam to be put on to charge the boom. But travellers should consult him if they want correct information, and should not trust in “Bradshaw.” The lion of the neighbourhood is the Traun Falls; and a station has been opened on the railway to Lintz to facilitate the seeing of the falls, which station is not even mentioned in the “Bradshaw” for August 1862. This is too bad.

I had considerable opportunities of seeing the state of the country in Austria. The people are prosperous and independent to a degree which much astonished me. They are almost all what we should call yeomanry, owning from twenty to two hundred acres of land. Even the labourers, who work for the great proprietors, own their own cottages and an acre or so of land round; in fact, the Teutonic passion for owning land is so strong that, unless a man can acquire some, he manages to emigrate. Since 1848 the communes have stepped into the position of lords of the manors, and own most of the woods and the game. The great proprietors pay them for the right of sporting over their own lands. In faet, whatever may be the case with the higher classes, the people here seem to have it much their own way since 1848. We spent a Sunday afternoon in the palace gardens at Schonbrunn, into which half the populace of Vienna, smoking vile-smelling cigars, seemed to have poured in omnibuses and cabs, which stood before the palace, and on foot. We (the people) occupied the whole of the gardens, and a splendid military band played for our behoof. You reach the gardens by passing under the palace, so that King People was everywhere, and the Kaiser Konig, if he wants retirement, must stay in his private rooms. A report spread that the Emperor and Empress were coming out, whereupon King People, and we amongst them, swept into the lower part of the palace, and right up to a private staircase, at the foot of which an open carriage was standing. A few burly and well-behaved guardsmen remonstrated good-humouredly, but with no effect. There we remained in block, men, women, and children, the pipes and cigars were not extinguished, and the smell was anything but imperial. Presently the Emperor and Empress came down, and the carriage passed at a foot’s pace through the saluting and pleased crowd. The Empress is the most charming-looking royal personage I have ever seen, and seemed to think it quite right that the people should occupy her house and grounds. Fancy omnibuses driving into the Court-yard of Buckingham Palace, and John Bull proceeding to occupy the private gardens! John himself would decidedly think that the end of the world was come. The Constitution, too, seems to work well from all I heard. The Court party has ceased almost to struggle for power. It revenges itself, however, in social life. Society (so called) is more exclusive in Vienna than anywhere else, and consists of some 400 or 500 persons all told. Even the most distinguished soldiers and statesmen have not the entrée. Benedek’s family is not in society, nor Schmerling’s, though I hear his daughter is one of the prettiest and most ladylike girls in Austria. All which is very silly, doubtless, but the chief sufferers are the 400 inhabitants who drive in the Prater, and go to the Leichtenstein and Schwartzenburg parties, and after all, if aristocracies in the foolish sense are inevitable, an aristocracy of birth is preferable to one of money, or, me judice, of intellect, seeing that the latter gives itself at least as absurd airs, and is likely to be much more mischievous. On the other hand, my Hungarian sympathies have been somewhat shaken since visiting the country. I suppose the national dress has something to say to it. An Englishman cannot swallow braided coats, and tight coloured pants, and boots all at once, and the carriage and airs of the men are offensive. I say this more on the judgment of several of my country-women on this point than on my own, but from my own observation I can say that Pesth, to a mere passer-by, has all the appearances of the most immoral capital in the world. In the best shops, in the best streets, there are photographs and engravings exhibited which, with us, would speedily call Lord Campbell’s Act into operation. And the Haymarket is in many respects moral in comparison with many parts of Pesth. It is the only place in Europe where I have seen men going about drunk before midday. In short, you will perceive that my inspection inclines me to suspect that there may he more than one has been wont to believe in the assertion, that the Constitution we hear so much of is aristocratic and one which will give back old feudal privileges to a conquering race and enable them to oppress Slaves, Croats, etc., as they did before 1848. There is, everybody admits, a large discontented class in Hungary, composed chiefly of the poor nobility (who have long ago spent their compensation money), and professional men, especially advocates, but it is strenuously maintained that the great mass of the people have been far better off in all ways and more contented since 1849. I don’t pretend to give you anything except the most apparently truthful evidence I can pick up by the wayside, and the observations of my own eyes, and certainly the latter have not been favourable to Hungary in any way, though they look certainly very like a fighting race, these Magyars. The railroad from Pesth to Basiash, where one embarks on the Danube, passes through enormous flats, heavy for miles and miles with maize and other crops, and very thinly peopled. It is a constant wonder where the people can come from to reap and garner it all. The great fault of the country is the dust, which is an abominable nuisance. Certainly the facilities for travelling are getting to be all that can be wished in our time. A little more than forty-eight hours will bring a man, who can stand night journeys, to Vienna; after resting a night, eighteen hours more will bring him to Basiash, where he will at once plunge into the old world of turbans and veiled women, minarets and mosques; man and beast and bird, houses and habits, all strange and new to him; and if the Danube fares were not atrociously high, there are few things I would more earnestly recommend to my holiday-making countrymen than a trip down that noblest, of European rivers. Considering the present state of political matters, too, in the world, he can hardly select a more interesting country. Certainly the Eastern question gains wonderfully in interest when one has seen ever so little of the lands and people about which the wisest heads of all the wisest statesmen of our day are speculating and scheming—not very wisely, I fear, at present.

The Danube, 13th September 1862.

The Rhine may, perhaps, fairly be compared with the Upper Danube, between Lintz and Vienna, even between Vienna and Pesth. There is no great disparity so far, either in the size of themselves or of the hills and plains through which they run. The traveller’s tastes, artistic and historical, decide his preference. The constant succession of ruined holds of the old oppressors of the earth which he meets on the Rhine, are wanting on the Danube. It is certainly a satisfaction to see such places thoroughly ruined—to triumph over departed scoundrelism wherever one comes on its relics. As a compensation, however, he will find on the Danube a huge building or two, such as that of the Benedictine Monastery at Molk, or the Cathedral and Palace of the Primate of Hungary at Gran, of living interest, and with work still to do in the world. There is not much to choose between the banks of the two streams in the matter of general historical interest, though to me the long struggle between the Christian and the Moslem, the footprints of which meet one on all sides, gives the Danube slightly the advantage even in this respect. There are longer gaps of flat uninteresting country on the eastern stream, no doubt, which may be set off against the sameness and neatness of the perpetual vineyard on the western; and on the Danube you get, now and then, a piece of real forest, which you never see, so far as I remember, on the Rhine.

Below Belgrade, however, all comparison ceases. The Rhine is half the size of its rival, and flows westward through the highest cultivation and civilisation to the German Ocean, while the huge Danube rushes through the Carpathians into a new world—an eastern people, living amidst strange beasts and birds, in a country which is pretty much as Trajan left it. You might as well compare Killiecrankie to the Brenner Pass, as any thing on the Rhine to the Kazan, the defile by which the Danube struggles through the western Carpathians. Here the river contracts in breadth from more than a mile to between 200 and 300 yards; the depth is 170 feet. The limestone rocks on both sides rise to near 2000 feet, coming sheer down to the water in many places, clothed with forest wherever there is hold for roots. Along the Servian side, on the face of the precipice, a few feet above the stream, run the long line of sockets in which the beams were fastened for the support of his covered road by Trajan’s legions. A tablet and an inscription 1740 years old still bear, I believe, the great Roman’s name, and a memorial of his Dacian campaign, though I cannot vouch for the fact, as we shot by it at twenty miles an hour; but I could distinctly see Roman letters. On the left bank the Austrians have carried a road by blasting and masonry; and a cavern which was held for weeks by 400 men against a Turkish army in 1692 commands the whole pass.

We had scarcely entered the defile when some eight or ten eagles appeared sweeping slowly round over a spot in the hanging wood, where probably a deer or goat was dying. I counted upwards of thirty before we left the Kazan; several were so near the boat that you could plainly mark the glossy barred plumage, and every turn of the body and tail as they steered about upon those marvellous, motionless wings. One swooped to the water almost within shot, but missed the fish, or whatever his intended prey might be. A water ouzel or two were the only other living creatures which appeared to draw our attention for a moment from the sway of the mighty stream and the succession of the dizzy heights. Below the pass the stream widens again. You lose something of the feeling of power in the mass of water below you, though the superficial excitement of whirl, and rush, and eddy, is much increased. Here, at Orsova, a small military town on the frontier line between Hungary and Wallachia, we turned out into a flat-bottomed steamer, with four tiny paddle-wheels, drawing only some three feet of water, which was to carry us over the Iron Gates, as the rapids are called; and beautifully the little duck fulfilled her task. The English on board, three ladies and five men, had already fraternised; we occupied the places in the bows. The deck was scarcely a yard above water, and there were no bulwarks, only a strong rail to lean against. The rush of the stream here beat any mill-race I have ever seen, and the little steamer bounded along over the leaping, boiling water at the rate of a fast train. Twice only she plunged a little, shipping just enough water to cause some discomposure amongst the ladies’ dresses, and to wet our feet. We shot past the wreck of a Turkish iron Steamer in the wildest part, which had grounded on its way up to Belgrade with munitions of war. The Servians had boarded and burnt her, and there she lay, and will lie, till the race washes her to pieces, for there is nothing to be got out of her now except the iron of her hull. Below the Iron Gate, a fine Austrian steamer received us, and we moved statelily out into the stream on our remaining thirty hours’ voyage. We had left the mountains, but were still amongst respectable hills covered with forest, full of game, an engineer officer who was on board told us, and plenty of wolves to be had in the winter—too many, indeed, occasionally. A friend of his had knocked up a little wooden shooting-box in these Wallachian forests—a rough affair, with a living-room below, a bedroom above. He had found the wolves so shy that he scarcely believed in them; however, to give the matter a fair trial, he asked three or four friends to his box, bought a dead horse, and roasted him outside. The speedy consequence was such a crowd of wolves that he and his friends had to take refuge in the bedroom and fight for their lives; as it was, the wolves were very near starving them out. And now the river had widened again, and water-fowl could rest and feed on the surface.

The hot evening, for hot enough it was, though cool in comparison of the day, brought them out in flocks round the islands and over the shallows. I was just feasting my eyes with the sight of wild swans, quite at their ease in our neighbourhood, when three huge white birds came sailing past with a flight almost as steady as the eagles we had seen in the Kazan. “What are they?” I said eagerly to my companion, the engineer. “Pelicans,” he answered, as coolly as if they had been water-hens. In another moment they lighted on the water, and I saw their long bills and pouches. Fancy the new sensation, sir! But on this part of the Danube there is no want of new sensations. Our first stop at a Bulgarian village—or town, perhaps, I should call it, for it boasted a tumble-down fort, with some rude earthworks, and half a dozen minarets shot up from amongst its houses and vineyards—may be reckoned amongst the chief of these. What can be more utterly new to an Englishman than to come upon a crowd of poor men, who have their daily bread to earn, half of whom are quietly asleep, and the rest squatting or standing about, without offering, or thinking of offering, to help when there is work to be done under their noses? One was painfully reminded of the eager, timid anxiety to be allowed to carry luggage for a penny or two which one meets with at home. Here one had clearly got into the blissful realms where time is absolutely of no account, and if you want a thing done, you can do it yourself. Our arrival was evidently an event looked forward to in some sort, for there were goods on the wharf waiting for us, and several of the natives had managed to bring down great baskets full of grapes, by which they had seated themselves. We were all consumed with desire for grapes, and headed by the steward of the vessel, who supplies his table here, rushed ashore and fell upon the baskets. It seemed to be a matter of perfect indifference to the owners whether we took them or let them alone, or how many we took, or whether we paid or not. The only distinct idea they had, was that they would not take Austrian money. Our English emissary returned with six or seven huge bunches for which he had given promise to pay two piastres to somebody. The piastre was then (ten days ago) worth one penny, it is now worth twopence—a strange country is Turkey. There were some buffaloes lying in the water, with their great ears flopping, to move the air a little, and keep off flies. A half-grown Turkish lad was squatted near the head of one of them, over which he was scooping up the water with his hands, the only human being in voluntary activity. His work was thoroughly appreciated; I never saw a more perfect picture of enjoyment than the buffalo who was getting this shower-bath. The costumes, of course, are curious and striking to a stranger, but turbans and fezzes, camel’s hair jackets, and loose cotton drawers,—even the absence of these in many instances, and the substitute of copper-coloured flesh as a common garb of the country—are after all only superficial differences. It is the quiet immobility of the men which makes one feel at once that they are a different race, and the complete absence of women in the crowds. The cottages, in general, look like great mole-hills. They look miserable enough, but I believe are well suited to the climate, being sunk three or four feet in the ground, which keeps them cool in summer and warm in winter. Our Crimean experience bears this out. The mud huts sunk in the ground and thatched roughly were far more comfortable all weathers than those sent out from England. The campaign between the Russians and Turks at the beginning of the late war became much clearer to me as we passed down the river. It must be a very difficult operation to invade Bulgaria from the Principalities, for the southern bank commands the dead flat of the Wallachian banks almost all the way down. The serious check which the Russians got at Oltenitza was a great puzzle in England. We could not make out how it happened. Omar Pasha seemed to have made a monstrous blunder in throwing a single division across the river, and we wondered at his luck in getting so well out of it. The fact is that it was a real stroke of generalship. The Russian corps were about to cross at points above and below. Omar’s cannon posted on the Bulgarian heights completely commanded the opposite plain, where a considerable stream runs into the Danube. This stream protected the left flank of the division which crossed, and they threw up earth-works along their front and right. The Russians recalled the corps which were about to cross, thinking to annihilate them, and attacked under a plunging fire from the Turkish artillery on the opposite bank, which, combined with that from the earth-works, was unendurable, and they were repulsed with enormous loss. It is by no means so easy, however, to understand why they did not take Silistria. Here they had crossed, were in great force, and had no strong position to attack. The famous work of Arab Tabia, the key of the position which was so gallantly held by Butler and Nasmyth with a few hundred Turkish soldiers under them, is nothing but a low mound, which you can scarcely make out from the steamer. Why they should not have marched right over it and into the town is a mystery.

The village of Tchernavoda where the steamer lands passengers for Constantinople, consists of a very poor inn, some great warehouses for corn, and some half-dozen Turkish cottages. An English company has made the railroad across to Kustandjie, on the Black Sea, so that you escape the long round by the mouths of the Danube. I fear it must be a very poor speculation, but it is very convenient. The line runs through a chain of lakes, by which it is often flooded. Once last winter the water came nearly into the carriages. The train was, of course, stopped, and had to remain in the water, which froze hard in the night. I believe the passengers had to proceed over the ice. If any young Englishman who combines the tastes of a sportsman and naturalist wants a field for his energies, I can’t fancy a better one than these lakes. The birds swarm; every sort of duck and sea-bird one had ever heard of, besides pelicans, wild swans, bitterns, (the first I ever saw out of a museum) and herons, and I know not what other fowl were there, especially a beautiful white bird exactly like our heron, but snowy white. I saw two of these. I don’t believe they were storks, at least not the common kind which I have seen.

We had been journeying past the scene of the late conferences, and of the excitement which was so nearly breaking out into war a month or two back, and had plenty of Servians and other interested persons on board; but, so far as I could learn, everything is quieting down into its ordinary state—an unsatisfactory one, no doubt, but not unlikely to drag on for some time yet. Should the Servians and other discontented nationalities, however, break out and come to be in need of a king, or other person of that kind, just now, they may have the chance of getting two countrymen of ours to fill such posts. We left them preparing to invade Servia on a shooting and exploring expedition, armed with admirable guns, revolvers, and a powder for the annihilation of insects. They were quite aware of the present unsettled state of affairs, and prepared to avail themselves of anything good which might turn up on their travels.

Constantinople, 34th September 1862.

The Eastern question! It is very easy indeed to have distinct notions on the Eastern question. I had once, not very long ago neither. Of course, like every Englishman, I was for fighting, sooner than the Russians, or any other European Power, should come to the Bosphorus without the leave of England, and that as often as might be necessary, and quite apart from any consideration as to the internal state of the country. But as for the Turks, I as much thought that their time was about over in Europe as the Czar Nicholas when he talked of the sick man to Sir Hamilton Seymour. They were a worn-out horde, the degenerate remnant of a conquering race, who were keeping down with the help of some of the Christian Powers, ourselves notably amongst the number, Christian subjects—Bulgarians, Servians, Greeks, and others—more numerous and better men than themselves. I could never see why these same Christian subjects should not be allowed to kick the Turks out of Europe if they could, or why we should take any trouble to bolster them up. Perhaps I do not see yet why they should not be allowed, if they can do it by themselves; but I am free to acknowledge that the Eastern question, the nearer you get to it, and the more you look into it, like many other political questions, gets more and more puzzling and complicated and turns up quite a new side to you. A week or two on the Bosphorus spent in looking about one, and sucking the brains of men of all nations who have had any experience of this remarkable country, make one see that there is a good deal to be said for wishing well to the Turks, notwithstanding their false creed and bad practices. I hear here the most wonderfully contradictory evidence about these Turks. They have one quality of a ruling nation assuredly in perfection—the power of getting themselves heartily hated. But so far as I could test them, the common statements as to their dishonesty and corruption are vague and general if you try to sift them, and I find that even those who abuse them are apt in practice to prefer them to Creeks, Armenians, or any other of the subject people in these parts. On the other hand, you certainly do hear much of the honesty of the lower classes of the Turks. For instance, it seems that contracts are scarcely ever made here in writing, and in actions of debt if a Turk will appear and swear that he was never indebted, the case is at an end, and he walks out of court a free man. Admiral Slade, amongst his other functions, is judge of a court which is a sort of mixture of an Admiralty and County Court, in which he tries very many actions of debt in the year. After an experience of nearly three years he told my informant that he had had only two cases in which a defendant had adopted this summary method of getting out of his difficulties. Again in the huge maze of bazaars in Stamboul there is a quarter, some sixty yards square, at least, I should say, which is par excellence the Turkish bazaar. The Jews, Armenians, and Greeks, who far out-number the Turks in the other quarters of the bazaars, have no place here; or if an Armenian or two creep in, it is only on sufferance. The Turks are a very early nation, and not given to overwork themselves, and this bazaar of theirs is shut at twelve o’clock every day, or soon afterwards, and left in charge of one man. I passed through it one day when many of the shops were closing. The process consisted of just sweeping the smaller articles into a sort of closet which each merchant has at the back of the divan on which he sits, and leaving the heavier articles (such as old inlaid firelocks, swords, large china vases, and the like) where they were, hanging or standing outside. Most of the merchandise, I quite admit, is old rubbish; still there are many articles of considerable value and very portable, and certainly every possible temptation to robbery is given both to those who shut up latest and to the man who is left in charge of all this property, and yet a theft of the smallest article is unheard of. In this very bazaar I saw an instance of honesty which struck me much. The custom of trade here is, as every one knows, that the vendor asks twice or three times as much as he will take, and you have to beat him down to a fair price. I accompanied a lady who had to make some purchases. After a hard struggle, she succeeded in getting what she wanted at her own price; but her adversary evidently felt aggrieved, and declared that he should be a loser by the transaction. She cast up the total in her head, paid the money; her cavass (as they call the substitutes for footmen here, who accompany ladies about the streets with scimitars by their sides, and sticks in their hands, to belabour the Jews and Greeks with who get in the way) had taken up the things, and we had left the shop, when the aggrieved merchant came out, called us back, explained to her that she had made a wrong calculation by ten francs or so, and refunded the difference. I was much surprised. The whole process was so like an attempt to cheat that it seemed very odd that the man who habitually practised it should yet scruple to take advantage of such a slip as this. But my companion, who knows the bazaars well, assured me that it was always the case. A Turk does not care what he asks you, often loses impatient customers by asking fabulously absurd prices, but the moment he has made his bargain is scrupulously exact in keeping to it, and will not take advantage of a farthing in changing your foreign money, or of your ignorance of the value of his currency. This was her experience. I might multiply instances of Turkish honesty if it were of any use, but have been unable to collect a single instance of the like virtue on the part of Greeks or Armenians. Every man’s word seems against them, though their sharpness in trade and cleverness and activity in other ways are admitted on all hands. I found that every one whose judgment I could at all depend on, however much he might dislike the Turks, preferred them to any other of the people of the country whenever there was any question of trust. So, on the whole, notwithstanding their idleness, their hatred of novelties and love of backsheesh, their false worship and bigotry, and the evils which this false worship brings in its train, I must say that the immense preponderance of oral evidence is in their favour, as decidedly the most upright and respectable of the races who inhabit Turkey in Europe. One does not put much faith in one’s own eyes in a question of this kind, but, taking them for what they are worth, mine certainly led me to the same conclusion. The Turkish boatmen, porters, shopmen, contrast very favourably with their Greek and other rivals.

In short, they look particularly like honest self-respecting men, which the others emphatically do not.

If this be true, and so long as it continues to be true, I for one am for keeping the Turks where they are. And this does not involve any intervention on our parts. They are quite able to hold their own if no foreign power interferes with them, and all we have to do is to see that they are fairly let alone, which is not the case at present. For the present Government of Fuad Pasha is the best and strongest Turkey has seen for many a year. Fuad’s doings in Syria led one to expect considerable things of him, for few living statesmen have successfully solved such a problem as putting down the disturbances there, avenging the Damascus massacre, quieting the religious excitement, and getting the French out of the country. All this, however, he managed with great firmness and skill, and since he has been Prime Minister he has given proofs of ability in another direction equally important for the future of his country. Turkish finance was in a deplorable state when he came into power. I don’t suppose that it is in a very sound condition now, but at any rate the first, and a very important, step has been successfully made. Until within the last few months the paper currency here, called caimé, has been the curse of the country. There were somewhere about five million sterling’s worth of small notes, for sums from ten piastres (2s.) to fifty piastres in circulation. The value of these notes was constantly fluctuating, often varying thirty or forty per cent in a few days. The whole of these notes have been called in by the present Government and exchanged for small silver coin within the last two months, so that now the value of the piastre in Turkey is fixed. A greater blessing to the country can scarcely be conceived, and the manner in which the conversion has been effected has been most masterly. The English loan, no doubt, has enabled Fuad to do this, and he has had Lord Hobart at his elbow to advise and assist him in the operation. But, making all proper drawbacks, a very large balance of credit is due to the Turkish Government, as will appear when the English Commissioner’s Report appears in due course, the contents of which I have neither the knowledge nor the wish to anticipate. The settlement, for the present, at least, of the Servian and Montenegrin difficulties are further proofs, it seems to me, of the vigour and ability of the present Government. But still, giving the Turkish statesmen now in power full credit for all they have done, one cannot help feeling that this Eastern question is full of the most enormous difficulties, is, in short, about the most complicated of all the restless, importunate, ill-mannered questions that are crying out “Come, solve me,” in this troublesome old continent of ours.

For it hardly needs a voyage to the East to convince any man who cares about such matters that this Turkish Empire is in a state of solution. If one did want convincing on the point, a few days here would be enough to do it. Let him spend a few hours as I did last week at the Sweet Waters of Asia on a Turkish Sunday (Friday), and he will scarcely want further proof. The Sweet Waters of Asia are those of a muddy little rivulet, which flow into the sparkling Bosphorus some four miles above Constantinople. Along the side of this stream, at its junction with the Bosphorus, is a small level plain, which has been for I know not how long the resort of the Turkish women. Here they come once a week on their Sundays, to look at the hills and the Bosphorus without the interference of blinds and jalousies, and at some other human beings besides the slaves and other inmates of their own harems. You arrive there in a caique, and find yourself at a jump plump in the middle of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The Sultan has built a superb kiosk (summer-house) here, with a façade and balustrade of beautiful white marble, one hundred yards long, fronting the Bosphorus. (They tell me, by the way, that the whole kiosk is of the same white marble, and so it may be, but, at any rate, if it be, it is most superfluously covered with yellow stucco.) Outside the enclosure of his kiosk, at the Bosphorus end of the little plain, and some fifty yards from the shore, is a fine square marble fountain, with texts from the Koran in green and gold upon it, and steps all round. A few plane-trees give a little shade round it. On all the steps of the fountain, along the kiosk garden wall, under the plane-trees, and out on the turf of the valley, are seated Turkish women of every rank, from the Grand Vizier’s wife and family, on superbly embroidered cushions and carpets, and cloaked in the most fascinating purple and pink silks, down to poor men’s wives, in faded stuffs, on old scraps of drugget which a rag-collector would scarcely pick out of the gutter. Others of the veiled women are driving slowly round the little plain in the strangest carriages, just like Cinderella’s coach in the children’s books, or in arabas drawn by two oxen, and ornamented with silk or cotton hangings. Here the poor women sit, or drive, or walk for an hour or two, and smoke cigarettes, and eat fruit and sweetmeats, and drink coffee, which viands are brought with them or supplied by itinerant dealers on the ground. So far, the scene is just what it might have been in the days of Haroun Alraschid, and the black eunuchs standing about or walking by the carriages seem to warn off all contact with the outer world. But what is the fact? There were English and French ladies sitting on the carpets of the Grand Vizier’s wife and talking with her. There were men and women of all nations walking about or sitting close by the veiled groups, and plenty of Turkish men looking on, or themselves talking to unbelievers, and seeming to think that it was all quite natural. It is impossible in a few words to convey the impression of utter incongruity which this and other scenes of the same kind give one. Islamism and Frankism—Western civilisation, or whatever you like to call it,—I dare not call it Christianity,—are no longer at arm’s length. They are fairly being stirred up together. What will come of it? At a splendid garden fête, given by a great Pasha in the spring, amongst other novelties dancing was perpetrated. The Pasha is a Turk of advanced ideas. His wife (he has only one) and the other women of his household were allowed to look on from the harem windows. “In two years they will be down here, in five they will be dancing, and in ten they will wear crinolines,” said an Englishman to one of the French Embassy with whom he was walking. “Et alors l’empire serait sauvé,” replied the Frenchman. Not exactly so, perhaps, but still the speakers were touching the heart of the Eastern question. The harem or the Turks will have to go down in Europe in the next few years. But as this letter is already too long, I hope you will let me say what I have to say on the subject in my next.

Constantinople, 30th September 1862.

Amongst the many awkward facts which the Turks in Europe have to look in the face and deal with speedily, there is one which seems specially threatening. They have no class of educated men. “Some remedy must be found for this,” say their friends; “things cannot go on as they are. The body of your people may be, we believe they are, sound and honest as times go, superior indeed in all essentials to the other races who are mixed up with them, but this will not avail you much longer.” Steamboats, telegraphs, railways, have invaded Turkey already. The great tide of modern material civilisation is flooding in upon the East, with its restless, unmanageable eddies and waves, which have sapped, and are sapping, the foundations, and overwhelming the roof trees, of stronger political edifices than that of the Sublime Porte. If you Turks cannot control and manage the tide, it will very soon drown you. Now where are your men to do this? You have just now Fuad Pasha, and three or four other able men, and reasonably honest, who understand their time, and are guiding your affairs well. Besides them you have a few dozen men—we can count them on our fingers—who have educated themselves decently, and who may possibly prove fit for the highest places. But that is doubtful, and for all minor offices, executive, administrative, judicial, you have no competent men at all. The places are abominably filled, and for one Turk who is able to fill them even thus badly you have to employ ten foreigners, generally renegades. This is what Turkish patriots have to look to. You must find a class of men capable of dealing with this modern deluge, or you will have to move out of Europe, all we can say or do to the contrary notwithstanding.

All very true, say the enemies of the Turks. The facts are patent enough, but the remedy! That is all moonshine. You cannot have an educated class of Turks, and you cannot stop the deluge; so you had better stand back and let it sweep over them as soon as may be, and look out for something to follow.

I believe that this dispute does touch the very heart of the Eastern question, for it goes to the root of their social life; and the answer to it must depend, in great part, upon the future of their “peculiar institution”—the harem. For, alas the day! the harem is the place of education for Turkish boys of the upper classes. And how can it be helped? The boys must be with the women for the first years of their lives, and the women must be in the harems. We need not believe all the stories which are current about the abominations of these places. It is quite likely that the number of child-murders and other atrocities, which one hears of on all sides, may be exaggerated. But where there is a part of every rich man’s house into which the police cannot enter, which is to all intents beyond the reach of the law—in which the inmates, all of one sex, are confined, with no connection with the outer world, and no occupations or interests whatever except food and dress (they are not even allowed to attend mosque)—one can hardly be startled by anything which one may be told of what is done in them; and it is impossible to conceive a more utterly enervating and demoralising place for a boy to be brought up in. There is nothing in Turkey answering to the great schools, colleges, and universities of Western Europe. There is no healthy home life to substitute for them. The harem is the place of education, and, with very rare exception, the boys come out of its atmosphere utterly unfitted for any useful active life.

This is the great difficulty of the Turks in Europe. If they could break the neck of it the others need not frighten them; and so the best of them feel, and are doing something towards meeting the difficulty. Many Turks are setting the example of taking only one wife, and of living with her in their own houses as the men of Christian nations do. A few have done away with the separate system, so far as they themselves are concerned, and their harems are so only in name. They encourage foreign ladies to call on their wives, and would gladly go further. Some of them have even tried taking their wives with them into public; but this has been premature. The nation will not stand it yet. The women themselves object. The few who feel the degradation of their present lives, and are anxious to help their husbands in getting rid of it, are looked upon with so much suspicion that they dare not move on so fast. Honest female conservatism has taken fright, and combines with vice, sloth, and jealousy, to keep things as they are. However, the women will come round fast enough if the men are only in earnest. They get all their outer-world notions from the men, and as soon as the men will say, “We wish you to live with us as the Giaours’ wives live with them,” the thing will be done.

I may say, then, from what I have myself seen and heard, that a serious attempt is being made by the Turks—few in number, certainly, at present, but strong in position and character—to break the chain of their old customs, especially this of the harem, and to conform outwardly to Western habits and manners. This is being done mainly for political reasons, and if nothing more enters into the movement will probably fail; for, in spite of the great changes which have taken place in Turkey in Europe of late years, there is a tremendous power of passive resistance and hatred of all change amongst the people, which no motives of expediency will be able to break through. It will take something deeper than political expediency to do that. Is there the sign of any such power above the horizon?

Well, sir, of course my opinion is worth very little. A fortnight’s residence in a country, whatever opportunities one may have had, and however one may have tried and desired to use them, cannot be of much use in judging questions of this kind. Take my impressions, then, for what they are worth, at any rate they are honest, and the result of the best observation of a deeply interested spectator. Islamism as a religious faith is all but gone in Turkey in Europe. Up to 1856 the Turks were still a dominant and persecuting race, and Islamism a persecuting creed. Since the Hatti humayoun, which was, perhaps, the most important result of the Crimean war, there has been nominally absolute religious toleration—actually something very nearly approaching to it—in Turkey in Europe. Islamism was spread by the sword, and the consequence of this method of propagation was that large layers of the population were only nominally converted. These have never since been either Moslem or Christians but a bad mixture of the two. Since 1856 this has become more and more apparent. I will only mention one fact bearing on the point, though I heard many. An American missionary traveller in a part of Roumelia not very far from Constantinople found the people, though nominally Turks, yet with many Christian practices and traditions, to which they were much attached, but which they had till lately kept secret. They did not seem inclined to make any further profession of Christianity, or to give up their Moslem profession, but were anxious that he should read the Bible to them. They had not heard it for generations, but had preserved the tradition of it. He did so; and afterwards parties of them would come to the Bosphorus to his house to hear him read, and, I believe, do so still. It is a curious story to hear of bodies of men sitting to hear the old Book read, and weeping and going away. It takes one back to the finding of the Book of the Law in Josiah’s day. Amongst the Turks proper there is only one article of Islamism which is held with any strength, and that is the hatred of any approach to image worship. In this they are fanatics still. Thirty years ago the then Sultan nearly caused a revolution by having his likeness put on coin. The issue was called in, and to this day there is nothing but a cipher on the piastres and other Turkish coin. The rest of their faith sits very lightly on them, and is much more of a political than a religious garment. There is a strong feeling of patriotism amongst the people (though it, and all else that is noble, seems to have died out amongst the insignificant upper class, if one may speak of such a thing here)—a patriotism of race more than of country; and it is this, and not their faith, which is holding the present state of things together.

Now, I am not going to tell you, sir, that the Turks in Europe are about to be converted to Christianity. I only say that Islamism is all but dead on our continent; that the most able and far-seeing of the Turks see and feel this more and more every day themselves; that they are themselves adopting, and are trying to introduce, practices and habits which are utterly inconsistent with their old creed; that they have, in fact, already virtually abandoned it. “We must have a civilisation,” the best men amongst them say; “but what we want is a Turkish civilisation, and not a French, or Russian, or English civilisation.” Yes; but on what terms is such a civilisation possible for you? Well, sir, I am old-fashioned enough to believe myself that the Christian faith is the only possible civiliser of mankind. The only civilisation which has reached the East—the outside civilisation of steam, gas, and the like—will do nothing but destroy, unless you have something stronger to graft it upon. What is the good of sending messages half round the world in a few seconds, if the messages are lies; of carrying cowards and scoundrels about at the rate of fifty-miles an hour; of forging instruments of fearful power for the hands of the oppressors of the earth? Not much will come of this kind of civilisation alone for any nation; and, as for these poor Turks, it is powerful enough to blow them up altogether, and that is all it will do for them.

When one stands in Great Sophia, and sees the defaced crosses, and the names of Mahomet and his successors, on huge ugly green sign-boards, hanging in the most prominent places of the noblest church of the East, it is difficult not to feel something of the Crusading spirit. But, if the Turks were swept out of Europe to-morrow, I doubt whether it would not be a misfortune for the world. We should not only be expelling the best race of the country, but they would retire into Asia sullen and resentful, hating the West and its faith more than ever. Islamism would gain new life from the reaction which would take place; for the Turks will not go without making a strong fight, and Turkey in Europe would be left to a riff-raff of nominal Christians, with more than all the vices and none of the redeeming virtues of their late masters. It would be a far higher and nobler triumph for Christendom to see the Turks restoring the crosses and taking down the sign-boards. That sooner or later they will become Christians I have no sort of doubt whatever, after seeing them; for they are too strong a race to disappear. No nation can go on long without a faith, and there is none other for them to turn to. Modern Greeks may regret their old Paganism—here they say seriously that many of them openly avow it; but for a Turk who finds Islamism crumble away beneath him, it must be Christianity or nothing. The greatest obstacle to the conversion of Turkey will be the degradation of the subject Christian races. It is, no doubt, a tremendous obstacle, but there have been tremendous obstacles before now which have been cleared by weaker people.

I daresay I shall seem lunatic to you, sir, though I know it will not be because you think the Christian faith is itself pretty well used up, and ought to be thinking of getting itself carried out and buried decently, instead of making new conquests. But if you had been living for a fortnight on the Bosphorus, you could not help wishing well to the old Turks any more than I, and I don’t believe you, any more than I, could by any ingenuity find out what good to wish them, except speedy conversion. With that all reforms will follow rapidly enough.

If you are not thoroughly outraged by these later productions of mine I will promise to avoid the Eastern question proper, and will try to give you something more amusing next week. Meanwhile, believe me ever faithfully yours.

Athens, 1st October 1862.

I am afraid, to judge by my own café, it is quite impossible to give anything like a true idea of Constantinople to those who have never been there; at any rate it would require a volume and not two columns to do it, but I can’t help trying to impart some of my own impressions to your readers. Miles away in the Sea of Marmora you first catch sight of the domes and minarets (like huge wax candles with graceful black extinguishers on them) of the capital of the East. As you near the mouth of the Bosphorus, on the European side lies the Seraglio Point with its palaces, Sublime Porte, and public offices and gardens full of noble cypresses. On the Asiatic side lies Scutari, the great hospital, with the English cemetery and Marochetti’s monument in front of it, occupying the highest and most conspicuous point. Midway between the two shores is a rock called Leander’s rock, on which is a picturesque little lighthouse. Passing this you turn short to the left round Seraglio Point, and open at once the view of the whole city. The Golden Horn runs right away in front of you, and on the promontory between it and the Sea of Marmora lies the old town of Stamboul, crowned with the mosques of St. Sophia and Sultan Achmet. A curious old wooden bridge, some five hundred yards in length, crosses the Golden Horn and connects it with Galata, a mass of custom-houses, barracks and offices, broken by a handsome open square, at one end of which is the Sultan’s mosque. Behind these the houses are piled up the steep hill side, and at the top stands the striking old tower of Galata, from which you get the finest view of Constantinople. Beyond comes Pera, the European quarter, where are the Embassies and Missouri’s Hotel. Of course a vast city lining such a harbour and strait as the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus must be beautiful, but there is something very peculiar in the beauty of Constantinople, which the splendid site alone will not account for. I tried hard to satisfy myself what it was, and believe that it lies in the wonderful colouring of the place. The mosques are splendid, but not so fine as many Gothic churches, and the houses in general are far inferior to those of most other capitals; and yet, seen in the mass, they are strikingly beautiful, for those which are not of wood are almost all covered with boarding, which is stained or painted in many different colours. Many of them are a deep russet brown, others slate gray, or blue, or deep yellow, some pale green with the windows picked out in red. The colours are not fresh, but toned down. Then very many of the houses have court-yards, or small gardens, and you get the fresh foliage of orange-trees, and figs, and cypresses, as a further contrast, and for flooring and ceiling the blue of the Bosphorus water and of the cloudless Eastern sky. The moment you get into the wretched, narrow, unpaved streets, the charm goes; but while you keep to the great high street of the Bosphorus, I don’t believe there is any such treat in the world for the lover of colour. And the shape of the houses, too, is picturesque: as a rule they have flat roofs and deep overhanging eaves, and rows of many windows with open Venetian shutters. As we have no time to spare, we will not attempt the town, but stick to the high street.

There are three accepted ways of passing up and down the Bosphorus. There is the common market-boat of the country—a huge, lumbering, fiat-bottomed affair, about the size of a Thames lighter, but with high bows and stern. It is propelled by six or eight boatmen, each pulling a huge oar some eighteen feet long. They pull a long, steady stroke, each man stepping up on to the thwart in front of him at the beginning of his stroke, and throwing himself back till his weight has dragged his oar through, and he finds himself back on his own seat, from which he at once springs up and steps forward again for a fresh stroke. It must be splendid training exercise, and they make a steady four miles an hour against the stream;—no bad pace, for the boats are loaded with fruit-baskets and packages and passengers—the veiled women sitting in a group apart in the stern. Then there are the steamers, which ply every hour up and down, the express boats touching at one or two principal piers, and doing the twelve miles from the bridge at Stamboul to Bajukdere in an hour and a quarter, the others stopping at every pier, and taking two hours or more. They are Government boats, for passengers only, and the fares are somewhat higher than those of our Thames steamers. They have a long glazed cabin on the after-deck for the first-class male passengers, and a small portion screened off further aft, where the veiled women are crowded together. Until lately, all women were accustomed to travel behind this screen, but the unveiled are beginning to break the rule, and to intrude into the cabin of the lords of creation. You see the Turks lift their eyebrows slightly as women in crinoline squeeze by them and take their seats, but it is too late for any further demonstration. An awning is spread over the whole deck, cabin and all, and under it the passengers, who are too late to get seats in the cabin, sit about on small low stools. Such a colluvies gentium and Babel of tongues no man can see or hear anywhere else I should think. By your side, perhaps, sits a scrupulously clean old Turk, with his legs tucked up under him and his slippers on the floor beneath. He has the vacant hopeless look of an opium-eater, and you see him take out his little box from his belt, and feel with nervous fingers how large a pellet he may venture on in consideration of the bad company he is in. On the other side an English sailor boy, delighted to be able to talk broad Durham to somebody, is telling you how he has been down to the bazaars and has bought a “hooble booble,” and a bottle of attar of roses for the folk at home, and speculating how they would give £5, he knows, at Sunderland, to see one of those women who look as if they were done up in grave-clothes. Opposite you have a couple of silky-haired Persians, with their long soft eyes and clear olive skins, high head-dresses and sombre robes, and all about a motley crowd of Turks, Circassians, and Greeks, Europeans with muslin round their wideawakes, Maltese, English, and French skippers, soldiers in coarse zouave and other uniforms, most of them smoking, and the waiters (Italians generally), edging about amongst them all with little brazen coffee-trays. An artist wishing to draw the heads of all nations could find no richer field, and in the pursuit of his art would not of course object to the crush and heat and odour; but as we are more bent on comfort, we will go up the Bosphorus in the third conveyance indicated above, a caique—and a more fascinating one can scarcely be conceived. You may have your caique of any size, from one pair of sculls up to the splendid twelve-oared state affairs of ambassadors and pashas; but that with three caiquejees or rowers seems to be the most in use amongst the rich folk, so we can scarcely do wrong in selecting it.

Our three-manned caique shall belong to an English merchant, the happy owner of a summer villa at Therapia or Bajukdere. He shall be waiting for us, and shall board the steamer as it drops anchor opposite Seraglio Point. While our portmanteau is being fished up from the hold, we have time to examine critically his turn-out. The caique is about the size of an old-fashioned four-oar, but more strongly built, with a high sharp bow and a capital flat floor, and lies on the water as lightly as a wild duck. The caiquejees’ seats are well forward. The stern is decked for some eight feet, and in this deck is a hole, so that you can stow your luggage away underneath. When the ladies use the caique, their cavass, with his red fez, blue braided coat and scimitar, sits grimly with his legs in the hole and gives their orders to the caiquejees. Comfortable cushions lying on a small Turkey carpet, between the little deck and the stretcher of the stroke oar, in the roomiest part of the boat, await you. You will lounge on them with your shoulders against the deck, a white umbrella over your head, and a cigarette in your mouth. In the climate of the Bosphorus, cigarettes of Turkish tobacco supersede all other forms of the weed. The caiquejees are wiry, bronzed Turks; their costume, the red fez, a loose coloured jacket, generally blue, which they strip off for work, and appear in Broussa shirts of camels’ hair fitting to the body, with loose sleeves reaching only to the elbow, and baggy white cotton drawers tied at the knee. The stroke wears stockings, which the others dispense with; each of them keeps his slippers under his own seat. They each pull a pair of straight sculls fastened to a single thole pin by a greased thong. You follow your friend and portmanteau down the gangway and start, and are at once delighted at the skill with which your crew steer through the crowds of Maltese boats and caiques, and under great steamers and merchant ships, and fall into their regular stroke, twenty-eight to the minute, which they never vary for the whole twelve miles. Their form, too, is all that can be desired, and would not discredit a London waterman. Turning up the Bosphorus you soon lose sight of the Golden Horn, and the old rickety bridge which spans it from Stamboul to Galata. You pull away at first under the European shore, past the magnificent palace of the present Sultan, gleaming white in the sun; and then come other huge piles, some tumbling to pieces, some used as barracks, and private houses of all sizes and colours, in their little gardens, and warehouses, coffee-shops, cemeteries, fruit-markets and mosques. Not a yard of the bank but is occupied with buildings, and the houses are piled far up the hillside behind. It is the same on the Asiatic side, except that there the houses next to the water are chiefly those of the rich Turks, as you may guess from the carefully barred and jalousied windows of the harems, and that the line of houses is not so deep. And so on for five miles you glide up the strait, half a mile or more wide, alive with small boats moving about, and men-of-war steamers riding at anchor, through one continuous street. Then comes the narrowest part, where the current runs like a mill-tail against you. On the European side stand the three towers, connected with battlemented walls, built by Mahomed’s orders in the winter before the taking of Stamboul and the extinction of the Western Empire. Roumelie Hissa the point is called now, and behind it rises the highest hill on the Bosphorus. If it is not too hot, your friend will land and walk up with you, and when you have reached the top you will see Olympus and the distant Nicomedian mountains over the Sea of Marmora to the south, and the whole line of the Bosphorus below you, and the Giants’ Mountain and the Black Sea away to the north. Behind you lie wild moorlands, covered with heather and gum cistus, and arbutus bushes, and a small oak shrub. Here and there in the hollows are small patches of vines and other culture, with occasional clumps of stone pine and Scotch fir, and chestnut and beech, amongst which scanty herds of buffaloes and goats wander, watched by melancholy, truculent-looking herdsmen, in great yellow capotes and belts, from which a brace of long, old-fashioned pistols and the hilt of a long straight dagger stick out. But, desolate as the European side is, it is a garden compared to the Asiatic. You look across there, and behind the little bright belt of life along the Bosphorus, there is nothing between you and the horizon but desert heathery hills, running away as far as the eye can reach, without a house, a tree, a beast, or the slightest sign of life upon them. I scarcely ever saw so lovely a view, and it is thrown out into the most vivid contrast by the life at your feet. You descend to your caique again, and now are aware of a towing-path which runs at intervals along in front of the houses. A lot of somewhat wretched-looking Turks here wait with ropes to tow the caiques and other boats up the rapids. Your stroke catches the end of the rope, and fastens it, exclaiming, “Haidee babai” (so it sounds), “Push on, my fathers; push on, my lambs”; and two little Turks, passing the rope over their shoulders, toil away for some hundred yards, when they are dismissed with a minute backsheesh. And now the Bosphorus widens out: on the Asiatic side comes the valley of the Sweet Waters of Asia, and the new kiosk of the Sultan, which I spoke of before, and afterwards only occasional villages and the palaces of one or two great pashas. On the European side the houses are still in continuous line, but begin to get more elbow-room, and only in the little creeks, where the villages lie, are the hillsides much built on. Now you begin to see the summer villas of the Europeans, and accordingly an esplanade faced with stone, and broad enough for carriages to pass, begins. This upper part of the Bosphorus has its own charm. The water is rougher, as there is generally a breeze from the Black Sea; and porpoises roll about, and flocks of sea-swallows (âmes damnées) flit for ever over the little restless waves. The banks between the houses and the wild common land of the hill tops are now often taken into the gardens and cultivated in terraces; and where this is not so they are clothed with fine Scotch fir and stone pine, and avenues of cypress of the height of forest trees, with magnificent old gray trunks, marking where paths run up the hillside or standing up alone like sombre sentinels. It is not until you get almost to Therapia that there is any break in the row of houses. Therapia, where Medea is said to have prepared her potions, is a Greek village, built round a little bay, the busiest and almost the prettiest place on the Bosphorus. There are always half a dozen merchantmen lying there, and a sprinkling of European sailors appear amongst the fezzes frequenting the quays formed by the esplanade, and there is a café restaurant, and a grog shop, where the British sailor can be refreshed with the strong liquors of his country. Behind the village is the little cemetery of the Naval Brigade, sadly neglected and overshadowed with beech and chestnut trees, where Captain Lyons and many another fine fellow lie, to whom their countrywomen have raised a large, simple white marble cross, which stands up mournfully amongst the tangled grass which creeps over the rows of nameless graves. One grieves that it is shoved away out of sight of the Bosphorus, up which the brave fellows all went with such stout hearts.

You pass more handsome villas and the summer residences of the English and French ambassadors just above Therapia, and then comes the Bay of Bajukdere, the broadest part of the Bosphorus, with the village of the same name on its north shore, the last and handsomest of the suburbs of Constantinople, where are the other embassies and the palaces of the richest merchants. It was the place where Godfrey of Bouillon encamped with his Crusaders. Beyond, the strait narrows again, and runs between steep cliffs with a sharp turn into the Black Sea, and close to the mouth are the storm-lashed Symplegades.

You must fill up the picture with ships of all sorts under the flags of all the nations of the earth passing up and down, and people the banks with figures in all the quaint and picturesque costumes of the East; but no effort of imagination, I fear, can realise the frame in which the whole is set, the water of the Bosphorus, and the unfathomable Eastern sky. I never had an idea of real depth before. I doubt if it be possible to imagine it. I am sure it is impossible to forget it.

Athens, 4th October 1862.

We left Constantinople for the Piraeus in a French packet. The sun set behind Pera just before we started, and at the same moment a priest came out into the little balcony which runs round each dizzy minaret some three parts of the way up, and called the faithful to prayer. The poor faithful! summoned there still at sunrise and sunset to turn towards Mecca, and fall down before Him who gave that great city, and the fair European countries behind it, to their fathers:—they must pray and work hard too if they mean to stay there much longer. We steamed slowly out from the Golden Horn, round Seraglio Point, and into night on the Sea of Marmora. I was up early the next morning, and saw the sun rise over the islands just as we were entering the Dardanelles. We stopped between Lesbos and Abydos to take in cargo, time enough to charter one of the fruit boats and pull off for a good swim in that romantic water. By ten o’clock we were opening the Ægean Sea, with the road close under our larboard bow and Tenedos in front of us. We saw the mounds on the shore, known as the tombs of Achilles and Ajax, and so passed on wondering. There were half a dozen young Englishmen on board, carrying amongst them a Homer, a Childe Harold, and other classics. We had much debate as we passed point after point as to the possible localities, but I am not sure that we came to any conclusions which are worth repeating. About noon, after we had become familiar with island after island, well remembered as names from school and college days, but now living realities, a faint peak was discovered in the far north-west. What could it be? We applied to an officer, and found it was Athos. You may fancy what the atmosphere was, sir, for Athos must have been at least sixty miles from us at the time.

Night came on before any of us were tired of the Ægean. Next morning at daybreak we were off the southern point of Euboea, with the coast of Attica in sight over the bows. By breakfast-time we were rounding Sunium, with the fair columns of a temple crowning the height, the bay of Salamis before us, and “Morea’s Hills” for a background; and presently the cliffs on the Attic coast gave way to low ground, and one of our company, who had been in these parts before, startled us with “There is the Acropolis!” “Where?” Operaglasses were handed about, and eager looks cast over the plain, till we were aware of a little rocky hill rising up some three miles from the shore, and a town lying round the foot of it. The buildings of the town gleamed white enough in the sun, but the ruins on the Acropolis we could scarcely make out. They were of a deep yellow, not easily distinguishable on this side, and at this distance from the rock below. The first sensation was one of disappointment—we were all candid enough to admit it. We had seen barren coasts enough, but none so bare as this of Attica. Hymettus lay on the right, and Pentelicus further away on the north, behind Athens and the Acropolis; and from their feet right down to the Piraeus, no tree or shrub or sign of cultivation was visible, except a strip of sombre green, a mile or so broad, which ran along the middle of the plain marking the course of the Ilyssus. In the early spring and summer they do get crops off portions of the plain, but by the end of September it is as dry, dusty, and bare as the road to Epsom Downs on a Derby Day.

The little arid amphitheatre, not larger than a moderatesized English county, with its capital and Acropolis, looked so insignificant, and but for the bright sunshine would have been so dreary, that to keep from turning away and not taking a second look at it, one was obliged to keep mentally repeating, “It is Attica, after all!” Matters improved a little as we got nearer, and before the Acropolis was hidden from our view by the steep little hill crowned with windmills which rises up between the Piraeus and Munychia, we could clearly make out the shape of the Parthenon, and confessed that the rock on which it stood was for its size a remarkable one, and in a commanding position.

You see nothing of the Piraeus till you round this hill and open the mouth of the harbour, narrowed to this day by the old Athenian moles, so that there is scarcely room for two large vessels to pass in it. It is a lively little harbour enough. Three men-of-war, English, French, and Greek, were lying there when we entered, and an Austrian Lloyd steamer and a dozen or two merchantmen. We were surrounded by dozens of boats, the boatmen dressed in the white cotton petticoats and long red fezzes, not mere scull-caps like those of the Turks—a picturesque dress enough, but not to be named for convenience or beauty with that of the Bosphorus boatmen.

Most of our party started at once for Athens, but I and a companion, resolved on enjoying the Mediterranean as long as we could, crossed the hill, and descended to the Munychia for a bath, which we achieved in the saltest and most buoyant water I have ever been in. The rocks (volcanic, apparently), on which we dressed and were nearly grilled, were all covered with incrustations of salt, looking as if there had been a tremendous frost the night before. After our bath we strolled through the little port town, hugely amused with the Greek inscriptions over the shop-doors, and with the lively, somewhat rowdy look and ways of the place; and, resisting the solicitations of many of the dustiest kind of cab-drivers, who were hanging about with their vehicles on the look-out for a fare to Athens, struck across the low marsh land, where the Ilissus must run when he can find any water to bring down from the hills, and were soon in amongst the olive groves. Here we were delivered from the dust at any rate, and in a few minutes met a Greek with a basket of grapes on his head, from whom, for half a franc, we purchased six or seven magnificent bunches, and went on our way mightily refreshed. We had made up our minds to be disappointed with the place, and so were not sorry to be out of sight of it, and the olive groves were quite new to us. Some of the old trees were very striking. They were quite hollow, but bearing crops of fruit still quite merrily, as if it were all right, and what was left of the trunk was all divided into grisly old fretwork, as if each root had just run up independently into a branch, and had never really formed part of the tree. They looked as if they might be any age—could Plato have sat or walked under some of them?

Vines grow under the olives, just as currant and gooseberry bushes under the fruit-trees in our market gardens. They were loaded with fine grapes, and the vintage was going lazily on here and there. There were pomegranates too scattered about, the fruit splitting with ripeness. It was tremendously hot, but the air so light and fresh that walking was very pleasant. Presently we came to an open space, and caught a glimpse of the Acropolis; and now that we were getting round to the front of it, and could catch the outline of the Parthenon against the sky, it began to occur to us that we had been somewhat too hasty.

In among the olive groves again, and then out on another and another opening, till at last, when we came upon the Via sacra, we could stand it no longer. The ruins had become so beautiful, and had such an attraction, that giving up the grove of the Academy and Colonus, which were not half a mile ahead of us, and which we had meant to visit, we turned short to the right, and walked straight for the town at a pace which excited the laughter of merry groups dawdling round the little sheds where the winepresses were working. The town through which we had to pass is ugly, dusty, and glaring. There are one or two broad streets, with locust-trees planted along the sides of them, but not old enough yet to give shade; and in the place before the palace, on which our hotel looked, there are a few shrubs and plenty of prickly pears, which seem to be popular with the Athenians, and are the most misshapen hot-looking affairs which I have yet met with in the vegetable world. But shade, shade—one longs for it, and there is none; and the glare and heat are almost too much, even at the beginning of October—in summer it must be unendurable. If the Athenians would only take one leaf out of the book of their old enemies, and stain and paint their houses as the Turks of the Bosphorus do! But though the houses are as ugly as those of a London suburb, and there are no tolerable public buildings except one church, the modern town is a very remarkable one, when one comes to remember that thirty years ago there were only ten or twelve hovels here. But you may suppose that one scarcely looks at or thinks of the modern town; but pushing straight through it, makes for the Acropolis. A fine broad carriage-road runs round the back of the hill, and so up with a long sweep to the bottom of the western face, the one which we had seen from the olive groves. You can manage to pass the stadium and the columns of Jupiter on your left, as you ascend, without diverging, but even to reach the Parthenon you cannot go by the theatre of Dionysus, lying on your right against the northern face of the Acropolis, without stopping. They are excavating and clearing away the rubbish every day from new lines of seats; you can trace tier above tier now, right up the face of the hill, till you get to precipitous cliff; and down below, in the dress circle, the * marble seats are almost as fresh as the day they were made; and most comfortable stalls they are, though uncushioned, with the rank of their old occupants still fresh on them. You could take your choice and sit in the stall of a [Greek phrase] as you fancied. Below was the actual stage on which the tragedies of Sophocles and Æschylus were played to audiences who understood even the toughest chorus; and, for a background, Hymettus across the plain, and the sea and islands! We passed yet another theatre as we went up the hill, but nothing now could turn us from the Parthenon, and certainly it very far exceeded anything I had ever dreamt of. Every one is familiar with the shape and position and colour of the ruins from photographs and paintings. We look at them and admire, and suppose they grew there, or at any rate scarcely give a thought to how they did get there.

But I’ll defy any man to walk up the Propylæa and about the Parthenon without being struck with wonder at the simple question, how it all got there. Can the stories we have all been taught be true? Leaving beauty altogether out of the question, here you are in the midst of the wreck of one of the largest buildings you ever were in. You see that it was built of blocks of white marble; that the columns are formed of these blocks, each some four feet high, and so beautifully fitted together that at the distance of two thousand years you very often cannot find the joints, except where the marble is chipped. You see that the whole of this building was originally surrounded by most elaborate sculpture; you see that the whole side of the hill up which you approach the great temple was converted into a magnificent broad staircase of white marble—in short, you see probably the greatest architectural feat that has ever been done in the world, and are told that it was done by a small tribe—not more numerous than the population of a big English town—who lived in that little barren corner of earth which you can overlook from end to end from your standing-place, in the lifetime of one generation; that Pericles thought the idea out, and the Athenians quarried the marble, carried it up there, carved it, and built it up, in his lifetime. Well, it is hard to believe; but when one has sat down on one of the great blocks, and looked over Salamis and Ægina, and the Isthmus of Corinth, and then down at the groves of the Academy and the Pynx and the Areopagus, and remembered that at this very time the thoughts, and methods of thought, of that same small tribe are still living, and moulding the minds of all the most civilised and powerful nations of the earth, the physical wonder, as usual, dwarfs and gives way before the spiritual. We saw the sunset, of course, from the front of the Parthenon, and then descended to the Areopagus, and stood on, or at any rate within a few feet of, the place where the glorious old Hebrew of the Hebrews stood, and looking up at those marvellous temples made by man, spoke a strange story in the ears of the crowd, whose only pleasure was to hear or tell some new thing. It is the only place where I have ever come in my journeyings right across the Scripture narrative, and certainly the story shines out with new light after one has stood on the very rock, and felt how the scene before Paul’s eyes must have moved him.

We got to our inn after dark, and after dining went to a Greek play. Theatre and acting both decidedly second-rate, the audience consisting chiefly of officers—smart-looking young fellows enough. There were two murders in the first act, but I regret to say that we could none of us make out the story of the play. There were half a dozen young men, all with good brains, none of whom had left our Universities more than two years, at which the Greek language is all but the most prominent study, and yet they might as well have been hearing Arabic. As for myself—unluckily my ear is so bad that I can never catch words which are not familiar to me—on this occasion, indeed, I could almost have sworn the actors were using French words. But it really is a pity that we can’t take to the modern Greek pronunciation in England. One goes into Athens, and can read all the notices and signs, and even spell through a column of newspaper with a little trouble, and yet, though one would give one’s ears to be able to talk, cannot understand a word, or make oneself understood. We managed, however, to get a clear enough notion that something serious was going to happen; and from several persons, French, Italian, and Greek, learned positively that Prince Alfred was to be King of Greece shortly, which remarkable proposition has since spread widely over the world. We sailed from Athens, after a two days’ stay, in an Austrian Lloyd boat. The sailors were all Italians, and there were certainly not much more than half the number which we found on the French boat from Constantinople. And yet the Austrian Lloyd Company has not lost a boat since it was a company, and the Messageries Impériales have done nothing but lose theirs. Happily, the French are not natural sailors, or there would be no peace on sea or land.

The Run Home, October 1862.

We ran from Athens to Syra through the islands, in a bright moonlight, and half a gale of wind, the most enjoyable combination of circumstances in the world for those who are not given to sea-sickness. The island is a rock almost as bare as Hymettus, and that is the most barren simile I can think of—any hill in the Highlands would look like a garden beside it. But it has a first-rate small harbour, which has become the central packet-station of the Levant; and the town which has sprung up round the harbour is the most stirring place in the East, and the commercial capital of Greece. A very quaint place to look at, too, is Syra, for at the back of the lower town, which lies round the harbour, rises a conical hill, very steep, right up to the top of which a second town is piled, with the Bishop’s palace on the highest point. This second, or pyramidal, town is built on terraces, and is only accessible to foot passengers, who ascend by a broad stone staircase, running from the lower town up to the Bishop’s palace, and so bisecting the pyramid. As restless a place as ever I was in, in which nothing seems to be produced, but everything in the world exchanged—a very temple of the Trade Goddess, of whom I should say there are few more devout or successful worshippers than the Greeks. Here we waited through a long broiling day for the steamer, which was to take us westward—homewards.

In travelling there is only one pleasure which can be named with the start—that luxurious moment when one unstrings the bow, and leaving one’s common pursuits and everyday life, plunges into new scenes—and that is, the turning home. I had never been so far or so long away from England before, so that the sensation was proportionately keen as we settled into our places in the Pluto, one of the finest of the Austrian Lloyd boats, which was to take us to Trieste. And a glorious run we made of it. In the morning we were off the Lacedaemonian coast. Almost as bare, this home of the Spartans, as that of their old rivals in Attica; in fact, all the south of the Peloponnesus is barren rock. We might almost have thrown a stone on to Cape Matapan as we passed. Above, the western coast soon begins to change its character, and scanty pine forests on the mountains, and not unfrequent villages, with more or less of cultivated land round them, are visible. Towards evening we steam past the entrance of Navarino Bay, scarcely wider than that of Dartmouth harbour, but with room inside for four modern fleets to ride and fight; as likely a place for a corsair to haunt and swoop out of, in old days, as you could wish to see. Night fell, and we missed the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth; and Ithaca, alas! was also out of sight astern before we were on deck again. But we could not complain; the Albanian coast, under which we were running, was too beautiful to allow us a moment for regret—mountains as wild and barren, and twice as high, as those of Southern Greece, streaked with rich valleys, and well-clothed lower hills. By midday we were ashore at Corfu, driving through the old Venetian streets, and on, over English macadamised roads, through olive groves finer than those of Attica, up to the one-gun battery—the finest view in the fairest island of the world. Bathing, and lunching, and all but letting the steamer go on without us! Steaming away northward again, leaving the shade of the union-jack under which we had revelled for a few hours, and the delightful sound of the vernacular in the mouth of the British soldiers, for a twenty-four hours’ run up the Adriatic, and into Trieste harbour, just in time to baulk a fierce little storm which came tearing down from the Alps to meet us.

Trieste is the best paved town I was ever in, and otherwise internally attractive, while in the immediate neighbourhood, on the spurs of the great mountains and along the Adriatic shore, are matchless sites for country houses, and many most fascinating houses on them. For choice, the situation, to my mind, even beats the celebrated hills round Turin, for the view of the Adriatic turns the scale in favour of the former. But neither city nor neighbourhood held us, and we hurried on to Venice by rail, with the sea on our left, and the great Alpine range on our right—now close over us, now retiring—the giant peaks looking dreamily down on us through a hot shadowy haze all the day long. Poor Venice! we lingered there a few days amidst pictures and frescoes and marbles; at night drinking our coffee in the Place of St. Mark, on the Italian side, watching the white and blue uniforms on the other, and hearing the Austrian military band play, or gliding in a gondola along the moonlit grand canal. English speculators are getting a finger in house property at Venice. There were placards up in English on a dozen of the palaces, “To be let or sold,” with the direction of the vendors below. What does this portend? Let us hope not restoration on Camberwell or Pentonville principles of art.

Then we sped westward again, getting an hour in the Giotto chapel at Padua, a long day at Verona, amongst Roman ruins and Austrian fortifications, and the grand churches, houses, and tombs of the Scaligers. Over the frontier, then, into Italy. ‘While the Austrian officials diligently searched baggage and spelt out passports, I consoled myself with getting to a point close to the station, pointed out by a railway guard, and taking a long look at the heights of Solferino and the high tower—the watch-tower of Italy, a mile or two away to the south. To Milan, through mulberries and vines—rich beyond all fancy; the country looked as we passed as if peace and plenty had set up their tent there. But little enough of either was there in the people’s homes. The news of Garibaldi’s capture and wound was stirring men’s minds fearfully; and all the cotton mills, too, of which there are a good number scattered about, were just closing; wages, already fearfully low, were falling in other trades. I came across a Lancashire foreman, who had escaped the day before from the mill in which he had been employed for five years, and only just escaped with his life. Sixteen men had been stabbed and carried to the hospitals in the closing row. He was making the best of his way back. “What was the state of things in Lancashire to what he had just got out of,” he answered, when I spoke of our distress. “He had been standing for three hours and more in a dark corner, with two men within a few feet of him waiting to stab him.” I rejoice to say that in the streets of Milan we saw everywhere unmistakable signs that Italy is beginning to appreciate her faithful ally. Some of the best political caricatures were as good as could be—as Doyle’s or Leech’s—and bitter as distilled gall. At Turin we had time to see the monuments of the two Queens, the mother and wife of Victor Emmanuel, in a little out-of-the-way Church of Our Lady of Consolation, where they used constantly to worship in life; their statues are kneeling side by side in white marble—as touching a monument as I have ever seen. Murray does not mention it (his last edition was out before it was put up), so some stray reader of yours may perhaps thank me for the hint. Over the Mount Cenis, and down into Savoy, past the mouth of the tunnel which, in six years or so, is to take us under the Alps to the lovely little town of St. Michael, where the rail begins, we went, pitying the stout king from whom so beautiful a birthplace had been filched by the arch robber; and so day and night to Paris; and, after a day’s breathing, a drive along the trim new promenades of the Bois de Boulogne, and a look round the ever-multiplying new streets of the capital of cookery and gilded mirrors, in ten hours to London.

Poor dear old London! groaning under the last days of the Great Exhibition. After those bright, brave, foreign towns, how dingy, how unkempt and uncared for thou didst look! From London Bridge station we passed through a mile and a half of the most hideous part of Southwark to the west. Even in the west, London was out at elbows, the roads used up, the horses used up; the omnibus coachmen and cads,—the cabbies, the police, the public, all in an unmistakable state of chronic seediness and general debility. In spic-and-span Paris yesterday, and here to-day! Well, one could take thee a thought cleaner and more cheerful, and be thankful, Old London; but after all, as we plunge into thy fog and reek and roar, and settle into our working clothes again, we are surer than ever of one thing, which must reconcile any man worth his salt to making thee his home,—thou art unmistakably the very heart of the old world.

Dieppe, Sunday, 13th September 1863.

I have just come away from hearing a very remarkable sermon at the Protestant church here, of which I should like to give you some idea before it goes out of my head. The preacher was a M. Bevel, a native of Dieppe, now a minister at Amsterdam, where he has a high reputation. He is here visiting his mother, which visit I should say is likely to be cut short if he goes on preaching such sermons as he gave us to-day, or else a liberty is allowed in the pulpit in France which is not to be had elsewhere. The service began with a hymn. Then a layman read out the Commandments at a desk. Then we sang part of Psalm xxv.; one of the verses ran:

Qui craint Dieu, qui veut bien,

Jamais ne s’égarera,

Car au chemin qu’il doit suivre

Dieu même le conduira—

À son aise et sans ennui

Il verra le plus long âge,

Et ses enfans après lui

Auront la terre en partage.

Good healthy doctrine this, and an apt introduction to the sermon. While we were singing, M. Revel mounted the pulpit. He is a man of thirty-five or thereabouts; middlesized, bald, dark; with a broad brow, large gray eyes, and sharp, well-cut features. After two short extempore prayers—almost the only ones I have ever heard in which there was nothing offensive—he began his sermon on a text in Ecclesiastes. As it had little bearing on the argument, and was never alluded to again, I do not repeat it.

“There is much talk,” M. Revel began, “in our day about an order of nature. All acknowledge it; as science advances it is found more and more to be unchangeable. We ought to rejoice in this unchangeableness of the order of nature, for it is a proof of the existence of a God of order. Had we found the earth all in confusion it would have been a proof that there could be no such God. But this God has established a moral order for man as unchangeable as the order of nature. It was recognised by the heathen who worshipped Nemesis. The whole of history is one long witness to this moral order, but we need not go back far for examples. Look at Poland, partitioned by three great monarchs, and at what is happening and will happen there. Look at America, the land of equality, of freedom, of boundless plenty, and what has come on her for the one great sin of slavery. Look at home, at the story of the great man who ruled France at the beginning of our new era, the man of success—‘qui éblouissait lui-même en éblouissant les autres,’ who answered by victory upon victory those who maintained that principle had still something to say to the government of the world, and remember his end on the rock in mid-ocean.

“Be sure, then, that there is an unchangeable moral order, and this is the first law of it, ‘Qui fait du mal fait du malheur.’ The most noticeable fact in connection with this moral order which our time is bringing out is the solidarité of the human race. The solidarité of the family and the nation was recognised in old times. Now, commerce and intercourse are breaking down the barriers of nations. A rebellion in China, a war in America, is felt at once in France, and the full truth is dawning upon us that nothing but a universal brotherhood will satisfy men. But you may say that punishment follows misdoing so slowly that the moral order is virtually set aside. Do not believe it. ‘Qui fait du mal fait du malheur.’ The law is certain; but if punishment followed at once, and fully, on misdoing, mankind would be degraded. On the other hand, ‘Qui fait du bon fait du bonheur,’ and this law is equally fixed and unchangeable in the moral order of the world.

“You may wonder that I have scarcely used the name of Christ to you to-day; but what need? I have spoken of humanity; He is the Son of Man, of a universal brotherhood which has no existence without Him, of which He is the founder and the head.”

As we came out of church it was amusing to hear the comments of the audience, at least of the English portion. Some called it rank Socialism, others paganism, others good sound Christian teaching; but all seemed to agree that it was very stirring stuff, and that this would be the last time that M. Bevel would be allowed to address his old fellow-townsmen from the pulpit. Indeed, his sketch of Napoleon I. was much too true to be acceptable to Napoleon III., and though his doctrine of universal brotherhood may be overlooked, I should scarcely think that his historical views can be. I was utterly astonished myself to hear such a sermon in a French pulpit. I had never heard M. Bevel before; but his reputation, which seems to be very great, is thoroughly deserved. The sermon of which I have tried to give you a skeleton lasted for fifty minutes, and never flagged for a moment. Sometimes he was familiar and colloquial, sometimes impassioned, sometimes argumentative, but always eloquent. He spoke with his whole body as well as with his voice, which last organ was managed with rare skill; and, indeed, every faculty of the man was thoroughly trained for his work, and so well trained, that notwithstanding my English dislike to action or oratory in a pulpit, I never felt that it was overdone or in bad taste. In short, I never heard such scientific preaching, and came away disabused of the notion that extempore sermons must be either flat, or vulgar, or insincere. I only wish our young parsons would take the same pains in cultivating their natural gifts as M. Revel has done, and hope that any of them who may chance to read this will take an opportunity the next time they are at Amsterdam of going to hear M. Revel, and taking a lesson. I have been trying to satisfy myself for the last three days what it is which makes this town so wonderfully different from any English provincial town of the same size. I do not mean the watering-place end of it next the sea, which is composed of the crystal palace known as the établissement des bains, great hotels, and expensive lodging-houses,—this quarter is inhabited by strangers of all nations, and should be compared to Brighton or Scarborough,—but the quiet old town behind, which has nothing in common with the watering-place, and is as hum-drum a place as Peterborough. As far as I can make out, the difference lies in the enjoyment which these Dieppois seem to take in their daily business. We are called a nation of shopkeepers now by all the world, so I suppose there must be some truth in the nickname. But certainly the Englishman does his shopkeeping with a very bad grace, and not the least as if he liked it. He sits or stands at his counter with grim, anxious face, and it requires an effort, after one has entered his trap and asked a question as to any article, to retire without buying. The moment his closing time comes, up go the shutters, and he clears out of the shop, and takes himself off out of sight and hearing of it as fast as he can. But here in Dieppe (and the rule holds good, I think, in all French towns) the people seem really to delight in their shops, and by preference to live in them, and in the slice of street in front of them, rather than in any other place. In fact, the shops seem to be convenient places opened to enable their owners to causer with the greatest possible number of their neighbours and other people, rather than places for the receipt of custom and serious making of money. I doubt if any man is a worse hand at shopping than I, and yet I can go boldly into any shop here, and turn over the articles, and chaffer over them, and then go out without buying, and yet feel that I have conferred a benefit rather than otherwise on the proprietor of the establishment. And as to closing time, there is no such thing. The only difference seems to be that after a certain hour, if you choose to walk into a shop, you will probably find yourself in a family party. No one turns off the gas until he goes to bed, so as you loiter along you have the advantage of seeing everything that is going on, and the inhabitants have what they clearly hold to be an equivalent, the opportunity of looking at and talking about you. The master of the shop sits at his ease, sometimes reading his journal, sometimes still working at his trade in an easygoing way, as if it were a pleasure to him, and chatting away as he works. His wife is either working with her needle or casting up the accounts of the day, but in either case is ready in a moment to look up and join in any talk that may be going on. The younger branches of the family disport themselves on the floor, or play dominoes on the counter, or flirt with some neighbour of the opposite sex who has dropped in, in the further corners. The pastrycooks’ seem favourite social haunts, and often you will find two or three of the nearest shops deserted, and the inmates gathered in a knot round the sleek, neatly-shaved citizens who preside in spotless white caps, jackets, and aprons, over these temples of good things. In short, the life of the Dieppe burgher is not cut into sharp lengths as it would be with us, one of which is religiously set apart for trade and nothing else. Business and pleasure seem with him to be run together, and he surrounds the whole with a halo of small-talk which seems to make life run off wonderfully easily and happily to him. Whether his method of carrying on trade results in as good articles as with us I cannot say, for the Dieppois is by no means guileless enough to part with his wares cheap, so that I have had very little experience of them. But certainly the general aspect of his daily life, so much more easy, so much more social than that of his compeer in England, has a good deal of fascination about it. On better acquaintance very possibly the charm might disappear, but at first one is inclined strongly to wish that we could take a leaf out of his book, and learn to take things more easily. The wisdom which has learnt that there are vastly few things in this world worth worrying about will, I fear, be a long time in leavening the British nation.

The people of Dieppe are a remarkably well-conducted and discreet folk in every way—wonderfully so when one considers their close neighbourhood to the richest and most fashionable crowd which frequents any French watering-place. Of these, and their amusements, and habits, and wonderful costumes in and out of the sea, I have no room to speak in this letter. They are now gone, or fast going, and this is the time for people of moderate means and quiet tastes, who wish to enjoy the deliciously exciting air and pretty scenery of this very charming old sea town, which furnished most of the ships for the invasion of England eight hundred years ago, and will well repay the costs of a counter invasion. Only let the English invader take care when he sets his foot on the Norman shore, unless he thinks it worth while to be fleeced for the honour and glory of being under the same roof with French dukes, Russian princes, and English milords, to give a wide berth to the Hotel Royal. I am happy to say I do not speak from personal experience, but only give voice to the universal outcry against the extortion of this huge hotel, the most fashionable in Dieppe. The last story is that an English nobleman travelling with a courier, who arrived late one evening, did not dine, and left early the next morning, had to pay a bill of 75 francs for his entertainment. The bill must have been a work of-high art.

I hope in another letter to give you some notions of the watering-place life, which is very quaint and amusing, and as unlike our seaside doings as the old town is unlike our ordinary towns.

Bathing at Dieppe, 17th September 1863.

That great work, the Sartor Resartus, should have contained a chapter on bathing-dresses, and I have no doubt would have done so had the author been a frequenter of French watering-places. Each of these—even such a little place as Treport—has its établissement des bains, its etiquettes and rules as to the dress and comportment of its bathing populations; and Dieppe is the largest, and not the least quaint, of them all. The établissement here is a long glass and iron building like the Crystal Palace, with a dome in the middle, under which there are daily concerts and nightly balls; and a transept at each end, one of which is a very good reading-room, while in the other a mild kind of gambling goes on, under the form of a lottery, for smelling bottles, clocks, and such like ware. I am told that the play here is by no means so innocent as it looks, and that persons in search of investments for spare cash can be accommodated to any amount, but to a stranger nothing of this discloses itself. Between this building and the sea there runs a handsome esplanade, the favourite promenade, and immediately underneath are the rows of little portable canvas huts which serve as bathing machines. The ladies bathe under one end of the esplanade, and the gentlemen under the other, while the fashionable crowd leans over, or sits by the low esplanade wall, inspecting the proceedings. This contiguity is, no doubt, the cause of the wonderful toilets, spécialités des bains, which fill the shops here, and are used by all the ladies and many of the men. They consist of large loose trousers and a jacket with skirts, made of fine flannel or serge, of all shades of colour according to taste, and of waterproof bathing caps, all of which garments are trimmed with blue, or pink, or red bows and streamers. Over all the baigneurs comme il faut throw a large cloak, also tastefully trimmed. Thus habited the lady walks out of her hut attended by a maid, to whom when she reaches the water’s edge she hands her cloak, and, taking the hand of one of the male baigneurs, proceeds with such plunges and dancings as she has a fancy for, and then returns to the shore, is enveloped in her cloak by her maid, and re-enters her hut. These male baigneurs are a necessary accompaniment of the performance. I have only heard of one case of resistance to the custom, which ended comically enough. A young Englishman, well known in foreign society, was here with his wife, who insisted on bathing, but vowed she would go into the water with no man but her husband. He consented, and in due course appeared on the ladies’ side with his pretty wife, in most discreet apparel, went through the office of baigneur, and returned to his own side. This raised a storm among the lady bathers, and the authorities interfered. The next day the lady went to the gentlemen’s side; but this was even more scandalous, and was also forbidden. The persecuted couple then took; to bathing at six in the morning; but, alas! on the second morning the esplanade was lined even at that untimely hour by young Frenchmen, who, though by no means early risers, had made a point of being out to assist at the bath of their eccentric friends, and as these last did not appreciate the éclat of performing alone for the amusement of their friends, the lawless efforts of ces Anglais came to an end. In England, where dress for the water is not properly attended to by either sex, one quite understands the rule of absolute separation; but here, where every lady is accompanied by a man in any case, where she is more covered than she is in a ballroom, and where all her acquaintance are looking on, it does not occur to one why she should not be accompanied by her husband. For, as on the land, here people are much better known by their dress in the water than by anything else. A young gentleman asked one of his partners whether she had seen him doing some particular feat of swimming that morning; she answered that she had not recognised him, to which he replied, “Oh! you may always know me by my straw hat and red ribbon.” The separation here is certainly a farce, for at sixty yards, as we know from our musketry instructors, you recognise the features of the party; and the distance between the men and women bathers is not so much. The rule is enforced, however, at any depth. A brother and sister, both good swimmers, used to swim out and meet one another at the boat which lies in the offing in case of accidents. But this was stopped, as they talked together in English, which excited doubts as to their relationship. I suppose it would be more improper for girls and boys of marriageable age to swim together than to walk; but I vow at this moment I cannot see why.

You may fancy, sir, that in such a state of things as I have described, good stories on the great bathing subject are rife. The last relates to a beauty of European celebrity, who is known to be here and to be bathing, but keeps herself in such strict privacy that scarcely a soul has been able to get a look at her, even behind two thick veils. Had she really wished to be unnoticed she could not have managed worse. The mystery set all the female world which frequents the établissement in a tremor. They were like a knot of sportsmen when a stag of ten tines has been seen in the next glen, or when a 30 lb. salmon has broken the tackle of some cunning fisherman, and is known to lie below a certain stone. Of course, they were sure that something dreadful must have happened to her looks, which she who should be happy enough to catch her bathing would detect. In spite of all, the beauty eluded them for some time, but at last she has been stalked, and I am proud to say, sir, by a sportswoman of our own country. By chance this lady was walking at eight in the morning, when the tide was so low that no one was bathing. She saw a figure dressed en bourgeoise approaching the bathing-place, apparently alone, but two women suspiciously like maids followed at a respectful distance. It flashed across our countrywoman that this must be the incognita; she followed. To her delight, the three turned to the bathing-ground, and disappeared in two huts which had been placed together apparently by accident. She took up a position a few yards from the huts. After an agonising pause the door opened, and a head appeared, which was instantly withdrawn, but now too late. The mystery was solved. It was too late-to send maids to the directeur of the baths to warn off the spectator, and, moreover, useless, for she politely declined to move, though there was nothing more to discover. The whole establishment is ringing with the news that the beauty is pale comme une morte, and the inference, of course, follows that paint has been forbidden. You will also, sir, no doubt, be interested to know that she wears a red rose on the top of her bathing-cap, which, having regard to her present complexion, does not say much for her taste in the choice of colours.

But if the water toilets here are fabulous, what shall I say of those on the land? The colours, the textures, the infinite variety, and general loudness of these bewilder the sight and baffle the pen of ordinary mortals. The keenest rivalry is kept up amongst the fair frequenters of the establishment. They sit by hundreds there working and casing of afternoons, while the band plays from three to six, or sweeping about on the esplanade; and in the evening are there again in ever new and brighter colours. The Dieppe Journal comments on the most striking toilets. It noticed with commendation the purple velvet petticoats of the ladies of a millionaire house; it glowed in describing the “toilette Écossaise” of another rich Frenchwoman. An officer on reading the announcement laid down the paper, and addressed a lady, his neighbour, “Mais, madame, comment est que ça se fait?” He, worthy man, had but one idea of the toilet in question, which he had gained from the Highland regiments in the Crimea. I am happy to say, both for their own sakes and their husbands and fathers, that the Englishwomen are by far the most simply dressed. The men generally speaking are clad like rational beings, but with many exceptions. I hear of a celebrity in gray velvet knickerbockers and pink silk stockings, but have not seen him. A man in a black velvet suit, and a red beard reaching his waist, has just walked past, without apparently exciting wonder in any breast but that of your contributor.

Dieppe must be a paradise to the rising generation. The children share all the amusements of their elders, and have also special entertainments of their own, amongst which one notes specially two balls a week at the establishment. The whole building is brilliantly lighted every evening, and on these nights the space under the central dome is cleared of chairs, and makes a splendid ballroom. Here the little folk assemble, and go through the whole performance solemnly, just like their elders. The raised permanent seats are occupied by mammas, nurses, governesses, and the public. The girls sit round on the lowest seats, and the boys gather in groups talking to them, or walking about in the centre. They are of all nations, in all costumes—one boy in a red Garibaldian blouse and belt I noted as the most dangerous flirt. There were common English jackets and trousers, knickerbockers of many colours, and many little blue French uniforms. There was no dancer older than fifteen, and some certainly as young as seven. When the music began, the floor was at once covered with couples, who danced quadrilles, waltzes, and a pretty dance like the Schottische, to the tune of “When the green leaves come again.” At the end of each dance the girls were handed to their chairs with bows worthy of Beau Brummel. There were at least 200 grown folk looking on, and a prettier sight I have seldom seen, for the children danced beautifully for the most part. Should I like my children to be amongst them? That is quite another affair. On the whole, I incline to agree with the ladies with whom I went, that it would, perhaps, do boys good, but must be utterly bad for the girls. I certainly never saw before so self-possessed a set of young gentlemen as those in question, and doubt if any one of them will ever feel shy in after-life.

Last Sunday afternoon: again, we had a fete des vacances for the children. The Gazette des Bains announced, “À deux heures, ascensions grotesques, l’enlèvement du phoque; à deux heures et demie, distribution de jouets et bonbons; à trois heures, course à ânes, montés par des jockeys grosse-tête,”—a most piquant programme. Not to mention the other attractions, what could the enlèvement du phoque be? In good time I went into the établissement grounds at the cost of a franc, and was at once guided by the crowd to the brink of a small pond, where sure enough a veritable live seal was swimming about, asking us all as plainly as mild brown eyes could speak what all the rout meant, and then diving smoothly under, to appear again on the other side of the pond. Were the cruel Frenchmen actually going to send the gentle beast up into the air? My speculations were cut short by the first comic ascent and the shouts of the juveniles. A figure very like Richard Doyle’s Saracens in the illustrations to Rebecca and Rowena, with large head, bottle nose, and little straight arms and legs, mounted suddenly into the air, and went away, wobbling and bobbing, before the wind. Another and another followed, as fast as they could be filled with gas. The wind blew towards the town, and there was great excitement as to their destiny, for they rose only to about the height of the houses. I own I was surprised to find myself so deeply interested whether the absurd little Punchinellos would clear the chimneys. One only failed, a fellow in a three-cornered hat like a beadle’s, and, refusing to mount, was soon torn in pieces by the boys. The last was a balloon of the figure of a seal, and I was much relieved when we all trooped away to the distribution of bonbons, leaving the real phoca still gliding about in his pond with wondering eyes. The bonbons were distributed in the most polite manner, the handfuls which were thrown amongst the crowd only calling forth a “Pardon Monsieur,” “Pardon Mademoiselle,” as they were picked up, instead of the hurly-burly and scramble we should have had at home. The donkey races might better be called processions, which went three times round the établissement. The winner was ridden by a jockey whose grosse tête was that of a cock, in compliment, I suppose, to the national bird; the lion jockey was nowhere, but he beat the cook’s boy, who came in last. The figures were well got up, and some of the heads really funny. At night we had fireworks, and a grand pyrotechnic drama of the taking of the old castle, which stands on the chalk cliff right over the établissement and commanding the town. The garrison joined in the fun, and assaulted the walls twice amidst discharges of rockets and great guns. The third assault was successful, and the red-legged soldiers swarmed on the walls in a blaze of light and planted the tricolour. A brilliant scroll of “Vive l’Empéreur” came out on the dark castle walls above their heads, and so the show ended. The castle, by the way, is a most picturesque building. One of the towers has been favourably noticed by Mr. Ruskin. It is also to be reverenced as the stronghold of Henry IV. and the Protestants. It was here, just before the battle of Arques, that he made the celebrated answer to a faint-hearted ally, who spoke doubtfully as to the disparity of numbers, “You forget to count God and the good cause, who are on our side.” It will never be of any use in modern warfare, but makes a good barrack and a most magnificent place for a pyrotechnic display for the delectation of young folk, in which definition for these purposes may be included the whole of the population of France.

As I am writing, a troop of acrobats pass along the green between this hotel and the sea, followed by a crowd of boys. There is the strong man in black velvet carrying the long balancing triangle, on which he is about to support the light fellow in yellow who walks by his side.

There is an athletic fellow in crimson breeches, carrying a table on his head, and a clown with two chairs accompanying. There they have pitched on the green, and are going to begin, and the English boys are leaving their cricket, and the French boys their kites and indiarubber handballs, and a goodly ring is forming, out of which, if they are decent tumblers, I hope they may turn an honest franc or two.

They are not only decent but capital tumblers, the best I have seen for many a day, especially the man in crimson. He has balanced three glasses full of water on his forehead, and then lain down on his back, and passed himself, tumblers and all, through two small hoops. He has placed one chair upon the table, and then has tilted the second chair on two legs upon the seat of the first, and on this fearfully precarious foundation has been balancing himself with his legs straight up in the air while I could count thirty! The strong man has just run up behind the man in yellow, who was standing with his legs apart, and, stooping, has put his head between the yellow man’s legs and thrown him a backward somersault! I must positively go down and give them half a franc. It is a swindle to look on at such good tumbling for nothing.

P.S.—Imagine my delight, sir, when I got down on the green to find they were the tumblers of my native land. They joined a French circus for a tour some weeks back, but could get no money, and so broke off and are working their way home. They can speak no French, and find it very difficult to get leave to perform, as they have to do in all French towns. The crowd of English boys seemed to be doing their duty by them, so I hope they will speedily be able to raise their passage-money and return to the land of double stout and liberty.

Normandy, 20th September 1863.

To an Englishman with little available spare cash and time, and in want of a thorough change of scene and air, which category I take to include a very handsome percentage of our fellow-countrymen, I can recommend a run in Normandy without the slightest hesitation. I am come to the age when one learns to be what the boys call cocksure of nothing in this world, but am, nevertheless, prepared to take my stand on the above recommendation without fear or reservation. For in Normandy he will get an exquisitely light and bracing air, a sky at least twice as far off as our English one (which alone will raise his spirits to at least twice their usual altitude), a pleasant, lively, and well-to-do people, a picturesque country, delicious pears, and, to an Englishman, some of the most interesting old towns in the world out of his own island. All this he may well enjoy for ten days for a five-pound note, or thereabouts, in addition to his return fare to Dieppe or Havre. So let us throw up our insular vacation wide-awakes, and bless the men who invented steam, and pears, and Norman architecture, “and everything in the world beside,” as the good old song of “the leathern bottèl” has it, and start for the fair land from which our last conquerors came before the days get shorter than the nights. Alas! how little of that blissful time now remains to us of the year of grace 1863.

It is some few years, I forget how many, since I was last in a Norman town, and must confess that in some respects they have changed for the better, externally at least, now that the Second Empire has had time to make itself felt in them. All manner of police arrangements, the sweeping, lighting, and paving, are marvellously improved, and there is an air of prosperity about them which does one good. Even in Rouen, the centre of their cotton district, there are scarcely any outward signs of distress, although, so far as I could see, not more than one in three of the mills is at work. I was told that there are still nearly 30,000 operatives out of work in the town and neighbourhood, who have no means of subsistence except any odd job they can pick up to earn a few sous about the quays and markets, but if it be so they kept out of sight during my wanderings about the town. But there is one characteristic sign of the empire to be noted in all these same Norman towns, for which strangers will not feel thankful, though the inhabitants may. The building and improving fever is on them all. In Rouen, amongst other improvements, a broad new street is being made right through some of the oldest parts of the town, from the quays straight up to the boulevards, which it joins close by the railway-station. This Grand Rue de l’Empereur will be a splendid street when finished, to judge by the few houses which are already built at the lower end. Meantime, the queer gables of the houses whose neighbours have been destroyed, and a chapel or two, and an old tower, standing out all by itself, which would make the architectural fortune of any other city, and which find themselves with breathing room now, for the first time, I should think, in the last five hundred years, look down ruefully on the cleared space, in anticipation of the hour rapidly approaching, when they will be again shut out from human ken by four-storied stone palaces, and this time, undoubtedly, for good and all. They can never hold up until another improving dynasty arrives.

At Havre the same process is going on. New houses are springing up all along the new boulevards. Between the town and Frescati’s great hotel and bathing establishment, which faces the sea, there used to stand a curious old round tower of great size, which commanded the mouth of the harbour, and some elaborate fortifications of more modern date. All these have been levelled, old and new together, and the ground is now clear for building, and will, no doubt, be covered long before I shall see it again. Large seaports are always interesting towns, and Havre, besides the usual attractions of such places, has a sort of shop in greater perfection than any other port known to me. In these you can buy or inspect curiosities, alive and dead, from all parts of the world. Parrots of all colours of the rainbow scream at the door, long cages full of love-birds, and all manner of other delicate little feathered creatures one has never seen elsewhere, hang on the walls, or stand about amongst china monsters, and cases of amber, and inlaid stools from Stamboul, and marmoset monkeys, and goodness knows what other temptations to solvent persons with a taste for collections or pets. To neither of these weaknesses can I plead guilty, so after a short inspection I stroll to the harbour’s mouth, and do wonder to think over the astounding audacity of our late countryman, Sir Sidney Smith, who ran his ship close in here, and proceeded in his boats to cut out a French frigate under the guns of the old fortifications. His ship got aground, and was taken; he also. But, after all, it was less of a forlorn hope than throwing himself with his handful of men into Acre, and facing Bonaparte there, which last moderately lunatic act made him a name in history. Audace! et encore d’audace! et toujours d’audace! was the rule which brought our sailors triumphantly through the great war. And there is another picture in that drama which Havre harbour calls up in the English mind, to put in the scale against Sir Sidney’s failure—I mean Citizen Muskein and his gunboats skedaddling from Lieutenant Price in the Badger. Do you remember, sir, Citizen Muskein’s—or rather Canning’s—inimitable address to his gunboats in the Anti-Jacobin?—

Gunboats, unless you mean hereafter

To furnish food for British laughter,

Sweet gunboats, and your gallant crew,

Tempt not the rocks of St. Marcou,

Beware the Badger’s bloody pennant

And that d——d invalid Lieutenant!

Enough of war memories, and for the future the very last thing one wishes to have to do with this simple, cheery, and, for all I can see, honest people, is to fight them.

There are packets twice a day from Havre across the mouth of the Seine, a seven miles’ run, to Honfleur, described in guide-books as a dirty little town, utterly without interest. I can only say I have seldom been in a place of its size, not the site of any great historic event, which is better worth spending an afternoon in, and I should strongly advise my typical Englishman to follow this route. In the first place, the situation is beautiful. From the steep wooded heights above the town, where are a chapel, much frequented by sailors, and some villas, there are glorious views up the Seine, across to Havre, and out over the sea. Then, in the town, there is the long street, which runs down to the lighthouse, and which, I suppose, the guide-book people never visit, as it is out of the way. It is certainly as picturesque a street as can be found in Rouen, or any other French town I have ever seen—except Troyes, by the way. The houses are not large, but there is scarcely one of them which Prout would not be proud to ask to sit to him.

Then there is the church in the centre of the town by the market-place, with the most eccentric of little spires. It seems, at an early period of the Middle Ages, to have taken it into its clock—or whatever answers to a spire’s head—that it would seer more of the world, and to have succeeded in getting about thirty yards away from its nave. Here, probably finding locomotion a tougher business than it reckoned on, it has fallen asleep, and, while it slept, several small houses crept up against its base and fell asleep also. And there it remains to this day, looking down over the houses in which people live, and many apples and pears are being sold, and crying, like the starling, “I can’t get out.” There is a splendid straight avenue, stretching a mile and a half up the Caen road, and a good little harbour full of English vessels, which ply the egg and fruit trade, and over every third door in the sailors’ quarter you see “Cook-house” written up in large letters, for the benefit of the British sailor.

The railway to Lisieux passes through a richly wooded, hilly country, and then runs out into the great plain in which Caen lies. The city of William the Conqueror is quite worthy of him, which is saying a good deal. For, though one may not quite share Mr Carlyle’s enthusiasm for “Wilhelmus Conquestor,” it must be confessed that he is, at least, one of the three strongest men who have ruled in England, and that in the long run he has done a stroke of good work for our nation. The church of the Abbey des Hommes, which he began in 1066, and of which Lanfranc was the first abbot, stands just as he left it, except the tops of two towers at the west end, which were finished two centuries later. It is a pure Norman church, 320 feet long, and 98 feet high in the nave and transepts, and the simplest and grandest specimen of that noble style I have ever seen. William’s grave is before the high altar, the spot marked by a dark stone, and no king ever lay in more appropriate sepulchre. The Huguenots rifled the grave and scattered his bones, but his strong stern spirit seems to rest over the place. There is an old building near the Abbey surmounted by a single solid pinnacle, under which is a room which tradition says he occupied. It is now filled with the wares of a joiner who lives below. Caen is increasing in a solid manner in its outskirts, but seems less disturbed and altered by the building mania than any of her sisters. There was an English population of 4000 and upwards living here before 1848, but the English Consul fairly frightened them away by assurances of his inability to protect them (against what does not seem to have been settled) in that wild time, and now there are not as many hundreds. One of the survivors is the Commissionaire of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, West by name, a really intelligent and serviceable man, well up to his work. It is scarcely ever worth while to spend a franc on a commissionaire, but West is an exception to the rule. His father was in the lace trade, which is active in Caen, but his premises were burnt down some years since, and an end put to his manufacture. West is now trying to revive the family business, and one of his first steps was to get over a new lace machine, and a man to work it, from England. It has not proved a good speculation as yet, for no one else can manage the machine, and the Englishman insists on being drunk half his time.

We left by one of the steamers which ply daily from Caen to Havre. The run down the river is chiefly interesting from the quarries on its banks. They are not the principal quarries, but are of very considerable extent; and from the quantities of tip, heaped into moderate-sized grass-covered hills by the river side, it is plain that they must have been in work here for centuries. You see the stone in many places lying like rich Cheddar cheese, and cut as regularly in flakes as a grocer would cut his favourite cheeses. The stone is very soft when it comes first from the quarries, but gains its great hardness and sharpness after a short exposure. After passing the quarries we got between salt marshes haunted by abundance of jack snipe, and so we passed out to sea.

Gleanings from Boulogne

There is one large portion of the French people which has improved marvellously in appearance in the last few years, and that is the army. The setting up of the French soldier of the line used to be much neglected, but now you never see a man, however small and slight, who does not carry himself and move as if every muscle in his body had been thoroughly and scientifically trained. And this is the actual fact. They have the finest system of military gymnastics which has ever been seen. In every garrison town there is a gymnasium, in which the men have to drill as regularly as on the parade-ground. The one close to the gate of the old town of Boulogne is an admirable specimen, and well worth a visit. Our authorities are, I believe, slowly following in the steps of the French, but little has as yet been done. There is no branch of army reform which may more safely be pressed on. We have undoubtedly the finer material. The English soldier is a bigger and more muscular man than the French soldier, but is far behind him in his physical education, and must remain so until we provide a proper system of gymnastic training, which, by the bye, will benefit the general health of the men, and develop their intelligence as well as their muscles.

During our stay at Boulogne there was some very heavy weather. A strong sou’-wester came on one night, and by two o’clock next day, when I went down, was hurling the angry green waves against the great beams of the southern pier in fearful fashion. The entrance to the harbour, as most of your readers will remember, is quite narrow, not one hundred yards across between the two pier heads. The ebb-tide was sweeping down from the north, and, meeting the gale right off the harbour’s mouth, made a battling and raging sea which brought one’s heart into one’s mouth to look at. The weather was quite bright, and though the wind was so strong that I held my hat on with difficulty, the northern pier was crowded, as the whole force of the sea was spent against the southern pier, over which it was leaping every moment. We were in comparative shelter, and could watch, Without being drenched with spray, the approach of one of the fishing smacks of the port, which was coming home. I shall not easily forget the sight. We stood there, jammed together, rough sailors, fishwomen, Cockneys, weatherbound soldiers, well-dressed ladies, a crowd of all ranks, the wind singing through us so that we could scarcely make our nearest neighbours hear. Not that we wanted to talk. The sight of the small black hull and ruddy brown sail of the smack, now rising on the crest of a great wave, and the next moment all but disappearing behind it, took away the desire, almost the power, of speech. Two boats, manned with fishermen, pulled to the harbour’s mouth, and lay rolling in the comparatively still water just within the shelter of the southern pier head. It was comforting to see them there, though if any catastrophe had happened they could never have lived in that sea. But the gallant little smack needed no help. She was magnificently steered, and came dancing through the wildest part of the race without shipping a single sea, seeming to catch each leaping wave just in the spot where it was easiest to ride over. As she slid out of the seething cauldron into the smooth water past the waiting boats the crowd drew a long breath, and many of us hurried back to get a close view of her as she ran into her place amongst the other fishing boats alongside the quay. I envied the grizzly old hero at the helm, as he left his place, threw off his dreadnought coat, and went to help the two men and two boys who were taking in the sail and coiling away the ropes. There was much shouting and congratulation from above; but they made little answer, and no fuss. Their faces struck me very much, especially the boys’, which were full of that quiet self-contained look one sees in Hook’s pictures. There was no other boat in the offing then, so I went home; but within a few hours heard that a smack had capsized in the harbour’s mouth, with the loss of one man. I only marvel how the rest could have been saved.

On the 1st of October in every year there is a solemn festival of the seafaring people of Boulogne, and the sea is blessed by their pastors. I was anxious to wait for the ceremony, but was unable to do so. There seems to be a strange mixture of trust in God and superstition in all people who “occupy their business on the great waters.” There is a little chapel looking down on Boulogne port full of thank-offerings of the sailors’ wives, where the fishwomen go up to plead with God, and pour out the agony of their souls in rough weather. There are propitiatory gifts, too, by the side of the thank-offerings, and the shadow of a tyrannous power in nature, to be bought off with gifts, darkens the presence of the true Refuge from the storm. There are traces, too, of a more direct idolatry in the town. In the year 643 of our era the Madonna came to Boulogne in an open boat, so runs the story, and left an image with the faithful, which soon became the great religious lion of the neighbourhood, drawing largely, and performing a series of miracles all through the Middle Ages. When Henry VIII. took the town the English carried off the image, but it was restored in good condition when peace came, and as powerful as ever for wonder-working. The Huguenots got hold of it half a century later, and were supposed to have destroyed it; but an image, which at any rate did duty for it, was ultimately fished up out of a well. Doubts as to identity, however, having arisen, the matter was referred to the Sorbonne, and a jury of doctors declared in favour of the genuineness of the article which was forthcoming. And so it continued to practise with varying success until the Revolution, when the Jacobins laid hands on it, broke it up, and burnt it, thinking to make once for all an end of this and other idol-worships. But a citizen not so enlightened as his neighbours stayed by the fire, and succeeded at last in rescuing what he declared to be an arm of the original image, which remains an object of veneration still, and is said not to have lost all healing power. But it is far inferior in this respect to some drops of the holy blood, for the reception of which a countrywoman of ours has built a little chapel in the suburbs.

Boulogne has all the marks of rapidly increasing material prosperity which may be seen now in every French town, one of the many fruits of which is a wonderful improvement in the condition of the streets and thoroughfares. The fine new buildings, the look of the shops and of the people, all tell the same tale. In fact, one comes away from France now with a feeling that, so far as surface polish and civilisation are concerned, this is the country which is going to the front. Whether it goes any deeper is a matter upon which a traveller flitting about for a few weeks cannot venture an opinion.

Vacation Rambles

VACATION RAMBLES

By Thomas Hughes, Q.C.

Author Of ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’

Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.—Juvenal

London: Macmillan And Co.

1895

PREFACE

THOS. HUGHES.

VACATION RAMBLES

EUROPE—1862 to 1866

Foreign parts, 14th August 1862.

Bonn, 22nd August 1862.

Munich, 29th August 1862.

The Tyrol, 2nd September 1862.

Vienna, 10th September 1862.

The Danube, 13th September 1862.

Constantinople, 34th September 1862.

Constantinople, 30th September 1862.

Athens, 1st October 1862.

Athens, 4th October 1862.

The Run Home, October 1862.

Dieppe, Sunday, 13th September 1863.

Bathing at Dieppe, 17th September 1863.

Normandy, 20th September 1863.

Gleanings from Boulogne