inns). " Hôtel Meurice!" " Hôtel de France!"
"Hôtel de Calais!" "The Royal Hôtel, Sir,
Angaishe ouse!" "You going to Parry, Sir?"
"Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?" Bless ye,
my Touters, bless ye, my commissionnaires, bless
ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military
form, who are always here, day or night, fair
weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which
I never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom
House officers in green and grey; permit me to
grasp the welcome hands that descend into
my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at
the bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar
shake up, as if it were a measure of chaff or
grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le
Douanier, except that when I cease to breathe,
Calais will be found written on my heart. No
article liable to local duty have I with me,
Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing
of a breast devoted to your charming town should
be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the gangway
by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother
and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he
who collects the names! May he be for ever
changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with
his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat,
surmounting his round smiling patient face! Let
us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours a
tout jamais — for the whole of ever.

Calais up and doing at the railway station,
and Calais down and dreaming in its bed; Calais
with something of "an ancient and fish-like
smell" about it, and Calais blown and sea-
washed pure; Calais represented at the Buffet
by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and
Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere
by flitting persons with a monomania for changing
money though I never shall be able to
understand in my present state of existence how
they live by it, but I suppose I should, if I
understood the currency question — Calais en gros,
and Calais en détail, forgive one who has deeply
wronged you. — I was not fully aware of it on
the other side, but I meant Dover.

Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the
travellers. Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers,
for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles,
Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble
representative of the Uncommercial interest, ascend
with the rest. The train is light to-night, and
I share my compartment with but two fellow-
travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete
cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable
thing that they don't keep "London time" on a
French railway, and who is made angry by my
modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris
time being more in their way; the other, a
young priest, with a very small bird in a very
small cage, who feeds the small bird with a
quill, and then puts him up in the network
above his head, where he advances twittering, to
his front wires, and seems to address me in an
electioneering manner. The compatriot (who
crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be
some person of distinction, as he was shut up,
like a stately species of rabbit, in a private
hutch on deck) and the young priest (who
joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then
the bird and I have it all to ourselves.

A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the
wires of the electric telegraph with a wild and
fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with the
added storm of the train-progress through it, that
when the Guard comes clambering round to
mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a
really horrible performance in an Express train,
though he holds on to the open window by his
elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands
in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the
collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let
him go. Still, when he is gone, the small small
bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering
to me —- twittering and twittering, until, leaning
back in my place and looking at him in drowsy
fascination, I find that he seems to jog my
memory as we rush along.

Uncommercial travels (thus the small small
bird) have lain in their idle thriftless way
through all this range of swamp and dyke, as
through many other odd places; and about here,
as you very well know, are the queer old stone
farm-houses approached by drawbridges, and the
windmills that you get at by boats. Here, are the
lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling
canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the
cabarets and other peasant-houses where the stone
dovecotes in the littered yards are as strong as
warders' towers in old castles. Here, are the
long monotonous miles of canal, with the great
Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the
towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the
forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders,
not a pleasant sight to see. Scattered through
this country are mighty works of VAUBAN,
whom you know about, and regiments of such
corporals as you heard of once upon a time,
and many a blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these
flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk
those long grotesque files of young novices in
enormous shovel hats, whom you remember
blackening the ground checkered by the avenues
of leafy trees. And now that Hazebroucke
slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recal the
summer evening when your dusty feet strolling
up from the station tended hap-hazard to
a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants
were circling round and round a barrel-organ
on hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and
where the principal show in the Fair was a
Religious Richardson's — literally, on its own
announcement in great letters, THEATRE
RELIGIEUX. In which improving Temple, the
dramatic representation was of " all the interesting
events in the life of Our Lord, from the
Manger to the Tomb;" the principal female
character, without any reservation or exception,
being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in
trimming the external Moderators (as it was
growing dusk), while the next principal female
character took the money, and the Young Saint
John disported himself upside down on the
platform.

Looking up at this point to confirm the small
small bird in every particular he has mentioned,