gether, that who can say where he is or where he will be; and 'tis but a sorry chance which of us may fall uppermost. Six! It clashes clear from the great dial, and the frosty twilight is falling. Six! And cheerily issues the first britska from the inner court, where these ponderous locomotives of an unlocomotive age used to lurk harnessed and ready when the hour struck to disperse themselves leisurely to the four quarters of the compass. Bordeaux! shouts the employé de la poste. A couple of travelers jump into the carriage. The door shuts with a sharp click. The postillion blithely clacks his long-lashed, short-handled whip, and four colossal percherons strain forward in the traces, and start off at a brisk trot to the merry sound of a multitude of little tinkling bells. Calais! Lyons! A second calèche; a third. The courrier swings himself into the cabriolet. They are off. At last, Strasbourg! How my heart beats! O dulce germen matris! (may the souls of the grammarians forgive me the pun!) Oh dear mother German! Home! and with what homeward thoughts I scale the high carriage step. We issue on to the great open spaces of the night by the Barrier St. Denis. I plunge my yearning looks beyond me, deep and far into the glimmering air, searching on the utmost verge of the dark horizon that long line of clouds which may perhaps o'ercanopy (oh pleasant thought!) the skies of Germany. And as the restless roar of Paris (that never quiet heart) sinks faint behind me on the seri ous, cold night air, I have little care to remember that I am leaving, perhaps forever, a world bottomless, vast a world of vice and grandeur, of the ludicrous and the sublime. PART II. THE PATIENT. To tread a maze that never shall have end, |