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commences about 3.30 P.M., we are in a perpetual whirl of visits, and under a genial and continued rain of presents. Truth, however, compels me to say that these étrennes are of very small value, though of great current utility. You see, you must not only receive, but give, on the first day of the year: if, for instance, you chance to meet—and it is not his fault if you do not—a man who has done anything for or against you during the past twelve months, you must give him a bonus of not less than four shillings and two-pence. Among that class of society to whom five francs are not a socially legal tender, you must offer chocolate bonbons, or little figures of metal, marble, or even wax, filled with indigestion, coloured according to taste. Now, the best way to settle these polite reciprocities is to give unto others what others have given unto you. It is, indeed, a sort of eleventh commandment written in the code of Paris; therefore, the wise man or woman—if she is single and helpless -orders a cab by the day, has it at her door at a very early hour, and sits in her best clothes, waiting for good gifts. They come early, those good or indifferent gifts, and by eleven our recipient is almost prepared to give in her turn. So off she pops in a 'Remise,' at '2.50 the hour,' and gives not unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's-nothing of that sort, I assure you, but rather unto Mrs. Pompey the things which were Mrs. Cæsar's. For instance, A arrives at Rue de la Sainte-en-Ciel, No. 90, with a little box of sweetmeats, which perhaps A has bought, perhaps A has received as 'Etrennes' from Z-a charmingly liberal letter, which gives its compliments early. Well, A having paid to B the 'compliments of the season,' goes goes off to give presents to the rest of the alphabet. The door is no sooner shut than off goes B, and carries the same present to Æ, a newly-married diphthong, and they, in their turn, pass on the bonbons and the compliment, which therefore revolve in a polite, but still really vicious circle. Is it a good thing to give preserved oranges, pickled pears, nuts 'clad' with sugar, almost impenetrable to the human tooth, almonds disguised till their best friends would not know them from the 'rock' they assume to be? Is the diffusion of indigestion a good thing for either nations or individuals? These are questions which must arise to the mind of any traveller in Paris. Still, perhaps, they are scarcely questions to intrude on the population of either me

tropolis, at a time when the residents might well be described as ‘magna indigestaque moles,' a great population, who have indulged in too many sweets.

84. THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER.

'Apartments to let ! It formerly was 'lodgings,' but of late years the world has grown vastly genteel, and the simple term 'lodgings' is held to be vulgar. Apartments to let!' To many minds the bare sight of that laconic announcement conveys an impression of terror and despair, akin to that awakened by the awful inscription over the portals of the Inferno-' All hope abandon, ye who enter here.' Who has not been compelled, at some period or another of his career, to live in apartments; and who does not preserve the most dismal reminiscences of the days he spent in them? It is all very well to be genteel; but to us these penitential places must always be lodgings, and the landlady a lodging-house keeper. Horrible female ! Mr. Dickens, who is ever striving to bring out the bright side of human nature, and who, need were, would undertake a vindication of mothers-in-law or men in possession, has drawn with matchless skill an amiable lodging-house keeper, and has made Mrs. Lirriper so attractive that we should not be surprised to learn that numbers of his readers had given up housekeeping, and undertaken a voyage of discovery for some living Mrs. Lirriper in Cecil or Salisbury Street, Strand. But when we come to contemplate the Lirriper of real life we shudder. The genial novelist may whitewash her in fiction, but in fact she will remain an ogre, like Nero or Richard III. Her ways are dreadful; her cat is a monster; her servant a slave; her accounts are inscrutable: her rapacity insatiable; her mendacity unfathomable; her heart deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. If there be one thing on earth more intolerable than the she lodging-house keeper, it is the lodging-house keeper's husband-the sea-faring man who never goes to sea; the corn and coal agent who never gets a commission; the mysterious, lazy, loafing, bushy-whiskered fellow with the deep bass voice, who 'hasn't done a stroke of work these ten years,' who is always hanging about with a chisel, or a hammer and a flight of steps, and who at night smokes the strongest

shag tobacco, and drinks cold rum-and-water in the kitchen, while his wife makes out her 'little bills,' or meditates fresh onslaughts on your tea-caddy or your chiffonier. A Temple laundress is not an agreeable specimen of femininity; a charwoman is frequently a nuisance; and, next to the stewardess of a Gravesend steamer, or a female searcher at the stationhouse, a pew-opener is about the last person we should care to meet at a small party: but all these are Venuses, Psyches, Hebes, compared with the regular London or watering-place lodging-house keeper.

85. THE WELL of St. KeYNE.

A Well there is in the west country,
And a clearer one never was seen;
There is not a wife in the west country
But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.

An oak and an elm tree stand beside,
And behind does an ash tree grow ;
And a willow from the bank above
Droops to the water below.

A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne,
Joyfully he drew nigh ;

For from cockcrow he had been travelling,
And there was not a cloud in the sky.

He drank of the water so cool and clear,
For hot and thirsty was he;

And he sat down upon the bank,
Under the willow tree.

There came a man from the neighbouring town,

At the Well to fill his pail ;

By the well-side he rested it,

And he bade the stranger hail.

'Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?' quoth he,

'For an if thou hast a wife,

The happiest draught thou hast drunk this day
That ever thou didst in thy life.

'Or has thy good woman, if one thou hast,
Ever here in Cornwall been?

For an if she have, I'll venture my life,

She has drank of the Well of St. Keyne.'

'I have left a good woman who never was here,'
The stranger he made reply;

'But that my draught should be better for that,
I pray you answer me why.'

'St. Keyne,' quoth the Cornishman, 'many a time
Drank of this crystal Well;

And, before the angel summoned her,
She laid on the water a spell :

‘If the husband, of this gifted Well
Shall drink before his wife,
A happy man henceforth is he,

For he shall be master for life.

'But if the wife should drink of it first,

God help the husband then!'

The stranger stoop'd to the Well of St. Keyne,
And drank of the water again.

'You drank of the Well, I warrant, betimes,'

He to the Cornishman said;

But the Cornishman smiled as the stranger spake,
And sheepishly shook his head.

'I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,
And left my wife in the porch;

But i' faith she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church.'-Southey.

86. THE BEDOUINS.

Stand in an Arab market-place, and you might fancy yourself surrounded by the greatest ruffians and villains in the world. Such wild eyes, such ferocious gestures, such scowling brows you never saw out of a picture by Salvator Rosa. But they are decent and honest folk notwithstanding. Here is a brawny

Bedouin, six feet high, noble, and dignified, and warlike in mien, but he bestrides the humblest little donkey you can imagine. Neddy is burdened, too, with a pannier full of spring onions, and the Bedouin is inciting the meek little beast into a trot, not by blows or curses, but by soft terms of Arabic endearment. You might fancy the Bedouin to be Saul, the son of Kish, riding one of his father's asses, and quite unwotting that he is to be made king over Israel. But mount this Arab on a fleet barb, and give him a long gun, and a sharp yataghan, and a holster full of pistols, and see what a terrible man of war he will make. The Arab, however, does not seem to make war on his own responsibility. If the emir or the sheik of his tribe raises the war-cry, he and all his tribe get on horseback, and fight like tigers. He will rob and slay in a body, but individually he is neither an assassin nor a thief. In truth, he is one of nature's nobility, and a very dirty, savage nobleman too, like most of the primitive peerage. Dissimilar as he is in race, complexion, and garb, I am the more and more reminded as I mingle with these wild men of the Scottish Highlanders, as Sir Walter describes them in the Legend of Montrose-true children, if not of the Mist, at least of the Sirocco-plunderers and cattle-lifters, and occasionally blood-spillers; but the target and claymore once laid aside, quiet and docile people; terrible in warfare as Fergus M'Ivor, but gentle and affectionate in repose as Evan Dhu in the gaol at Carlisle.

87. LA GRANde Ville dE MARSEILLE.-LA CANNEBIÈRE.

This often-mentioned street is, in truth, handsome enough, as wide as the Rue de la Paix, but not much longer. The best shops and hotels of Marseilles line its trottoir, and it leads directly down to the port and to the sea. There are streets quite as noble in Lyons and in Bordeaux; but its chief charm consists in its incessant and characteristic life and bustle, and the varied costumes of the people, who seem to have been culled indiscriminately from all the nations under the sun. Venice used to be the most cosmopolitan-looking place in Europe; but, in the sad days of her hopeless bondage, she has grown monotonous. But here, in the Cannebière, thousands are running to and fro, clothed in different habits, gabbling different

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