minable! That which I intend is not the repast a la carte (a navigation on which no Englishman should venture -such are its hazards-without taking a French pilot on board), but a table d'hôte, one rather of pretension, meant to seduce you and me, and the rest of us, who know no better, or will pay no more, into the idea that we have dined. The guests seated, the signal issued, off fly the covers of two portentous elliptical vessels of earthenware, and the baling out of a turbid bilge water called potage forthwith commences. Now, there are things that one does not venture even to taste; and a little of the stained warm water in question had accordingly to travel a great way before it found customers. It was succeeded by a huge dish of fried whiting, with many gashes to represent crimping, an operation which had humanely been delayed for several days (the French being a very tenderhearted people) after they were caught. The ramollissement of the fibre had, however, been to a certain degree counteracted by chlorine, with which, or some of its combinations, no fishmonger's stall in Paris is unprovided. To make all sure, the dish was (like Pyrrha's sweetheart) liquidis perfusus odoribus, provided with an antisceptic sauce of a very complex character. Now, that some of the science-associationgentlemen taste mummy I know, and dare say it is relishing; but hot mummymummy à la maitre d'hotel-could only be properly appreciated at Canopus. When these refections had been discussed, these foundations for the restoration of nature duly laid, three lean and nearly incinerated ducks, plumped out by chewed or otherwise comminuted chesnuts (a post-mortem stuffing, which might have contributed considerably to their edification had they been administered to the living fowl), were opposed to three of their webfooted and wilder cousins, called widgeon-bad affairs at best, and presenting irresistibly the similitude of exactly the same number of Day and Martin's blacking bottles rescued from the dusthole, with their necks knocked off. Four stale and sapless sweetbreads, cushioned in greasy spinach, might haply have escaped discovery, but for the angular projection of some obtrusive hard substances, well known to the anatomist, which plainly told where they came from. Of no pancreatic origin, assuredly, were these spoils of

deceased quadrupeds! We had eaten frog at Tivoli and Brussels, and had tasted cat (en patis serie) at Antibes ; but the cricoid and thycoid cartilages of horse or donkey, till this blessed day, did we never meet with as an hors d'œuvre. Next came their beans, those detestable white haricots (on a "charger" as big as that of the daughter of Herodias in the pictures of all the schools). We never set our eyes on these enormities without concurring with the Samian, "qui ventri indulsit non omne legumen" Fèves de marais! why, it is mere foddera thing to be neighed for!-and poor Marius at Minturnæ, supported on this authentic diet of the prodigal sou, seems more than ever to be pitied!

So that's what you call a mayonnaise! Away with it!—its milk and its mustard; its capers and its chopped anchovies; its white of egg, and its yolk of egg-away with it! "A bit of that roast bullock, if you please, that pater armenti, and add to it one of those yellow potatoes which have been waxing cold this half hour"—(I was weary of sitting either stricto pane or eating bread at discretion)alas! a ration of the sevenfold shield of Ajax would have answered the same purpose, blunting the knife and not the appetite; in short, it would have been clear gain to have retired, in place of waiting three quarters of an hour longer for six apples fried on fat toast! Some cream, manufactured in the apothecary's mortar, out of snails and blanched almonds, redolent of prussic acid, and confined in a sponge. cake embankment; a plate of chewed slices of doe-skin sprinkled with sugar (of which, I forgot the technical name); a sixpenny omelette; some baked pears, all brown sugar and cloves, at which a Spanish muleteer would have turned up his aquiline nose; a flabby salad, fœtid gruyère, and some pennyworth's of "ladies' fingers," stale macaroons and corrugated apples, with here and there a halfpennyworth of barley sugar drops, each wrapped in its paper with a stupid couplet.

Pleasant society, too, in Tiberim defluxit Orontes. The Thames is emptying itself into the Seine. How cleverly that "gent" (vide supra), balances his plate upon the point of his little finger without spilling a drop of the gravy! Yes, the feat is accom plished! and his familiar (whose sen

for when it rains here, it rains in earnest; the Boulevard, mean-while, which is synonymous with Paris itself, is lifeless and deserted, and but for those weather-beaten coach-stands, and that epichorial industry which works in seasons like the present, all day long, and every day at daybreak, with bell and bucket, to prepare the nymph Lutetia for her toilette, there would be little to arrest a stranger's attention, or offer material for description; but who can fail to notice that long double line of colossal mud carts, harnessed as if with the ghosts of horses slain during the week by the knackers of Montfaucon ! carts in the lowest state of decrepitude, of which the owners have solved the problem of the smallest number of spokes which may constitute a wheel. There they move, under the conduct of the official assigned to each, brandishing aloft his mud ladle of gigantic mould, or making you tremble at the chance of aspersion from his rampant besom! Yet all this line of Rosinante wretchedness has undeniably known better days. The sorriest jade amongst them, whose raw back is now bleeding under its plaister of mud, bearing the sting of the never-idle thong, was once the frolicsome colt that knew a dam's protection, and would shake the hills of Montmorency with his joyous neigh! Even when he was taken from her care, his extreme youth would protect him from hard labour; an husbandman's drudge when he had ceased to exhibit himself and his master in the Bois de Boulogne, he was still happy. If he brought greens to the Barriere, he had a whole cabbage to himself on prosperous market-days; bound subsequently apprentice to a light citadine (which is not above the moiety of a hackney-coach), though it was a great fall from his primitive, and no improvement of his secondary fortune; and though occasionally flogged in cold weather to give his master salutary exercise, yet in common circumstances, and when the fare was by time, he was allowed to have it very much his own way. It was not till the red-eyed omnibus (whose fiery cornea had marked his promising figure as she shot by him up or down the Boulevard) had determined to make him her own, that the measure of his woes was full! From the first hour that he was harnessed to the accursed dragon, his sufferings were

appalling and without remedy; he groaned, poor fellow! but the groans were profitless, as he was tied for the first time to the long-bodied monster behind him: perhaps he kicked-if so, so much the worse for him. Finding all efforts at liberation unavailing, he bore up against his cruel fate for a few summer months; at length, when his vital principle had been halfwhipped out of his body, winter and the scavenger's cart offered him a comparative euthanasia, and there he is! How many hundreds of such poor beasts, of long shaggy fetlock, may be seen to-day champing a mouthful of half-and-half (half hay and half straw), or a bit of loose harness leather taken on the sly, by which to keep alive a little longer, and but a little for their hazy eyes and dropping jaws too surely indicate that those pinched nostrils have already snuffed within a very few cubic inches of their full allotment of oxygen! Verily, the poor horse would have more right than our landlady to say, if he could speak, "Oh les hommes, les hommes!" I have just set my eye on another of these poor brutes attached to such a cart-the planks so nearly on the point of sending forth the avalanche of mud, that a sporting Englishman might bet whether the organised or the wooden carcase would drop first! and there's another, the the third specimen of the spectral row! an articulated skeleton of sixteen hands and a half, whom you would call a picture of misery! What do you say to misery herself embodied in horseskin? Mark how his straggling members, which he vainly endeavours to collect securely under him, sprawl like the divaricating legs of some old ricketty table, seeking a more extended base for the huge carcase! To what a scraggy powerless lever of a neck it is still committed to crane up that hollow and nearly dissected head! With what distressing effort does he contrive to raise it a little above the level of that blue collar against which he must pull till he drops; and this he would have done long ago, but for an ally-that young donkey-whose undeveloped vigour has been yoked to his decrepitude, and who, at this moment, in order to escape the rain, has taken the opportunity of a short halt to seek shelter under his trunk, and carry him a little on his back! As to his neighbour, whose slit ears proclaim his military carcer, well may he

regret, in common with many other heroes, that he did not fall in the last charge at Waterloo! Every horse yonder, like every man every where, has had "his inch of mirth for ell of moan." But other objects, elicited by the rainy day, challenge our attention. Behold those long files of distressing mendicity in the mid-road; an interminable vista, spattering and bespattered, but moving in admirable rhythm, save when a headstrong omuibus, or volatile cab, insist on breaking the line, which as instantly closes upon the intruder. What a group of animated scarecrows is reflected on the surface of that black, half-consolidated mirror, age or sex alike problematical and uncertain, wild and marvellous in gesture, like creatures of another world; they take no notice of any thing

mud, mud, mud! They have no organ for any thing else; how do they put their clothes on? or do they ever take them off?-of course they sleep on mud mattresses, and prop their weary heads on pillows of the same cheap material. I do assure you they have no resemblance to the functionaries of street-cleaning elsewhere. With what faultless accuracy does the long train of lustral besom fall on the rippling wave! What a black sea of clouted confectionary advances slowly at every stroke, till, reaching the rise of the Boulevard, and acquiring momentum, it facilitates the work of its own progression, and, spreading forth a pacific ocean of mud in front of that lofty arch, where vanquished Rhine, with a hundred cities, does homage to the Grand Monarque!

The sun that was to fire us all day rose cloudless, and already the close stillness of that breathless morning, the unspecked blue of that whole firmament, too clearly indicated the future prospects of the road. There was that perfect and fixed inertia in the air, that rain, wind, or hail to disturb it seemed incompatible with the nature of things. The sun's chariot, anticipating our own, was just clearing the chimney, as we ran down the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs to the bureau of the Nancy diligence, and found our equipage on the start-the horses in close conversation on the future suffer ings of the road which they knew awaited them. The rose-fingered daughter of the dawn surely burnt her fingers with the key of the coachhouse, as she proceeded with her duties for the day; and, though the colours of their pelisses are, of course, warranted to stand, the skins of those fair ladies, the hours, were in more than common jeopardy of freckles.

But hark to the horn! and behold the inexorable man, who, with register of live stock in hand, invites us to tumble in among the blouses and casquettes of six-insides! He runs his eye along our ranks, he pronounces us "complets!" The clock strikes, up clambers the conducteur to his lofty post-crack goes the whip-the horses fling up their heads-jingle, jingle, go

Livre des Postes.

We have now come to our second change, and with handkerchief already between head and hat. The heat is becoming more and more intolerable. We alight for a tantalising moment; and, under the cover of a friendly gateway, survey the coach fore and aft, and find a change of position for the better hopeless. The victims under the hot leather awning of the banquette lie feebly writhing at their length like caterpillars. He that kissed the pretty girl, and swaggered in the yard before we started, leans with pallid, vacant countenance, on his two hands (like the old sailor on the raft, in Jericault's terrific shipwreck). A third, more enfeebled still, opens his mouth for air, like a sick chub in a waterbucket. Even the Coupé, to-day, will enjoy no privilege. The two ladies, their gentlemen, and the Italian greyhound, who occupy it, all seem equally

suffering and centralised. The gentleman may be a man of gallantry on the Boulevard, for the lady next him is pretty; but who can afford small talk, or any talk to-day? As for the Rotonde-how eloquent the silence there! Five females packed in together, and not a whisper through the open window!

Heat, heat alone the full confession wrings, That mortals travelling, are but selfish things!

Stuffed once more into the blue woollen furnace, and scarcely adjusted to our place of torment-a sudden pull up! One of our horses has dropped dead. What must a poor brute suffer before he drops in harness! and how many men are obliged to die in harness! The next incident is a petty one-it is occasioned by a wasp, which, after buzzing about, stings the object of his preference, the unstung being far too much distressed with the heat to be at

the fatigue of expressing much sympathy with the sufferer. Every one has soon fallen back into his place, when all of a sudden a single puff or gust of wind, like the simoom of the desart, has filled our nostrils with life (and our eyes, of course, with dust)— alas! it returns no more. We look out, and at what a scene! An open landscape, torrified, embrowned, lies smoking under this fiery sun, and dismally is it picturesque after its kind! Leagues of straight unrun road before, and leagues of road as inexorably straight behind, and neither hedge, avenue, or casual tree to afford a moment's relief, as you toil on in the white burning dust! Think of this before you take out your passport! The rivulets have run dry-you may just make out where they ought to be, and are not -brown earthy stripes of land, near or distant, and a few stone dykes to confine the road, constitute the whole. You seem to be looking rather at an ébauche on nature's canvass (sketched in bistre or umber, or what not) than a completed picture intended for exhibition. But the very desart will afford matter for observation to the student of nature; numerous tribes of wildflowers to the right and to the left, with petals as thin as gauze paper, and stalks not bigger than a crow quill, are not in the least incommoded by this xavμaupiasyns!—they lift their heads exultingly, and rejoice in the sun's rays! those rays which have utterly dried up and split the solid

earth in which they grow, and out of which they still contrive to draw their miraculous supplies. Though every drop of moisture is gone from every ditch, the progress of the fluids, through their delicate organism, is going on, and not one molecule of sap is diverted from its destiny! Is this the whole of my reflection on what I see? Far from it, I look around me again, and I see another class of created things, which equally defies these calorific rays under which we are half expiring, and all the brute creation is palpably distressed. The insects, like the plants, are unmolested-are in joyous activity! So now, ye that demonstrate their nervous system in microscopes, and constitute them sentient and intelligent, by the exposition of what you call their anatomy, allow us merely to express surprise, that being what you say they are, modelled with a capacity of feeling (which all experience shows, at the least of it, you most enormously over-rate), that when the grove is silent, the plain abandoned for cover, and the very fish motionless in the stream, they alone are busy on the wing!

Let me lead you to yonder pool; that predatory ruffian the pike, will not, on such a day as this, move from his black water for the finest roach ever spawned! The said roach turns away his nose from the minnow, and remains lock-jawed to all temptation; all other creatures are either silent, or reduced to a few notes which complain rather than rejoice. Dogs bark notwomen scold not-the grunter in the stye is voiceless-if the sheep bleat, it is but to invite her progeny to the shelter which it has not mother wit to find. The lowing herd will not low till sun-set, and the hysterical bray of yonder half-baked donkey whom we have nearly run over, kicking in the dust, is scarcely an exception; for really he seems to express impatience rather than enjoyment. Yet the grasshopper chirrups blythely, the bee buzzes away, the wasp, the hornet, the common flies are quite unmolested (though far from unmolesting); in short, on this 12th day of July, the insects and the plants plainly have it all to themselves! You say, from some analogies of structure with higher beings, that insects do and suffer this, that and the other; I, from observation of their habits, arrive at very different conclusions, and cannot