to shine forth in its gladdest features.

I was up and

stirring soon after sunrise; and with all my prejudices against such a means of 'lengthening one's days,' I sat at my window, actually entranced with the beauty of the scene. Beyond the river there rose a heath-clad mountain, along which misty masses of vapour swept hurriedly, disclosing as they passed some tiny patch of cultivation struggling for life amid granite rocks and abrupt precipices. As the sun grew stronger, the grey tints became brown and the brown grew purple, while certain dark lines that tracked their way from summit to base began to shine like silver, and showed the course of many a mountain torrent tumbling and splashing towards that little lake that lay calm as a mirror below. Immediately beneath my window was the garden of the château-a succession of terraces descending to the very river. The quaint yew hedges carved into many a strange device, the balustrades half hidden by flowering shrubs and creepers, the marble statues peeping out here and there, trim and orderly as they looked, were a pleasant feature of the picture, and heightened the effect of the desolate grandeur of the distant view. The very swans that sailed about on the oval pond told of habitation and life, just as the broad expanded wing that soared above the mountain peak spoke of the wild region where the eagle was king.

My musings were suddenly brought to a close by a voice on the terrace beneath. It was that of a man who was evidently, from his pace, enjoying his morning's promenade under the piazza of the château, while he hummed a tune to pass away the time:

Holloa, there, François, ain't they stirring yet? Why, it's past six o'clock!'

The person addressed was a serving-man, who in the

formidable attire of an English groom-in which he was about as much at home as a coronation champion feels in plate armour-was crossing the garden towards the stables.

'No, sir; the count won't start before eight.'

'And when do we breakfast?'

I say, François, what horse do they mean for Mademoiselle Laura to-day?'

'The mare she rode on Wednesday, sir. Mademoiselle liked her very much.'

'And what have they ordered for the stranger that came the night before last the gentleman who was robbed

'I know, I know, sir; the roan, with the cut on her knee.'

'Why, she's a mad one! she's a runaway!'

'So she is, sir; but then monsieur is an Englishman, and the count says he'll soon tame the roan filly.'

""Why, soldiers, why-""

hummed the old colonel, for it was Muddleton himself; and the groom pursued his way without further questioning. Whereupon two thoughts took possession of my brain: one of which was, what peculiar organisation it is which makes certain old people who have nothing to do early risers; the other, what offence had I committed to induce the master of the château to plot my sudden death.

The former has been a puzzle to me all my life. What a blessing should sleep be to that class of beings who do nothing when awake; how they should covet those drowsy hours that give, as it were, a sanction to indolence; with what anxiety they ought to await the fall of day,

as announcing the period when they become the equals of their fellow-men; and with what terror they should look forward to the time when the busy world is up and stirring, and their incapacity and slothfulness only become more glaring from contrast! Would not any one say that such people would naturally cultivate sleep as their comforter? Should they not hug their pillow as the friend of their bosom? On the contrary, these are invariably your early risers. Every house where I have ever been on a visit has had at least one of these troubled and troublesome spirits-the torment of Boots, the horror of housemaids. Their chronic cough forms a duet with the inharmonious crowing of the young cock, who for lack of better knowledge proclaims day a full hour before his time. Their creaking shoes are the accompaniment to the scrubbing of brass fenders and the twigging of carpets, the jarring sounds of opening shutters and the cranking discord of a hall door chain; their heavy step sounds like a nightmare's tread through the whole sleeping house. And what is the object of all this? What new fact have they acquired; what difficult question have they solved; whom have they made happier or wiser or better? Not Betty the cook, certainly, whose morning levée of beggars they have most unceremoniously scattered and scared; not Mary the housemaid, who, unaccustomed to be caught en déshabillé, is cross the whole day after, though he was only an elderly gentleman, and wore spectacles'; not Richard, who cleaned their shoes by candle-light; nor the venerable butler, who from shame's sake is up and dressed, but who, still asleep, stands with his corkscrew in his hand, under the vague impression that it is a late supper-party.

These people, too, have always a consequential, selfsatisfied look about them; they seem to say they know a 'thing or two' others have no wot of-as though the day, more confidential when few were by, told them some capital secrets the sleepers never heard of, and they made

this pestilential habit a reason for eating the breakfast of a Cossack, as if the consumption of victuals was a cardinal virtue. Civilised differs from savage life as much by the regulation of time as by any other feature. I see no objection to your red man, who probably can't go to breakfast till he has caught a bear, being up betimes; but for the gentleman who goes to bed with the conviction that hot rolls and coffee, tea and marmalade, bloaters and honey, ham, muffins, and eggs await him at ten o'clock-for him, I say, these absurd vagabondisms are an insufferable affectation, and a most unwarrantable liberty with the peace and privacy of a household.

Meanwhile, old Colonel Muddleton is parading below; and here we must leave him for another chapter.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CHASE

I WISH any one would explain to me why it is that the tastes and pursuits of nations are far more difficult of imitation than their languages or institutions. Nothing is more common than to find Poles and Russians speaking half the tongues of Europe like natives. Germans frequently attain to similar excellence; and some Englishmen have the gift also. In the same way it would not be difficult to produce many foreigners well acquainted with all the governmental details of the countries they have visited-the policy, foreign and domestic; the statistics of debt and taxation; the religious influences; the resources, and so forth. Indeed, in our days of universal travel, this kind of information has more or less become general, while the tastes and habits, which appear so much more easily acquired, are the subjects of the most absurd mistakes, or the most blundering imitation. To instance what I mean, who ever saw any but a Hungarian dance the mazurka with even tolerable grace? Who ever saw waltzing except

among the Austrians? Who ever beheld 'toilette' out of France? So it is, however. Some artificial boundary drawn with a red line on a map by the hand of Nesselrode or Talleyrand, some pin stuck down in the chart by the fingers of Metternich, decides the whole question, and says, 'Thus far shalt thou dance and no farther. Beyond this there are no pâtés de Perigord. Here begin pipes and tobacco; there end macaroni and music.'

Whatever their previous tastes, men soon conform to the habits of a nation, and these arbitrary boundaries of the gentlemen of the red tape become like Nature's own frontiers of flood or mountain. Not but it must have been somewhat puzzling in the good days of the Consulate and the Empire to trim one's sails quick enough for the changes of the political hurricane. You were an Italian yesterday, you are a Frenchman to-day; you went to bed a Prussian, and you awoke a Dutchman. These were sore trials, and had they been pushed much further, must have led to the most strange misconceptions and mistakes.

Now, with a word of apology for the digression, let me come back to the cause of it-and yet why should I make my excuses on this head? These 'Loiterings' of mine are as much in the wide field of dreamy thought as over the plains and valleys of the material world. I never promised to follow a regular track, nor did I set out on my journey bound, like a king's messenger, to be at my destination in a given time. Not a bit of it. I'll take 'mine ease in mine inn.' I'll stay a week, a fortnight-ay, a month, here, if I please it. You may not like the accommodation, nor wish to put up with a 'settle and stewed parsnips.' Be it so. Here we part company then. If you don't like my way of travel, there's the diligence, or, if you prefer it, take the extra post, and calculate, if you can, how to pay your postillion in kreutzers-invented by the devil, I believe, to make men swear-and for miles, that change with every little grand-duchy of three acres in extent. I wish you joy of your travelling companions-the German who smokes,