lived in, what will they do about your fleshy tabernacle?"

'As the season advanced, the crowds increased; and as autumn began, the conflicting currents to and from the Rhine all met in my bedroom. There took place all the rendezvous of Europe. Runaway daughters there first repented in papa's arms, and profligate sons promised amendment for the future. Myself and my wife were passed by unnoticed and disregarded amid this tumult of recognition and salutation. We were emaciated like skeletons; our meals we ate when we could, like soldiers on a retreat; and we slept in our clothes, not knowing at what moment the enemy might be upon us. Locks, bolts, and bars were ineffectual; our resistance only increased curiosity, and our garrison was ever open to bribery.

'It was to no purpose that I broke the windows to let in the north wind and acute rheumatism; to little good did I try an alarm of fire every day about two, when the house was fullest; and I failed signally in terrifying my torturers when I painted the gardener's wife sky-blue, and had her placed in the hall, with a large label over the bed, "collapsed cholera." Bless your heart! the tourist cares for none of these; and I often think it would have saved English powder and shot to have exported half a dozen of them to the East for the siege of Seringapatam. Had they been only told of an old picture, a teapot, a hearth-brush, or a candlestick that once belonged to Godfrey de Bouillon or Peter the Hermit, they would have stormed it under all the fire of Egypt! Well, it's all over at last; human patience could endure no longer. We escaped by night, got away by stealth to Ghent, took post-horses in a feigned name, and fled from the Château de Van Dyck as from the plague. Determined no longer to trust to chances, I have built a cottage myself, which has no historic associations further back than six weeks ago; and fearful even of being known as the ci-devant possessor of the château, I never confess to have been in Ghent in my life; and if

Van Dyck be mentioned, I ask if he is not the postmaster at Tervueren.

'Here, then, I conclude my miseries. I cannot tell what may be the pleasure that awaits the live "lion," but I envy no man the delights that fall to his lot who inhabits the den of the dead one.'

CHAPTER XX

BONN AND STUDENT LIFE

WHEN I look at the heading of this chapter, and read there the name of a little town upon the Rhine-which, doubtless, the majority of my readers has visited-and reflect on how worn the track, how beaten the path I have been guiding them on so long, I really begin to feel somewhat faint-hearted. Have we not all seen Brussels and Antwerp, Waterloo and Quatre Bras? Are we not acquainted with Belgium, as well as we are with Middlesex; don't we know the whole country, from its cathedrals down to Sergeant Cotton?-and what do we want with Mr. O'Leary here? And the Rhine-bless the dear man!— have we not steamed it up and down in every dampschiffe of the rival companies? The Drachenfels and St. Goar, the Caub and Bingen, are familiar to our eyes as Chelsea and Tilbury Fort. True, all true, mesdames and messieurs -I have been your fellow-traveller myself. I have watched you pattering along, John Murray in hand, through every narrow street and ill-paved square, conversing with your commissionaire in such French as it pleased God, and receiving his replies in equivalent English. I have seen you at table d'hôte, vainly in search of what you deemed eatable-hungry and thirsty in the midst of plenty; I have beheld you yawning at the opera, and grave at the Vaudeville; and I knew you were making your summer excursion of pleasure, 'doing your Belgium and Germany,' like men who would not be behind

their neighbours. And still, with all this fatigue of sea and land, this rough-riding and railroading, this penance of short bed and shorter board, though you studied your handbook from the Scheldt to Schaffhausen, you came back with little more knowledge of the Continent than when you left home. It is true, your son Thomas-that lamblike scion of your stock, with light eyes and hairhas been initiated into the mysteries of rouge et noir and roulette; madame, your wife, has obtained a more extravagant sense of what is becoming in costume; your daughter has had her mind opened to the fascinations of a French escroc or a 'refugee Pole'; and you, yourself, somewhat the worse for your change of habits, have found the salads of Germany imparting a tinge of acidity to your disposition. These are, doubtless, valuable imports to bring back-not the less so, that they are duty free. Yet, after all, 'joy's recollection is no longer joy'; and I doubt if the retrospect of your wanderings be a repayment for their fatigues.

Would he have us stay at home, Pa?' lisps out, in pouting accents of impatience, some fair damsel, whose ringlets alone would make a furore at Paris.

Nothing of the kind, my dear. Travel by all means. There's nothing will improve your French accent like a winter abroad; and as to your carriage and air, it is allessential you should be pressed in the waltz by some dark-moustached Hungarian or tight-laced Austrian. Your German will fall all the more trippingly off your tongue that you have studied it in the land of beer and beetroot; while, as a safeguard against those distressing sensations of which shame and modesty are the parents, the air of the Rhine is sovereign, and its watering-places an unerring remedy. All I bargain for is, to be of the party. Let there be a corner in a portmanteau, or an imperial, a carriage-pocket, or a courier's sack for me, and I'm content. If John' be your guide, let Arthur be your mentor. He'll tell you of the roads; I, of the travellers.

To him belong pictures and statues, churches, châteaux, and curiosities; my province is the people - the living actors of the scene, the characters who walk the stage in prominent parts, and without some knowledge of whom your ramble would lose its interest. Occasionally, it is true, they may not be the best of company. Que voulezvous? 'If ever you travel, you mustn't feel queer,' as Mathews said or sung-I forget which. I shall only do my endeavour to deal more with faults than vices, more with foibles than failings. The eccentricities of my fellow-men are more my game than their crimes; and therefore do not fear that in my company I shall teach you bad habits, nor introduce you to low acquaintances; and above all, no disparagement-and it is with that thought I set out-no disparagement of me that I take you over a much-travelled If it be so, there's the more reason you should know the company whom you are in the habit of visiting frequently; and secondly, if you accompany me here, I promise you better hereafter; and lastly, one of the pleasantest books that ever was written was the Voyage autour de ma Chambre. Come, then, is it agreed-are we fellow-travellers? You might do worse than take me. I'll neither eat you up, like your English footmen, nor sell you to the landlord, like your German courier, nor give you over to brigands, like your Italian valet. It's a bargain, then; and here we are at Bonn.

track.

It is one o'clock, and you can't do better than sit down to the table d'hôte: call it breakfast, if your prejudices run high, and take your place. I have supposed you at 'Die Sterne' (The Star), in the little square of the town; and, certes, you might be less comfortably housed. The cuisine is excellent, both French and German, and the wines delicious. The company at first blush might induce you to step back, under the impression that you had mistaken the salon, and accidentally fallen upon a military mess. They are nearly all officers of the cavalry regiments garrisoned at Bonn, well-looking and well-dressed fellows,

stout, bronzed, and soldierlike, and wearing their moustaches like men who felt hair on the upper lip to be a birthright. If a little too noisy and uproarious at table, it proceeds not from any quarrelsome spirit: the fault, in a great measure, lies with the language. German, except spoken by a Saxon mädchen, invariably suggests the idea of a row to an uninterested bystander; and if Goethe himself were to recite his ballads before an English audience, I'd venture long odds they'd accuse him of blasphemy. Welsh and Irish are soft zephyrs compared to it.

A stray Herr Baron or two, large, portly, responsiblelooking men, with cordons at their button-holes, and pipesticks projecting from their breast-pockets, and a sprinkling of students of the higher class-it is too dear for the others -make up the party. Of course, there are English; but my present business is not with them.

By the time you have arrived at the Rae-braten, with capers-which on a fair average, taken in the months of spring and summer, may be after about an hour and a half's diligent performance-you'll have more time to survey the party, who by this time are clinking their glasses, and drinking hospitably to hospitably to one another in champagne; for there is always some newly returned comrade to be fêted, or a colonel's birthday or a battle, a poet or some sentimentalism about the Rhine or the Fatherland, to be celebrated. Happy, joyous spirits, removed equally from the contemplation of vast wealth or ignominious poverty! The equality so much talked of in France is really felt in Germany; and however the exclusives of Berlin and Vienna, or the still more exalted coteries of Baden or Darmstadt, rave of the fourteen quarterings which give the entrée to their salons, the nation has no sympathy with these follies. The unaffected, simple-minded, primitive German has no thought of assuming an air of distance to one his inferior in rank; and I have myself seen a sovereign prince take his place at