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three play-bills. Seymour remarked to me knowingly, that there must be a very popular piece being acted at the time, for it was performed at three different theatres, and was called RELACHE. He advised me,

if it was printed to buy it, and send it over to Mr. Moncrieff to translate for the Coburg theatre.

"Promenaded the streets; Paris all gaiety; the Boulevards crowded with well-dressed ladies; coffee roasting under a wood fire, in a tin turn-about machine, before almost all the grocers' shops; flock-mattresses ripped up, beaten, and re-made in the open thoroughfares; old women trimming poodles on the bridges; letter-writers in stalls, on any subject; prints exhibited for public sale, which would be torn down in London by any coal-heaver who was a father of a family. Many more theatrical portraits in the print-shops than in our metropolis. The public think much more of actors and authors than they do with us; both are encouraged. Monsieur Scribe, a comic dramatic writer, gets above two thousand pounds a-year. The Parisian public respect and uphold him.

"Asked our serious friend, whose name I found out (by seeing it written in his hat) was Mudpole, what he thought of the bustle of the Boulevards? He replied, that it was a scene which would have provoked the pious indignation of a Nehemiah, zealous for the glory of his Maker, to an irascible state of choleric exacerbation, in fine, so opposed to everything that was barely moral, that even a Christian of moderate piety would have inwardly experienced pity, disgust, and shame.

a scene,

"Wandered till dinner-time, when we all entered a restaurateur's, -carte almost as long as the carts in the street, which appear to be made to go into next week. But the Paris carte, or bill of fare, gives you an infinite variety of eatables. Put on my spectacles, but was horribly bothered with the names of the French dishes. Seymour had a bill also in his hand, and he pulled my elbow, and said, 'Look here, Mr. Barnes. He then put his finger on the word 'POISSONS,' which he very naturally, poor fellow, read as 'poisons. This puzzled me a little, and I proceeded to look for the names of these poisons: I copied them in pencil,-'anguilles étuvés, 'merlan frit,' morue bouillé,' 'éperlans,' truite grillée, and yet, strange to say, all these poisons were priced, like the other eatables in the bill. Sorry I had not my French dictionary, and did not choose to expose my ignorance by asking questions.

-

"But it now came to the point what we were to have for dinner. All of them said that I was to order. (N. B. That cursed Harlequin, who could have interpreted, had left us.) I asked Columbine and her mamma if they would take some soup? The latter replied,-that it never agreed with either of them. No go there. I then thought they might like some fish; but did not know how to ask for it; and that infernal word, poissons,' again caught my eye, and made me hesitate. Seymour inquired if I happened to know the French for brown stout?' I confessed to having looked in my dictionary in the morning for the two words, and had written them down in my little memorandum-book. So, putting on my spectacles, I read them, Brune, qui a du cœur. This rejoiced Seymour, who begged me to order him a pot of it; but I could not make the fool of a waiter understand me; and, if his porter had no better head than he had, it could not have been good for much. They were now all becoming very impatient,

picking and nibbling their bread, and kept me in a state of nervous trepidation as to ordering dinner. I never in my life was in such a twitter, as we had all the eyes of the room upon us, which was not a little increased by Columbine's mamma sweeping a large glass decanter of water off the table with her elbow, which crashed into fifty pieces, and wetted through a French gentleman's cross-barred black silk stockings at the next table. We could not apologise; and he kept shaking his feet like a cat: and, worse than all, those brutes, Seymour and Ronaldson, could not refrain from laughing. Columbine, blushing, said, 'Do make haste, Mr. Barnes, and order something; I am very hungry.' So I was compelled to make a dash at the first dish that then caught my eye on the bill of fare, des raves.' So I beckoned the waiter, and pointed to the article. Pour quatre, monsieur?" said he.Yes,' said I, with the carte in my hand. He stared; but immediately went to order for us. Thank Heaven!' exclaimed Ronaldson, we shall now get something nice and hot. What a comfort it is to have in a foreign country such a person as Mr. Barnes for a fellow-traveller!' I felt cock-a-hoop' at this compliment, and quoted Old Rapid in the Cure for the Heart-Ache,'' If it is ever so little, let me have it hot.' But, Lord! how their faces all turned blue when the waiter put on the table four dishes of turnip radishes! (You might have knocked me down with a straw. Now, pray, how was the pantomime to succeed when the first scene was a dead failure!) When, as luck would have it, the Jew Frenchman, (harlequin) came to seek us; and, on explaining the dilemma, got us roasted turkey stuffed with chestnuts; cotelettes à la Maintenon which are mutton-chops with writing-paper sauce, and some other dishes of which we were afraid even to ask the names; all very savoury, and plenty of onions and garlic; but, whether they were composed of squirrels, parrots, dormice, hippopotamus, or alligator, we never inquired, and never knew.

"Mr. Mudpole said the longest grace before dinner I ever heard in my life, with the whites of his eyes turned up, and shaking his head. As a contrast to that, I remember an old fat curmudgeon of a Norfolk farmer, who always repeated this grace after meat,'Thank God! I've had a good dinner: and I don't care who harn't!' "Received directions to attend the theatre in the evening, at which we were engaged. Went, and we were introduced to the principal manager, who welcomed us to Paris. Saw part of the performance, but did not understand a word of it. N. B. The French good comedians by nature.

"Returned to the hotel; had some conversation with our tourist, Mr. Mudpole. He had been seeing Paris in his own way; but, somehow or other, he contrived to be very unfortunate in his lion-hunting. He visited the Bourse et Tribunal de Commerce.' There he was told that all commercial operations being ended, the exchange was closed. It, however, cost him nothing,-so he proved the old adage that Exchange was no robbery.' He then, as he expressed it, inclined his feet towards the Tuileries; but as Paris was at this period in a state of great political excitement, I don't think that Messieurs the sentinels much liked his appearance. Mudpole then poked his way to Notre Dame; where he found a great religious ceremonial in agitation. Tapestry, flags, horse and foot soldiers patrolling. It turned out to be, that under the sapient government of Charles X, Polignac, and

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Peyronnet, this was the observance of a festival annually held, in celebration of the fulfilment of a vow made by Louis the Fourteenth to the Virgin Mary, when he thought that she had granted him a little boy to be born, after a twenty-two years' sterile state of wedlock with his royal consort! Well,' thought I, Barnes, you are a d-d old fool! but can you imagine anything half so ridiculous as that, in a country which esteems itself the most enlightened on the face of the globe! The royal family were present. His Majesty, white and thin, like a wax-taper; the archbishops and bishops, mostly fat and waddling; the military, their bands-the choral-chaunting, and other mummery, all drove Mr. Mudpole crazy; and he told me seriously that it was, in his opinion, a huge and monstrous vanity; the equipage of a benighted superstition; heathen, demoralizing priestcraft worship; the essence of that Apocalyptic beast, that mother of harlots and abominations, that Queen of Mystic Babylon. The word, Babylon struck my pun-loving ear; when the whole affair had been got up for the loan of a baby.'

"It is not my habit to laugh at church myself. I used sometimes to accompany my poor dear Mary (now dead and gone) to Rowland Hill's chapel. She was partial to it; though, I must own, with all my partiality for her, I think she went more to show off her singing than any other motive. She had a very powerful voice. We had a Wolverhampton acquaintance, who lived in the Blackfriars' Road, who sat near to us in the chapel; and, in a complimentary way, he used to say, 'Mrs. Barnes's vice is above all the other females in the chapel.' He meant to have pronounced the word voice; but all folks from Staffordshire, and adjacent counties, use vice for voice.

6

"Pounced, by the blessing of Heaven, on a worthy Englishman, Mr. Wood, who keeps a publichouse-ay, a British publichouse,in Paris. He has got his labelled bottles, Old Tom,' Bitters,' 'London porter in draught and bottle,' 'gin,'-gin in Paris!- comfortable English dinners,' roasted joints,' potatoes,' 'apple dumplings,' and 'a bit of strong Cheshire.' All right, old boy! No longer obliged to trouble your poor diaphragm with what are termed kickshaws' in English; but which must mean in French (without bothering one with the dictionary,) from the similarity of sound, 'quelques choses.' "Alteration in the weather; wind got up; gusty and dusty. What extraordinary alterations have taken place in my recollection of seasons! We once were tolerably secure of the approaches and visitations of the different quarters of the year; but now all are changed. I am aware that I am an old fool; but, watching the fishmongers' shops, the periods of arrival of fish on the coast of Great Britain are altered from what I imagine I remembered. A red mullet was so rare a fellow, that when I saw them latterly by dozens, I thought they were the Chinese carp. Only I forgot the magnifying power of the globular glass. The red mullet has been driven to our shores; the periods of mackerel migrations have changed; herrings-which used only to be seen in October and November,- are visible on the fishmongers' boards almost all the year. We have had whales in the Channel, and a much larger quantity of white-bait in the Thames. I, accordingly, set my pantaloon's head to account for all this change. "And I have hit it, sure as a gun : we English, in our love of science, have been tampering too much with the North Pole: it should never have been disturbed. Holes have been repeatedly broken in the

ice there by our intrepid navigators; and the consequence is, an alteration of atmosphere, which has an effect both upon seasons and fish. There is only one way to set things on a proper footing again - to use a counteracting power. Let our Government send out an expedition to the South Pole, and rake away there. That device will, in a few years, again change the lamentable state of affairs.

"Next day, the Jew Frenchman came to the hotel to procure lodgings for us. Now, Seymour, who, as I stated before, was our machinist, had brought a pantomime trick with him from England, of which he was jealously proud; he could not bear any one to touch it but himself. I forget what the transformation was, but something changed to a windmill; and, as we hunted through the streets of Paris for lodgings for our fellow adventurers, Seymour, who was a little punchy figure, carried this trick, which was large and heavy, on his shoulder; while Ronaldson followed, with a large basket-work and papier-machée swan under each arm. The wind happened this day to be very boisterous, with sudden gusts round the corners of the streets; and it was fun to me to observe Seymour blown about, with his windmill on his back; and old frosty-faced Ronaldson behind him with his property birds. Every where, when we stopped at 'appartement garni à louer,' these monstrous things were put down in the street, to the admiration of the populace; and they really, in some instances, prevented the lodging-house keepers from taking us in on any terms. I cannot resist a little sketch of my friends. Seymour was rather drunk."

JUDGING BY APPEARANCES.

MISTAKES IN A PRISON.

SHORTLY after the execution of the culprits we were musing over our wine after a sumptuous dinner, when my friend, Mr. Doveways, proposed that on the following day we should go over the county gaol, which had the reputation of being the best built and the best managed, perhaps, of any gaol in England. I am generally averse to visiting scenes of vice, calamity, and woe, from motives of mere curiosity, or from any motives but those of assisting the sufferers, and schooling myself into habits of forbearance and mercy towards my fellow-creatures. On this occasion, however, I agreed to accompany my friend, and the next day the visit was paid.

Mr. Doveways was in the commission of the peace, and consequently we obtained easy access to the innermost recesses of the prison. We had visited all the female wards save one.

"In that ward,” said the matron, "c we have but two prisoners: one committed for an assault; and the other, for refusing to affiliate her child."

The huge bolt was withdrawn, and the ponderous key performed its office. The door was opened; and in a well-sized and remarkably clean room, with its white-washed walls, and floor almost rivalling their whiteness, were two female prisoners.

An Amazonian woman, with coarse features and dishevelled carroty hair, was stamping up and down the room, trying to quiet a miserably small sickly child, whose shrill squeaking voice was the most annoying I had ever heard from infancy. The huge ugly creature pressed the brat to her immense chest; and, as she took her wide strides and determined steps, her splay feet seemed to threaten to crush each board beneath her.

In the farther corner sat a young girl of seventeen. She rose, and courtesied; but the down-cast eye, the flushing cheek and quivering lip showed that she was ashamed to meet our gaze. Her courtesy was graceful in the extreme. It was the discipline of the gaol that all prisoners should remain standing whilst visiters were present; but this poor girl trembled so that she could scarcely support herself. Her face was extremely beautiful; the features delicate; the complexion pale; and, if I ever saw a lofty brow, a clear magnificent eye, and lips that expressed dignity and sweetness, purity and gentleness, this poor girl possessed them all in perfection. Her figure, considering her age, was tall and beautifully formed, and her manner even elegant. I was overcome by the distress which our presence occasioned, as well as by her general appearance; and, full of emotion, I suddenly withdrew. My friend followed; and was even more affected than myself. The day was so beautiful that we resolved to walk from the gaol to my friend's mansion. The first half hour was passed in silence, each of us being absorbed in his own melancholy thoughts. I was the first to speak.

"After all," said I, "there are some good points to be found even in the abandoned. The most coarse and rude natures have their delicacies, and the most violent their times of gentleness. How kind was