compatriot with the barrel organ, that I should have been glad if his hurdy-gurdy were in his entrails, and persisted in remaining there and playing for a week! Twenty minutes to Two.-Another Italian, with a barrel organ and a monkey. The monkey very like a Fenian, the man not so good looking. Why does not the Re Galantuomo keep these lazy Italians to himself? This fellow would make excellent food for powder. Two little children and a nursemaid at the opposite side of the street, seem delighted with the monkey; but what their opinion of the music is, I have no means of judging. Half past Two.-A performer on the corneta-piston, plays The Last Rose of Summer, and Auld Lang Syne, neither very well, nor very badly. His music brings up half-a-dozen female heads from the areas on either side of the way. He makes, what is in theatrical parlance called a succès d'estime, but does not favour the street beyond ten minutes. or if he has he makes none. The play proceeds; and as it is opposite my window, I make the most of it-and if I must tell the truth, I enjoy it. The dog that appears towards the last act, is a first-rate performer, cool and collected; and when Punch hits him a little too hard, he fastens upon Punch's nose in a manner that impresses the audience with the idea, that he thoroughly believes it to be flesh and blood. Good dog! I should think that Punch clears about eighteenpence by this little interlude, sixpence whereof was mine, for I had been seen to laugh, and could not expect to enjoy such a luxury without paying for it. If the manager of this ambulatory theatre repeats his performance ten or a dozen times a day, with the same pecuniary results, he must make what is called "a tolerably good thing of it." Five o'clock.-Barrel organ, Champagne Charlie, Not for Joseph, and Adeste Fidelis. No policeman. Twenty-five minutes past Five.-Barrel organ. Partant pour la Syrie. How I hate it! Followed by Adeste Fidelis, which if possible, I hate still more. No policeman. Six o'clock. An old man with a fiddle; an old woman with a concertina; and a younger woman with a baby at her breast. The young woman sings, and the older performers murder the music. This is even a worse infliction than the barrel organ; and lasts for about five minutes. Much as the street seems to love music, it evidently does not love this specimen of harmony, and not a single halfpenny rewards the trio. A quarter past Three.-A lad in shabby Highland costume, exhibits a pair of legs that do not show to advantage, and plays villanously on the bag-pipes, the well-known air of Bonnie Laddie. The cooks, housemaids, and children, seem to be well pleased; but when he changes the air to the Reel of Tulloch, the joy of the little ones grows frantic. Three or four girls of eight or ten who have strayed down the street from some of the contiguous alleys on the other side of the Strand, get up a little dance on the pavement. A policeman, for the first time during the day, makes his appear ance. What he might have done, if the performer had been a negro minstrel, singing the Twenty minutes past Six.-A man leading a Chickaleery Cove, I know not, but he evi- Newfoundland dog, with a monkey riding on dently neither admires the music of the bag- its back. The man beats a big drum to at pipes, nor the sight of the little children en-tract attention. Somebody rises from the dinner joying themselves; so he orders away the piper in a manner that shows he is not in a humour to allow his authority to be trifled with. Resistance being hopeless the piper departs and blessed silence once again prevails for a brief space. Five minutes to Four.-A blind old man, playing the violin, led by a young womanpossibly his daughter. His tunes are mostly Scotch, and miserably perverted. If no one were permitted to play an instrument in the streets without a licence, and if none but the blind were eligible for the privilege, the plague of minstrelsy in London might be beneficially diminished. I make a present of this idea to any metropolitan member who thinks well enough of it, to introduce it to the legislature. Ten minutes past Four.-Punch and Judy, the most popular theatrical performance that ever was invented, and known and enjoyed by millions, who never heard of Macbeth or Hamlet, and never will. The street suddenly seems to swarm with children, nor are older people at all scarce within two minutes after the familiar squeak. The policeman again turns up. He has apparently no objection to Punch, table, throws a bone into the street to the dog, which speedily unhorses, or I ought perhaps to say undogs the monkey, and darts upon the prize in spite of the opposition and the kicks of his master. The monkey performs several little tricks-holds out its paw for halfpence, mounts and dismounts at word of command, but not until the dog has crunched the bone and made an end of it, with as much relish as if it were flesh; and is altogether so popular with the children and the servants, as to earn the price of a dinner for his owner. The monkey gets bits of cakes and apple from the children, the dog gets another bone, with a little meat on it, and the partnership of the man and two beasts, departs in peace; to amuse the children somewhere else. Seven o'clock.-More mock niggers-seven of them. They sing Ben Bolt, Moggie Dooral, Little Maggie May, and others, which, I presume, are the popular favourites. A family just arrived as is evident by the piles of boxes on the roof of the two cabs that carry them in detachments-and possibly fresh from the rural districts, where black minstrelsy is rarer than black swans, stand at the windows, and listen. To be seen listening is to be seen approving, Half-past seven. A barrel-organ. No police man. Eight o'clock--A woman, "clad in unwomanly rags," with a thin weak voice, dolefully chaunting Annie Laurie. and to be seen approving means money. The hullabaloo! and loud cries of "Awful murder! minstrels are asked for the repetition of Little awful murder! Second edition--Second eddiMaggie May, and, after compliance, receive shon!" I send down to know what is the what looks like half-a-crown, as it flashes from matter. It is a sell-a sell-a palpable sellthe window to the hat of the leader. Half-a- and no murder at all; and the servant brings me crown is not much among seven, though it is up a fly sheet, printed on one side, like the evidently a much more liberal gratuity than halfpenny ballads. This costs a penny; and generally falls to the lot of street musicians, if is the story-I quote literally-of "A married an opinion may be formed from the expression man caught in a Trap, or, the Lovers Detected that gleams on the sooty and greasy face of the -a Laughable Dialogue, which took place in recipient. a Railway Carriage, between a married gentleman and a young lady in this town, which was overheard by a gentleman, who immediately committed the same to writing." The "laughable dialogue" is not at all laughable, but vapid, silly, puerile, and utterly contemptible. ComA quarter-past eight.--A barrel-organ. Po-pared with the vendors of such swindling rubliceman in the street, for a wonder; is told to expel this performer, and expels him accordingly. The man persists in grinding as he goes up the street to get out of it. "Leave off," says the policeman, sharply, and in the tone of a man that means mischief if he be thwarted; and the tune ceases. The policeman walks down the street, up again, and disappears; and in less than five minutes the organ fiend-for The above is a fair and true account, and an such this particularly pertinacious vagabond unvarnished tale of a day's music and misery in deserves to be called-re-enters the scene of his London. The real music was not much; the discomfiture, and begins to grind away trium-real misery was very considerable. Is there no phantly at the Old Hundredth Psalm. I suffer remedy for such wrong? Cannot a prohibihim, in an agony of spirit, for a full ten tive duty be put upon Italians and Savoyards minutes. He meets no encouragement, and at the port of entry? Caunot music, or the retires. May he grind organs in Pandemonium for ever and ever-amen! Nine o'clock. The tinkling of a guitar, well played, succeeded by the rich full voice, of a cultivated soprano, singing the old ballad, Comin' through the Rye. Here, at last is something worth hearing. Looking out I see a well dressed woman, with a small crowd around her. She next sings, Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon, and renders it beautifully; afterwards, The Last Rose of Summer, equally well, followed by Bonnie Dundee, sung with a spirit which would do credit to any stage. This person is, I understand, a protégée of my landlady, and visits the street regularly every week. She meets otherwise with very considerable encouragement. She has sought, but hitherto in vain, to obtain an engage ment at the music halls. "One reason is," she says, "that negro melodies and comic songs by ladies are more popular than Scotch songs, or than sentimental songs of any kind, unless they are sung by a man or a woman with a blackened face." Another reason, perhaps, is poverty, and the want of good introductions. My landlady says she is an honest girl and has been well enough educated to read music and sing at sight. Can nothing be done for her? I ask. Many gentlemen," replies the landlady, "have been greatly pleased with her singing, and promised to exert themselves to get her an engagement of some kind, however humble, to take her out of street singing; but it has been all cry and no wool; and nothing has come of it." A quarter to Ten o'clock.-A tremendous bish, who disturb the night by their vociferous murderers of music in the streets, by unautho- BAGGAGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES. WE have most of us in our time suffered more or less from "Baggage." But it is not until the traveller leaves Europe, and gets beyond railways and civilisation that the real miseries of the incumbrance fairly set in. Worst of all do they become, if you travel with an army, especially if that army be in Abyssinia. The endless packing and unpacking, the nice adjustment and fastening of the baggage upon the mules, the numerous break downs upon the road, the incessant delays, and the obstinacy of the drivers, disposed me, when I was in these last mentioned circumstances, to curse my birthday. Sometimes the duty of looking after baggage was more than an annoyance, for it was not unattended with danger. I had been stationed at Antalo, and one day received orders to go down to Senafe. Two or three other officers were also downward bound, and we decided upon journeying together. Above Antalo, should have halted until my friends came up, and could then have proceeded in safety, four Englishmen armed with revolvers being a natch for any number of Gallas. Having no belief whatever in the matter I rode on. At the end of half a mile, one of the natives again came up to my side, and pointing to a ruined village a little ahead, and sixty or seventy yards from the road side, again said very significantly "Gallas!" I rode on, but was checked suddenly by the apparition of some forty or fifty armed natives emerging from the village, and moving across to intercept our march. They were Gallas indeed; there was no mistaking their white robes, which are whiter than and worn in a different fashion from those of the Abyssiniaus. I confess that I was horribly alarmed. Two or three of us might have made a successful stand, but it was hopeless for one man to do so, if it came to fighting, especially as several of them were armed with guns, and all the rest with shield and spear. bands of the robber Gallas pervaded the whole accompany me. To this I assented, although country, and robbed our convoys whenever perfectly incredulous about the Gallas. Had I they saw an opportunity; sometimes openly had the smallest belief in the existence of a attacking when the baggage guards were weak; band of these robbers in the neighbourhood, I but generally making a sudden rush, plundering the first mule or two and killing the muleteer if he attempted resistance. Many lives were lost in this manner, the Gallas suffering more than our men, for when our men were reasonably on their guard, they were always able to repel the robbers, often with considerable loss. Below Antalo, however, it was considered that the risk was small; a soldier of the Royal Engineers and a mule-driver had been killed, only a day or two before my journey; these were exceptional instances. The natives might and would plunder if they had an opportunity, and they might occasionally murder; but we had no fear of their attacking a numerous party, while the robber Gallas were in our rear, and we were leaving their country every day. The Gallas inhabit the mountain slopes to the east of Abyssinia proper, and the flat country between them and the sea; and it is only near Lake Ashangi that they occupy the plateau land upon the mountain tops. So it came to pass that we took no precaution for the defence of our baggage, frequently allowing it to go on alone, and merely directing the drivers and servants to keep together, and on no account to straggle. Generally, however, one or two of us kept near, There was nothing for it but to put a bold simply because experience had taught us that the face on the matter. Three of my servants were mules arrived very much earlier at their destina-armed: two with spears, and the third with a tion if we were there to urge them, or rather to urge the servants, on. It happened, thus, one morning, that I started alone with the baggage, my companions having some inquiries to make at the station which would detain them two or three hours. The baggage animals were nine in number, and we had five or six servants. With these I rode on for some hours across the plain, when I came upon a party of about twenty natives, who were sitting in a slight depression of the ground. Some seven or eight of them were men, the rest women and girls. They had with them three or four of the little donkeys of the country. It was useless to think of flight, or I should have given the order instantly. The Gallas would have overtaken the heavily laden mules before they could have gone fifty yards. sword. They were all Goa men, who, however courageous they might be, would have been utterly useless in a fight, for they are physi cally one of the weakest races even in India. I told them to keep close by me, and on no account to use their weapons unless I fired, for we must be overpowered if it came to blows. I then drew my revolver and rode up to the head of the baggage. I had still some hopes that they would not attack when they saw an officer with the baggage, and therefore, when I got close to them, I waved my hand for them to let us pass. Their only answer was to draw closer across the road, As we approached, the natives rose, and came and I now presented my pistol and repeated my up to me, exclaiming Gallas! Gallas! and point- sign to them to clear the way. Their reply ing to the country around. They were evidently was a rush upon the mules; the chief himself, endeavouring to explain to me that there were a worthy in a brocaded dress and armed with Gallas in the neighbourhood. Now, I felt certain a rifle, seizing the head of the leading animal. that there could be no Gallas within fifty miles, Another minute, and every load would have and consequently shook my head in sign of un- been off; the only hope lay in Bounce, so belief, and said, "Mafeesh Gallas." (Mafeesh, throwing my reins to a groom, and jumping is I believe an Arabic word, but it is used from my horse, I had the astonished chief throughout Abyssinia, and is a general nega-tight by the throat before he knew what I tive; nowhere, none, not, no, are all express-was about. For a moment he struggled to free able by Mafeesh. The natives for instance when they heard of Theodore's death, came up to us and drew their hands across their throats, crying in an interrogative tone, "Têdres Mafeesh ?" If you inquired for any article which the natives did not possess the answer was "Mafeesh.") The natives were clamorous in the reiteration of their assertion: "Gallas! Gallas! Gallas!" They then by signs demanded if they might himself, but a native is a child in the hands of an Englishman of average strength, especially when the Englishman knows that his life is at stake. A severe shake and the exhibition of my revolver to his head soon quieted him. In the mean time the other Gallas rushed up, but the muzzle of my pistol kept them from coming to close quarters. Naturally I am a peaceful man, but upon the same principle that a sheep driven into a corner by a dog will stand at bay, I faced the Gallas, and I believed even concealed from them that I was not at all at my ease. In the mean time my men were lungeing away with their spears, but fortunately without effect, for the Gallas easily parried their thrusts. I shouted to them to be quiet, for that if they wounded any one we should all be killed to a certainty. The chief now gasped out, "Soultain, taib :" "Soultan," or master, being the term they all apply to the English, and "taib" signifying good." It is all very well to say Soultan, taib,' I replied, he not in the slightest degree understanding my words: "order your men to leave my mules alone." My gestures, and the threatening proximity of the pistol, enlightened him as to my country's language; and, seeing that I was thoroughly in earnest, he did order the men to leave the mules alone. This, however, they hesitated considerably about doing; and it was only after much talk, and a considerable pointing of the revolver, of which they have a great horror, that they let go the animals, and I directed my men to drive on at once. I now saw that all danger was over, and that the Gallas, although ready enough to plunder - as their experience had taught them they could with impunity when not absolutely caught in the act were yet very unwilling to shed blood, or to injure an officer; the punishment which had fallen upon Theodore, having taught them a rather striking lesson. They have a great national respect for their own lives, besides. me. ternal appearance-and with the rescued women kissing my boots, as if I had performed prodigies of valour. A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. Ir was part of the ineffable system of sweetness and light known as the wisdom of our ancestors, to whip up the children on the morning of Innocents' Day, "in order that the memorial of Herod's murder might stick the closer." The wisdom of our contemporaries, while it has discarded the brutal practice of annually reacting the Massacre of the Innocents on a secondary scale, still retains a trace of the disagreeable medieval custom, in respect of the strict connexion maintained in many households between Biblical study and afflictive punishment, and the intimate alliance between chapters from Jeremiah to be gotten by heart, and bread and water and dark cupboards. Who the philanthropic discoverer of child-torture as a prelude to a church festival may have been, is uncertain; perhaps he was a near relative of the bright spirit who hit on the ingenious devices-to which the puddling of iron and the glazing of pottery are but trifling puerilities-of confining black beetles in walnut shells and binding them over the eyes of infants; or of that ardent lover of his species-connected with the educational profession-whose researches into the phenomena of physical pain led him to the inestimable discovery that by boring a hole, or any number of holes, in a piece of wood with which a child's hand is struck, a corresponding number of blisters may be raised on the smitten palm. But I determined to prevent, if possible, the unfortunate girls and women, whom they Our good ancestors-can we ever be suffihad already seized, from being carried off. The ciently grateful for the rack, or for the whirligig Gallas are slavetraders, and the fate of these chair framed by medical wisdom for the treatpoor creatures would have been terrible. I ment of acute mania!-blended the Innocents' therefore went back, and insisted on their being Day custom with many of the observances of given up. To this there was great demur. "The social life. If they were wicked, these ancestors soultan was taib," they said, "but these people of ours, they were at least waggish in their were not soultans." I replied by pointing to wickedness. If the boundaries of a parish or myself, and saying, "Soultan," and then patting the limits of an estate needed accurate record, the women on their heads, and pointing to the they laid down a boy on the ascertained fronroad, to show that they were travelling with tiers, and flogged him so soundly that he never I had, however, harder work than in forgot where the parish of St. Verges ended, or recovering the baggage. A hostile group ga- where that of St. Brooms began. Fifty years thered round me, but the chief interfered; and afterwards, if he were summoned as a witness I could gather from his looks and gestures at Nisi Prius, he would relate, quickened by that he was warning them that assuredly ven- the memory of his stripes, every topogrageance would be taken if they killed an officer. phical condition of the land under discussion. He pointed to my revolver, too, and held up The phantom of this sportive mode of combining his fingers, showing that it had six barrels; cruelty with land surveying yet survives in the lastly, he pointed to the women with contempt, annual outings of charity children to "beat the and then to the villages round, as much as to bounds." Formerly the charity boys and not the say, "Why run all this risk for these crea- bounds were beaten; but now the long willow tures, when you can get as many as you like wands with which bricks and mortar are castianywhere?" This argument settled the busi-gated, are falling into desuetude, and although ness, and, with many exchanges of taib, we parted and proceeded on our respective ways, my party with no greater loss than that of four or five native donkeys, which had been carried off at the commencement of the row. Thus I came out of it, like a hero-to all ex the ceremony is still kept up in some parishesthe rector in his black gown, and a chimney-pot hat, and bearing a large nosegay in his hand, being a sight to see-it is feared that beating the bounds will, in a few years, be wholly abolished, owing to the gradual but sure extinction of Beadles, as a race. Another vestige of what may had a carbuncle on the left side of his nose— be called Innocenticism lingered until recently which, once upon a time, conveyed my nurse in certain pleasant municipal excursions termed and myself to the residence of a fashionable swanhoppings," when some corpulent gentle- dentist in Old Cavendish-street, London. I men with a considerable quantity of lobster salad can remember the black footman who opened and champagne beneath their waistcoats, were the door, and the fiendish manner in which he habitually seized upon by the watermen of the grinned, as though to show that his molars Lord Mayor's barge, and "bumped on posts needed no dentistry. I can remember the or rounded blocks of stone. The solemn usage dog's-eared copy of the Belle-Assemblée on the had some reference, it is to be presumed, to the waiting-room table; the widow lady with her liberties of the City, as guaranteed by the face tied up, moaning by the window; the chocharter given by William the King to William leric old gentleman in nankeen trousers who the bishop, and Godfrey the portreeve. Or it swore terrifically because he was kept waiting; might obscurely have related to the Conservancy the frayed and threadbare edges of the green of the Thames. Substantially, it meant half-a- baize door leading to the dentist's torture crown to the Lord Mayor's watermen. chamber; the strong smell of cloves and spirits of wine and warm wax, about; the dentist himself, his white neckcloth and shining bald head; his horrible apparatus; his more horrible morocco-covered chair; the drip, drip of water at the washstand; the sympathising looks of my nurse; the deadly dew of terror that started from my pores as the monster seized me; and, finally, that one appalling circular wrench, as though some huge bear with red hot jaws he has favoured us all, in dreams-were biting my head off, and found my cervical vertebræ troublesome: all these came back to me, palpably. Yet I had that tooth out, five and thirty years ago. In the south of France, there may be found growing, all the year round, as fine a crop of ignorance and fanaticism as the sturdiest Conservative might wish to look upon. The populace of Toulouse would hang the whole Calas family again to-morrow if they had a chance. The present writer was all but stoned last summer at Toulon for not going down on his knees in the street, in honour of the passage of an absurd little joss, preceded by a brass band, a drum-major, a battalion of the line, and a whole legion of priests. The country people still thrash their children mercilessly whenever a gang of convicts go by on their way to the bague, and, especially on the morning of the execution of a criminal. And it is a consolation to arrive at the conclusion, from patent and visible facts, that wherever wisdom, in its ancestral form, triumphantly flourishes, there dirt, sloth, ignorance, superstition, fever, pestilence, and recurring famines, do most strongly flourish too. A hard road to travel! I should have forgotten all about that road by this time but for the intolerable pain I endured when I was travelling upon it. I have crossed Mont Cenis a dozen times, yet I should be puzzled to point out the principal portions of the landscape to a stranger. I could not repeat, without book, the It may seem strange to the reader that, after names of the Rhine castles between Cologne venturing upon these uncomplimentary com- and Mayence. I am sure I don't know ments on our forefathers' sagacity, the writer how many stations there are between London should candidly proceed to own his belief that the and Brighton. And I am not by any means human memory may be materially strengthened "letter" or figure perfect" in the multiplicaas to facts and dates, by the impressions of tion table, although the road up to nine times bodily anguish suffered concurrently with a eight was in my time about as hard travelling particular day or a particular event. Such, as could be gone through by a boy with a skin however, is the fact, although, of course, it not quite so thick as that of a rhinoceros. But cannot be accepted as a plea in extenuation of every inch of the hard road I happened to the most barbarous cruelty. For example, if travel in the spring of 1864-a road which the next time a tramp sought hospitality at the stretches for some three hundred miles from Guildford union, the guardians forthwith seized the city of Vera Cruz to the city of Mexupon such tramp, and caused him to be branded ico- is indelibly impressed on my memory. with a hot iron from head to foot, and in Since then, I have journeyed many thouRoman capitals, with the words, "The guar-sands of miles over roads of more or less dians of the Guildford union refuse to relieve duresse; and in the Tyrol, in Venetia, in the casual poor," the stigmatised vagrant Spain, in Algeria, I have often tested by sudden would, to the day of his death, remember inward query the strength remaining in the rethat Guildford union workhouse was not a miniscence of that road in Mexico. You turn place whereat bed and breakfast should be asked for. Still there is no combating the fact that the remembrances of agony are lasting. I have a very indistinct recollection of things which took place twenty, or even ten years ago; and I often ask myself with amazement whether it is possible that I could ever have written such and such a letter, or known such a man or woman. Yet with microscopic minuteness, I can recall a yellow hackney-coach-the driver to the right from the great quay of Vera Cruz, passing the castle of San Juan de Alloa. You drive to a wretched railway station, and take the train (I am speaking of 1864) to a place called La Soledad, some five-and-twenty miles inland. There you sleep. Next morning at daybreak you start in a carriage along the great Spanish highway, and by nightfall make Cordova. At four A.M. on the following morning you drive to Orizaba-you are taking things |