how a bashful young fellow could ever get over a German courtship, if it's at all such a before-folk affair as is described by the Old Man in his Book of Bubbles, namely, a lover taking a romantic country walk with his intended, and eight or ten of her she-cronies, singing, laughing, and waltzing, after her heels. Without being particularly sheepish or shamefaced as a young man, I don't think I could have gone sweethearting with half a score of bouncing girls, ballad-singing, and whirligigging along with me, all agog, of course, to see how love was made, giggling at my tender sentiments, and mayhap scoring every kiss like a notch at cricket, provided one could have the face to kiss at all in such a company. But foreign love-making is like foreign cookery; an egg is an egg all the world over, but there are a hundred ways of dishing it

up.

And now, old friend, God bless you and all your family, by way of a last farewell from your old and faithful friend, RICHARD ORCHARD.

I wish you could see the breed of pigs in these parts. They are terribly long in the legs, and thin in the flanks, and would cut a far better figure at a Coursing Meeting than a Cattle Show. Some of them quite run lean enough for greyhounds.

You will not be sorry to receive tidings of a person whose mysterious disappearance, some two or three years back, cost us both some speculation. Yesterday, whilst looking at the

monument of Cuno of Falkenstein, in the venerable church of St. Castor, I was accosted by name, and with some difficulty recognized, under a German cap and kittel, our old friend Markham. In answer to my inquiries, he told me a new edition of the old story, — of "becoming security for a friend,” &c.; in short, he had come abroad to retrench, and selected this bank of the Rhine for his saving-bank. From what I could learn, the experiment had not answered his expectations. "You remember," said he, "our laughing at a written notice stuck up at the Opera-House in London, enforcing certain exclusive regulations, in consequence of the great affluence of strangers behind the scenes? In the same sense, the great affluence of strangers up the Rhine has not only had the effect of raising the price of every article, but with its proper meaning, the supposed affluence of the English travellers has generated a proportionate spirit of rapacity and extortion. I reckon, for instance, that I am charged a third more than a native on my whole expenditure, so that you see there is not much room left for saving."

Of course, the opinions of a disappointed man must be received cum grano salis,· but in the main, Markham's statements agree with those of Grundy; and though his remarks have occasionally a splenetic tone, yet he "gives his reasons. On some topics his outbreaks are rather amusing. Thus, when I asked if he did not find the natives a very good, honest sort of people, he replied to my question by another: "Do you expect that the descendants of our Botany Bay convicts will be remarkable for their strict notions of meum and tuum?" "Of course not," said I; "but the honesty of the German character has been generally admitted." "Granted,” said he, "but there is such a thing as giving a dog a good name as well as a bad one, upon which he lives and thrives as unjustly as another is pitchforked or shot with slugs. That the Germans are honest as a nation I believe, as regards your Saxons, Bavarians, Austrians, or north-countrymen, but as

for your Coblentzers, and the like, whence were they to derive that virtue? Was the rara avis hatched in any of the robbers' nests so numerous in these provinces? Was it inculcated by the ministers of their religion? An archbishop of Cologne, when asked by one of his retainers how he was to subsist, significantly pointed out, that the Knight's castle overlooked four

highways, and hinted to his vassal that, like Macheath, he must take to the road. No, no, if the Rhinelanders be particularly honest, they were indebted for their education, like Filch in the Beggars' Opera, to very light-fingered schoolmasters. Why, every Baron in the land was a bandit, and half the common people, by a regularly organized system, were either Journeyman Robbers or Apprentices. That's matter of history, my boy! At any rate, if Rhenish honesty be a fact, our prison philanthropists are all wrong; and Mrs. Fry and the Sheriffs, who are so anxious to separate the juvenile convicts from the accomplished thieves, ought immediately to take a trip up the Rhine. Instead of classification and moral instruction, the true way would be something like this: - take a clever boy, bring him up like a young Spartan, -reward him for successfully picking and stealing, strike the eighth commandment out of his catechism, send him to school in Newgate, and let Bill Soames be his private tutor; do all this, and expect eventually to discover in him the Honest Man that Diogenes could n't find with his lantern!" "Do you speak,” I asked, " from theory or from experience?" "From both," said he; "and comparing the Middle Ages with the modern ones, I cannot help thinking that an extortion of some thirty per cent on all foreign travellers on the Rhine, has a strong smack of the old freebooting spirit."

On leaving St. Castor's we saw, directly opposite the porch, the well-known fountain with its celebrated inscriptions :

ANNO 1812.

"Mémorable par la Campagne contre les Russes, sous la Préfecture de Jules Douzan."

"Vu et approuvé, par nous, Commandant Russe de la Ville de Coblentz, le 1er Janvier, 1814."

"There!" said Markham, pointing to the graven words, – "there are two sentences which have caused far more cackling than they deserved. The adulation of Mayors and Prefects is too common, for the erection of a monument on any occasion, or no occasion at all, to be a matter of wonder. But the mere undertaking an expedition against Russia was a memorable event in the career of Napoleon, whatever its ultimate result. As for the Russian General, he might naturally

be astonished and delighted to find himself in command of a city on the Rhine, and its obelisk; but his comment, if it points any moral at all, chiefly recalls the uncertainty of all human calculations. As a sarcasm it is feeble, with a recoil on himself; for where is St. Priest now, or who hears his name? Whereas, the spirit of the French Emperor still lives and breathes on the banks of the Rhine,ay, in Coblentz itself, - in his famous Code!

So

Our old acquaintance volunteering to be my guide, we made the round of the sights of the town, which are not very numerous, as the valets-de-place are well aware when they eke out their wonders with an old barrack or a street-pump. having seen the new Palace, the house that cradled Prince Metternich, the Jesuits' Church with its surprising cellars, and some other local "Lions" and cubs, we adjourned to Markham's lodgings, where, after ascending a dark, dirty, circular staircase, we entered an apartment with a visible air of retrenchment about it; for, with mere apologies for window-curtains, it had given up carpets, and left off fires. The only ornamental piece of furniture, for it certainly was not useful, was the sofa, which on trial afforded as hard and convex a seat as a garden-roller. "Rather different from my old snuggery in Percy Street," said my host, with a dubious smile. "There is not, indeed, much sacrifice to show," I replied, "but perhaps the more solid comfort." "Comfort, my dear follow!" cried Markham, "the Germans don't even know it by name; there's no such word in the language! Look at the construction of their houses! A front door and a back door, with a well staircase in the middle, up which a thorough draught is secured by a roof pierced with a score or two of unglazed windows; the attics by this airy contrivance serving to dry the family linen. Make your sitting-room, therefore, as warm as you please with that close fuming, unwholesome abomination, a German stove, and the moment you step out of the chamber-door, it is like transplanting yourself, in winter, from the hot-house into the open garden. To aggravate these discomforts, you have sashes that won't fit, doors that don't shut, hasps that can't catch, and keys not meant to turn! Then, again, the same openings that let in the cold, admit the noise; and for a musical people, they are the most noisy I ever met with. Next to chorus singing, their greatest delight seems to

be in the everlasting sawing and chopping up of firewood at their doors; they even contrive to combine music and noise together, and the carters drive along the streets smacking a tune with their whips!"

"You

The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Markham, a handsome, but careful-looking personage, to whom I was cordially introduced. Indeed, she confessed to trouble, especially a severe illness of her husband soon after their arrival at Coblentz, — not to mention all the minor annoyances and inconveniences of living in a foreign country without any knowledge of the language. "But those little trials," she said, are now things to laugh over, although they were sufficiently harassing at the time." 'My chicken, for instance," cried Markham, with a chuckle at the remembrance. must know, that Harriet here took it into her kind head that, as I was an invalid, I could eat nothing but a boiled fowl. The only difficulty was how to get at it, for our maid does not understand English, and her mistress cannot speak anything else. However, Gretel was summoned, and the experiment began. It is one of my wife's fancies, that the less her words resemble her native tongue, the more they must be like German; so her first attempt was to tell the maid that she wanted a cheeking or a keeking. The maid opened her eyes and mouth, and shook her head. 'It's to cook,' said her mistress, 'to coke, to put in an iron thing,- in a pit,- pat,-pot.' 'Ish verstand nisht,' said the maid, in her Coblentz patois. 'It's a thing to cat,' said her mistre-s, 'for dinner, for deener, with sauce, soase, sowse.'

But the maid still

shrugged her shoulders. 'What on earth am I to do!' exclaimed poor Harriet, quite in despair, but still making one last attempt. 'It's a live creature, a bird, a bard,

a

beard, — a hen, a hone, a fowl, a fool, — a foal, - it's all covered with feathers, fathers, feeders, fedders!' Hah, hah!' cried the delighted German, at last getting hold of a catchword, Ja! ja! fedders, - ja wohl!' and away went Gretel, and in half an hour returned triumphantly with a bundle of stationer's quills!”

The truth of this domestic anecdote was certified by Mrs. M. herself. "But I was more successful," she said, "the next morning; for on Gretel opening her apron, after marketing, out tumbled a long-legged living cock, who began stalking