unable to appreciate a genuine race are unworthy to be reckoned in the number of citizens-are on the Downs. All possible and impossible means of locomotion are in request, from humble walking to the aristocratic 'carriage-and-four,' including every intermediate shade, as donkey-carts, Hansom cabs, flies, dogcarts, Broughams, omnibuses, stage-coaches, railway waggons, all going along dashingly and rapidly, with flaming colours and flourishing post-horns out of tune, and drawn by exhausted horses. It is a real tide of human beings, eager to enjoy a sunny day of the floral and merry month of May. But by far the greater number will seek their happiness in horrible, unearthly yells when the horses are going to start, and the 'gentlemen of the turf' hazard their last bet. And how shall we depict that stirring and restless ant's nest of bipeds? There is the grand stand, tenanted by hundreds of visitors, and a swarm of blooming ladies, clad in all the colours and tints of the rainbow, give to the structure the appearance of a gigantic pyramid of flowers. On both sides muster thousands of men, from the costermonger and the 'rough,' who stopped up all night in order to rise early, and contrived to make of the supper of the preceding day the breakfast of the morning, to the fop who protects his silly face with a blue veil. Apropos of veils, it is a curious remark that, during these saturnalia, pretty ladies leave that genteel but ungenerous ornament to the uglier sex they want to see and to be seen. In true English manner and style, everyone has taken care to procure refreshments; the coarse inhabitant of Eastern London is provided with large hunks of bread and cheese, red slices of beef, fried fish, strong ale and Old Tom; while the beaux and belles of the West End indulge in pies and champagne. It needs the pen of a Rabelais or a Le Sage to describe this Pantagruelic feast, this wedding of Gamache. In one corner, I behold a

'happy couple' who contrive to be solitary

'Midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

the serious-looking bridegroom offering the sparkling beverage to his fair partner; in another, a wrinkled peeress trying to look indifferent, while the spectators admire the lively contrast between her pink parasol and her yellow face.

And then come all the characteristics of the scene-the

height, weight, and strength machines, the German bands playing awkward waltzes, which may be taken for polkas or galops, the Bohemian tambourine girls, the Scotch red-haired jigging beauties, the glee-maidens, mixed with acrobats and distortionists, the gipsies of all work, including fortune-tellers and pickpockets, the smart soldiers with red coats on their backs and slender sticks in their hands, and the ‘lions' of the day, the thin jockeys clad in silk. It is a Babel of types of every class and every country, and the noise becomes literally deafening.

On a sudden, a bell sends forth its merry tones, and directly the empty bottles are thrown away; the child which formed the apex of a human pyramid jumps from his high position; the London-born 'nigger' interrupts the favourite 'My Mary Ann' in the middle of a stave; the turban-headed girl ceases to grind her street-organ; the turf is evacuated in a moment; the occupiers of carriages stand on tiptoe, and pedestrians kick and push, in John Bull fashion, in order to get a better view. The race is at hand.

A second bell is heard. The horses are going to startthey start-they have started, and an indescribable cry of 6 They're off!' is sent forth by more than fifty thousand throats. A deep emotion takes hold of the spectators; there is a heavy weight on every chest, and every heart beats quicker. If the destinies of mankind were at stake, the excitement could not be greater; you see that you are in presence of a national feeling.

116. COUNTRY-HOUSE COQUETTE.

There was not a country-house in England that had so completely the air of habitual residence as Beaumanoir. It is a charming trait, and very rare. In many great mansions everything is as stiff, formal, and tedious, as if your host were a Spanish grandee in the days of the Inquisition. No ease, no resource; the passing life seems a solemn spectacle in which you play a part. How delightful was the morning-room at Beaumanoir. Such a profusion of flowers! Such a multitude of books! Such a various prodigality of writing materials! So many easy chairs too, of so many shapes; each in itself a

comfortable home; yet nothing crowded. Woman alone can organise a drawing-room; man succeeds sometimes in a library. And the ladies' work! How graceful they look bending over their embroidery-frames, consulting over the arrangement of a group, or the colour of a flower. The panniers and fanciful baskets, overflowing with variegated worsted, are gay and full of pleasure to the eye, and give an air of elegant business that is vivifying. Even the sight of employment interests.

Then the morning costume of English women is itself a beautiful work of art. At this period of the day they can find no rivals in other climes. The brilliant complexions of the daughters of the north dazzle in daylight; the illumined saloon levels all distinctions. One should see them in their wellfashioned muslin dresses. What matrons, and what maidens ! Full of graceful dignity, fresher than the morn! And the married beauty in her little lace cap. Ah, she is a coquette ! A charming character at all times; in a country-house an invaluable one.

Amiable

A coquette is a being who wishes to please. being! If you do not like her, you will have no difficulty in finding a female companion of a different mood. Alas! coquettes are but too rare. 'Tis a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. 'Tis the coquette that provides all amusement; suggests the riding-party, plans the pic-nic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms; the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet. Let any one pass a very agreeable week, or it may be ten days, under any roof, and analyse the cause of his satisfaction, and one might safely make a gentle wager that his solution would present him with the frolic phantom of a coquette.-Disraeli, Coningsby.

117. THE MONKEY.

Monkey, little merry fellow,
Thou art Nature's Punchinello;
Full of fun as Puck could be-
Harlequin might learn of thee!

In the very ark, no doubt,
You went frolicking about ;

M

Never keeping in your mind
Drowned monkeys left behind !

Have you no traditions-none
Of the court of Solomon?
No memorial how ye went
With Prince Hiram's armament?

Look not at him, slily peep;
He pretends to be asleep;
Fast asleep upon his bed,
With his arm beneath his head.

Now that posture is not right,
And he is not settled quite;
There! that's better than before,
And the knave pretends to snore.

Ha! he is not half asleep;
See, he slily takes a peep.

Monkey! though your eyes were shut,
You could see this little nut.

You shall have it, pigmy brother!
What, another! and another!
Nay your cheeks are like a sack—
Sit down and begin to crack.

There, the little ancient man

Cracks as fast as crack he can!
Now good-bye, you merry fellow,

Nature's primest Punchinello.-Mary Howitt,

118. THE SPHYNX.

And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphynx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mould of beauty-some mould of beauty now forgotten-forgotten be

cause that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Ægean, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the main condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still there lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world, and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable hand with the big pouting lips of the very Sphynx.

Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols ; but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deity-unchangefulness in the midst of change-the same seeming will and intent, for ever and ever inexorable! Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings—upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors-upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern empire-upon battle and pestilence-upon the ceaseless misery of the Egptian race-upon keen-eyed travellers-Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day-upon all and more this unworldly Sphynx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishmen straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlasting. You dare not mock at the Sphynx!—A. W. Kinglake, ‘Eothen.'

119. GRANDILOQUENT WRITING.

Magnificent words, and the pomp and procession of stately sentences may accompany genius, but are not always nor frequently called out by it. The voice ought not to be perpetually, nor much, elevated in the ethic and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if it issued from a mask in the theatre. The horses in the plain under Troy are not always kicking and neighing; nor is the dust always raised in whirlwinds on the banks of Simois and Scamander; nor are the rampires always in a blaze. Hector has lowered his helmet to the infant of Andro