almost, yet clinging to each other, after four years of terrible privation without one shilling from their former affluence, nor one hope to alleviate their present sufferings. Scant and threadbare of dress, they have gone dinnerless and fireless for weeks and weeks together. Mock friends, to whom the family mansion was ever open, shun them or choose to forget them. Night enshrouds the forlorn Miss Helters. Day may never dawn upon that misery, or fate may indulge fresh caprices, and strand them higher than before. Who dare try to foretell? At all events, whenever I journey eastward on the top of my City Atlas, I always look out for Blue Street, reflecting with heartfelt compassion, that, strange though this one story I happen to know of, the street more likely contains others still stranger, none of which -mercy on us-are too strange not to be true. Positively, I would venture to risk my experiences, so far as to take haphazard the nattiest villa at Norwood, or the loneliest cottage by the Hants seaboard, or the dingiest dwelling in Hackney town, and extract sensations enough out of its real life, to gratify the most greedy devourer of the regulation three volume.

English life abroad? Yes. Twothirds of our England, has it not steamed Rhineway to Switzerland ? Ha! those Rhine steamers, those Drachenfels bridle paths, those Rolandseck wine gardens, those skiffs from St. Goar to the Lurlei and Rudesheim, those balconies at Vevay, those chestnut avenues about Interlaken, those walks with their splendid views round Lucerne, those hotels up the Righi and Pilatus, what a legion of mad loves, gnawing jealousies, sweet conquests, dark despairs, joys and griefs, they must witness each summertide mostly joys, I trow. Those decks and berths of the P. and O. boats, those state-cabins of the Cunard or Inman lines, nay, those cuddies of the Black or White Balls to the Antipodes, what a myriad of money secrets each out or home (voyage must trust them with, soul-stirring

many to joy or grief-mostly to grief, I wot. But, the other third English has surely perambulated a Parisian boulevard.

Who is that stalwart fellow, somewhat grizzled of beard, going into the Café Foy? On his arm leans an olive-complexioned lady, rather given to stoutness, but showing remains of decided beauty. Two fine boys, in Eton hats and jackets, favourably contrasting with their wretched French counterparts in tight uniforms, follow the father and mother. As I pass, I notice a peculiar scar across his left ear and jaw, the momentaneous perception of which makes me grasp the hand of an old chum, formerly a major in Her Majesty's service, lately living in retirement at Tours, and now homeward bound to take possession of a large estate he has succeeded to in Scotland. Jock Ingleton is the name of him, and chequered has been his life. He began at Eton, whence he went out as midshipman in Admiral Haultaut's flagship to the Pacific station, the which, however, proved anything but pacific to him; for, besides being twice disrated by Captain Mainbracer, because of his refusal either to betray his comrade middies or to perpetrate a falsehood, he had to cut his way through a mob of rapscallions bent on robbing the ship's launch at Lima, and to deliver an unpleasant dig in the ribs with his middy's dirk to a Chilian officer at Valparaiso, who chose to conduct his ugly self in an offensive manner towards the English consul's lady-kind. When eighteen, Jock obtained a transfer to the sister service, in the shape of a commission in an Indian regiment, the depôt company of which formed part of Chatham garrison. It was there that we struck up our friendship. He had scarcely joined a month, when he well-nigh pulled a court-martial about his ears, from nothing else in the world but a personal objection to being mesmerized by Major-General Sir Tyger Thom, the then commandant of Chatham, who had a crack on the subject. Shortly after, my friend exchanged into the cavalry, and I thus lost

sight of the heaviest of heavy dragoons, till it fell to my lot to lift him down from his charger at Balaclava. Gracious! what a time gone by that does seem! A Russian sword-cut had gashed him shockingly over the head, and, as I laid the poor fellow on the grass, thinking himself moribund, he took a diamond from his finger and a locket from his neck, and begged me to convey them to 'Marietta,' with the message that 'she reigned in his heart to the last.' I sailed the next day, with invalids, for Corfu. And, a fortnight after, I saw Marietta, the daughter of an antiquated Venetian stock, settled centuries back as merchants at Zante. Jock, however, having meanwhile rallied, had himself sent her a scrap of a note. They had first met, it appeared, during his term of service on the Lord High Commissioner's staff. Hot love soon kindled, the Lord High's yacht and the Corfiote Palace effectively fanning the flame. The wedding day was actually fixed, when took place one of the customary misunderstandings of true love. In the middle of it all, came the Crimea. One morning, Jock received peremptory orders to join his corps forthwith. He sought Marietta in vain the best half of a day. Time failed him. She wrote: but, the letter sensationally miscarried, according to the habit of such letters. So, there they were. left, about as miserable a pair of lovers as could be, until the charge of the Six Hundred considerately solved the difficulty for them. My message, and the details I furnished, gave me the unwonted air of an angel from heaven. Still, she demurred. This time, financial pride, or repugnance to burdening him, by reason of her father's mercantile failure, caused the stoppage. As a matter of course, when Jocky came marching home,' he endeavoured to persuade his adored one that money ought to have naught to do with marrying. Yet, cruel fate required him to rescue Marietta's father bodily out of a fire, after the fashion of Æneas bearing Anchises, ere he could finally overcome her dread of dragging down the man she loved. I had last

encountered Jock in the autumn of 1856, on which occasion he strangely emerged from the engine-room of an Austrian Lloyd's lying in Ancona harbour, just as I was bidding goodbye to a fellow-tourist of mine en route to Greece. My hirsute friend was then all glee, on his way to claim Marietta. Judging by their looks, I see no change now. So that, if Jock did persuade his bride as to the non-relation of money to love, he knew he was right,' and she too. And, well they have stood the proof. Over our claret at the Café Foy, Jock told me how he had been done out of all his fortune by his half-sister and brother; how he had gone, twice, through the Bankruptcy Court; how he had taught English in a French provincial town-he, the dashing aide-de-camp and major of dragoons-while his trusty wife taught music; how he had again come in for a small fortune, and latterly for a very_large one. Commend me to Jock Ingleton, Esquire, for the matter of a novel. Mark, though: it would comprise only one feminine unit, a thorough woman, loving as she should love, lovable, and loved.

Let us go shake the hand of the Honourable Harry Talboys, in his dressing-room at the Lyrique Théâtre. There is a man who could unfold some sensational tales with a vengeance. Talboys, after having served an apprenticeship at the Foreign Office under Mr. Stumpy Grumps, was attaché, queen's messenger, secret service, and I know not what-all governmental. But, getting a pious twist, he relinquished no end of brilliant prospects and seceded to Rome, where he took to 'studying for the ecclesiastical state,' as they call it. Next, the Talboys is discovered, sailing up St. Peter's, with a procession of monsignori, arrayed very unapostolically in purple and gold. He saw through that sort of thing, however, time enough to come away whole-skinned. Just as he ungloved again to practical life, the Khabyl tribes were going in for a mutiny, whereupon Harry Talboys makes across to Tunis, pitches his tent inside the Turkish lines, and opens communications with the rebel

chiefs, in his assumed capacity of confidential emissary from Lord Palmerston. That he believed in the reality of his semi-official mission, I can verily credit, although the sole ground he had for assuming it was the silence of the English ambassador to the Sublime Porte, on being sounded on the subject by letter. The amateur diplomatics seemed at first to be succeeding so well, that their collapse eventuated rather ungenerously. But, poor Talboys was a man who, at that time, habitually enumerated his Dorkings before their incubation had been completed. As any one might have foreseen, his Greek servant played into the hands of the Turkish general, who accordingly seized the pseudo-envoy of England, and deported him, well ironed, to a frigate in the offing. When the vessel reached the Dardanelles, Calvert, the consul, coming on board and hearing an English voice shouting lustily from the hold, with much ado procured his liberation, on condition of his evacuating the Turkish empire. Nothing daunted, up turned the Honourable Harry, ere long, in an entirely new character at Seville, and, amid the orangegroves of Andalusia, Venus, hitherto untempting, managed to ensnare him in her silken meshes.

This is

how she worked. One of his characteristic ideas, in migrating to Tunis, had been, to jump out of the Roman frying-pan into the Moslem fire, or, using his own words, to put himself bang under the bey,' as the clearest case of despotism extant. The effect was exactly opposite; his deportation not only sweeping his purse clean, but curing him of all isms despotic whatsoever. When he had readjusted mind and moneybags, the goddess did not at once attack in front, but astutely took him in flank, by suggesting lay pursuits as his proper course for the future. She first made him astonish the Seville folk with a half-caste Tattersall's, which procured him the repute of too much riches, and thus excited the envious souls of some neighbouring brigands. The Talboys returning late in the evening from a distant horse fair, in company

The

with Captain Harty of the Gib garrison, they were on the point of entering the 'bosque de los fuegos, -a forest of fiery copper-beeches, seven miles out of Seville, on the Cordova road-when about twenty banditti, armed to the teeth, pounced upon them. Another hour, and the two Englishmen found themselves lodged in airy apartments, on the top of a high mountain, with delicious breezes, a delightful prospect by night of the Guadalquivir rolling towards the Gulf of Cadiz, not bad food, and two adorable senoritas to keep them in countenance. brigands, apparently taking for granted that, sooner or later, their rich captives would be ransomed, left them almost wholly to the treatment of the senoritas, whose capture had likewise been recently effected. Anyhow, the usual negotiations were good enough to stand over, till Talboys and Harty had succumbed to the charms of Esmeralda and Mariquita, who returned the English love with all the ardour of Castille. The brigands watched them so vigilantly, however, discharging their firelocks at the least provocation by way of warning, and the roads looked so frightful for horses, even if theirs could be got possession of, that the two Englishmen seriously doubted whether escape was possible. But, doth not love laugh at brigands, as well as at locksmiths? Wherefore, some weeks subsequent to the now lucky adventure, in the dead of the night, when the whole banditti, drunk and worn with fatigue after a day's exploits, were lying asleep round the great fire, Esmeralda and Mariquita noiselessly bolted the doors upon their brigand captors, and stood sentry outside, whilst their lovers gagged the old duenna and saddled the horses. Then, away to Seville on the backs of English thoroughbreds, each cavalier holding his beloved, like Bürger's Leonora, enclasped on the pommel of the saddle before him. The senoritas were real, but reduced, ladies, and two flowers of Andalusia. Their father, a brok n-down hidalgo, had taken the well-known Alberga de la Giralda, on the plaza of the cathe

dral at Seville, hoping to retrieve his fortunes-which he would have done, only that, the very day I quitted his hotel, he died of cholera, leaving those two beautiful girls absolutely alone in the world. Being clever and educated, they thought of the stage; and, at the time the brigands captured them, they were leisurely riding back from Cordova in a one-horse calesa, with the earnings of their first theatrical engagement. Seville laughed indolently at the brigandage, and applauded the gallant escape; but it grinned like a gargoyle at the marriages. What! the city of autos da fé intermarry with heresy? The lovers, therefore, migrated to the land of freedom, and here they were married. Harty and his Mariquita have lived and loved together for several years, at their charming seat of Rocks Perch, near Lynton, North Devon, more than one young Harty having been meantime added to the family circle. When I visited them in the spring of this year, Mariquita enthusiastically said, that Lynton equalled any scenery in Andalusia (so it does), while Harty appeared to spend half his time in nursing a shrubbery of copper-beeches, which he has christened 'bosque de los fuegos.' It fares differently with Harry Talboys and his Esmeralda, though full as lovingly. His noble governor fumed at the marriage, and straightway cut off his allowance. The truly Honourable, however, was too proud to ask pardon. Consequently, Esmeralda and her husband have ever since been earning their bread, he as an actor at the Châtelet and Lyrique, she as an artiste de genre at the Eldorado. It would surprise you, my reader, if I told you their stage names; for little recks the Parisian world of the sensational history of two of its favourite actors. That night, during the ride down the mountain into Seville, they vowed never to address one another by any other name than Mi Vida, and I know from Esmeralda that they keep their vow. A son and heir has come to them, who betokens honour to the Talboys title, but who speaks English and Castilian like two mother-tongues.

Already Harry Talboys is rewarded. His elder brother having been accidentally killed out shooting, I may any day greet my genial actor friends as Lord and Lady Talboys of Talboys. Call me that romance? Yet it is not extraordinary, nor at all too strange to be true for real life; although many would call it too sensational, because too improbable for the pages of a novel.

Being in Paris, figuratively speaking, we may glance at that group of odd ones, who, by means of the boarding-school French of the youngest daughter, are debating the question with an employé of the Ministère de la Maison de l'Empereur, as to why they cannot see the Tuileries on the wrong day. He looks as unsensational as any man ever did, does that painfully fat d gentleman, with his blucher boots, and capacious pockets to his broadshouldered coat. Wife and daughters, the same. She has got a double chin, and walks like a dismounted trooper; whilst, they sport flaxen hair, splayed features, and prodigiously long necks, but have forgotten their shoulders.

The ladies are vested, in the height of fashion; and, to tell the truth, that whole party is trying its very best to do gentility, as far as they know how, poor things. Well, how would you reckon their foregoings at a guess? Old Buffle, for that is he, used to keep a shop in the cheese, bacon, and cheap grocery line, not a hundred miles from Hanover Gate, Regent's Park. He had been in the business on his Own account somewhere about twenty years, besides serving his time and assisting; and, with such success too, by dint of honest dealing, hard saving, and low living, as to justify the confidence which animated the united hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Buffle, that they would soon be able to retire on a respectable independence to a freehold at Ealing. Once upon an afternoon, the he-Buffle deep in his molasses, the she-Buffle counting her cheeses, a veteran damsel, dressed in black, and pinched of nose, stepped into the shop, handed a paper parcel over the counter to Buffle, and

saying nervously, 'That's for you, sir,' withdrew in haste. The lady had never before been seen there; and old Buffle afterwards declared that, from her shabby-genteel appearance, he made sure the parcel contained tracts, with perhaps a small order for colza, or double sixes, or Souchong, in view of the approaching Tea-and-Bible at the 'Methodies.' Stupendous yet justifiable was their amazement to find it enclosed, tracts no doubt, but underneath them, in a sealed envelope addressed Thomas Buffle, Esq.,' four cheques on Coutts', two of 5,000l. each for the two elder Miss Buffles, one of 10,000l. for Miss Bella Buffle, the youngest and the pretty daughter, and another of 20,000l. for Mr. and Mrs. Buffle, with a request in he handwriting of the old lady, t at all their property should revert, when they died, to Miss Bella, the Buffle having no male heirs. The missus, it is reported, thought' she should have dropped,' and therefore, snatching at her 'salts,' flung herself distractedly on the little sofa in the back-parlour; the daughters 'went into screams of idiotic laughter, nearly tearing the mystic documents to bits, in their wild delight at the envy to be excited in the bosoms of the Miss Ruffles across the street; whilst old Buffle himself, neglecting a shopful of customers, recklessly devoted half an hour to rubbing his eyes, blessing his stars, and dashing his wig (in a metaphorical sense, of course). In the upshot, it seemed, that the apparition was a lady, bereft of relatives, and living in the neighbourhood, who wanted to leave her property safe before her death, which she wisely conjectured might not be far off. For this purpose, she repaired to a chemist's, from whom she had been in the habit of making insignificant purchases; but the man of drugs, little boding what he risked, answered a question too brusquely to please her, upon which out she bounced again. Now, Miss Isabella Buffle, who resided under the parental roof next door, chancing at that very moment to be engaged in domestic duties with the even

ing's milkman, her pretty face, and her sweet temper on being crossquestioned, caught the old lady's fancy; whence, the above-named sensation, which resulted as speedily as the donor could revoke the gift previously intended for her chemist and druggist. Sure enough, black dress and pinched nose did decease that identical week, yet not without the dying consolation of having made some deserving people rich and happy. They duly followed their benefactress to Kensal Green, with grateful hearts under their mourning apparel, and with large white handkerchiefs stuffed vigorously into every one of their five mouths, in a solemn coach drawn by four black-plumed horses. The grocery business disposed of, Ealing was likewise discarded, and Buffle invested in a desirable residence, situate at Wimbledon, commanding extensive views over the Surrey hills, and possessing every modern convenience and requisite for a gentleman's family,' as the advertisements described it. Buffle insisted on calling his new acquisition Souchong Lodge, excepting which, it really is a nice place. But, fortune, having once smiled upon the Buffles, by no means abandoned them at their Souchong. In the midst of a review last year of our intrepid volunteers, it so fell out, that one Captain Stanley was wounded by the bursting of a rifle, and had to be conveyed off the field in a bleeding and fainting condition. Buffle, like a patriot Briton, immediately offered the hospitalities of the family mansion to the wounded warrior, who, youthful and manly as he is, found he could not do better than stop in bed there a full fortnight. Such a state of affairs, lamentable as it first seemed, necessitated sundry attentions of a tenderly interesting description, which, before the captain had recovered, were appreciated with warmth in the proper quarter. Suffice to say, that, towards the close of a month, young Stanley, having been supported by his nurse from the couch of illness to the easy-chair of convalescence, rapturously took her hand, and, with tears of love in his handsome