drawn bayonets, was there to keep order, as well
as a number of the usual admiral-looking armed
Paris police. I endured the crowd for an hour,
and should have been much more happy and
comfortable if the peasants who surrounded me
had brought their trifling change of clothing in
portmanteaus or carpet-bags, instead of in small
egg-chests, and rude boxes with sharp corners,
not unfrequently studded with nails. A slow
filter through a gate and across a yard, then
through another gate and across a luggage room,
then through a door, and we found ourselves
jammed in the chief hall of the railway. Half
an hour of this crowd and atmosphere was borne
with different degrees of individual impatience,
until a liveried official calmly announced that
the whole affair was a mistake, and that our
train of pleasure was waiting for us at the end
of a calm, cool, narrow, and undiscovered
passage.

A fight for seats; a carriage with the same
mixture of travellers as before; a ten hours'
night run, at about eighteen miles an hour to
Boulogne, with the garlic-scented head of a
Picardy peasant resting asleep upon my shoulder
(a journey that seemed to last for years); a
pause of five hours in Boulogne; a calm passage
of two hours across the Channel in a drizzling
rain; a delay of an hour at Folkestone; and an
arrival, after a fair run of four hours, at London-bridge
station about ten o'clock on Wednesday
night; and my second train of pleasure was
brought to an end. What advantage I obtained
by going to Paris at such a fête time, and passing
two nights in a French railway carriage, I
have not yet been able to learn, unless I went
to patronise these wild, exhausting trains of
pleasure, that form the chief travelling amusements
of the present day. I am not a Tory obstructive,
nor do I hold any heretical opinions
with regard to steam; but when I see the
crowded list of long and rapid excursions that
are daily advertised upon the city walls, I look
back, perhaps with regret, to the time when
Hornsey Wood House was considered a day's
trip, and when Epping Forest formed the eastern
boundary of my wildest attempts to travel.

     WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE.

WHEN we are all wise, Marvels of Science
may, perhaps, content the common thirst for
wonderment as well as it has heretofore been
satisfied by curiosities of Superstition. Certain
it is, that the imagination claims its daily food,
and demands wonderful facts, false or true—
but in either case strange matter that is credited
—as one part of its diet. Wonders will never
cease out of the world. The greatest of philosophers
and the most ignorant of village crones
wonder alike, as they eat alike, only they do not
feed from the same dishes.

The superstitions of the country side, still
vigorous in many a farm and village throughout
every British county, are the relics of a body of
science that once rested on the names of Plato
and of Pliny, and was cherished by philosophers
in Europe till about three hundred years ago.
Much that appears most ridiculous in folk-lore
may be traced back to its origin among all that
was most learned in a bygone day. To study
superstition seriously is worth while, and in aid
of those who would do so, a contemporary
journal that, "when found, makes note of"
all the waifs and strays of knowledge scattered
up and down the land, for the assistance and
amusement of the learned, has for some years
past been a gatherer of old wives' tales. A
volume of Choice Notes from Notes and
Queries, taking folk-lore for its subject, now
contains the pith of many thousand entries.
From these notes we gather and arrange an
illustration or two of this feature in our social
history.

Superstition deals with a man's life before
his birth, and does not part from him at
death. To determine the sex of an unborn child,
get help, if you want it, to eat up a shoulder of
mutton at a supper, hold the bladebone before
the fire till it is so far charred that your two
thumbs may be thrust in two places through the
thinnest part. Put a string through the two
holes so made, and tie it in a knot, then hang
the bladebone by the string upon a nail outside
the house door and go to bed. The sex of the
first person ignorant of the charm who enters in
the morning will be the sex of the child in question.
This was tried once in a house where the
first comers were always women; but, on the
critical morning, it was a remarkable fact that a
man first entered, and, six weeks later, it was
truly a man child that was born.

To be born with a caul is lucky. A child bom
on Christmas-day or in chime hours will be able
to see spirits.

    Born on a Sunday, a gentleman;
    Born on a Monday, fair in face;
    Born on a Tuesday, full of grace;
    Born on a Wednesday, sour and grum;
    Born on a Thursday, welcome home;
    Born on a Friday, free in giving;
    Born on a Saturday, work hard for your living.

A May baby's always sickly. You may try, but
you'll never rear it. Rock the cradle when the
baby is not in it, and the child will die. Children
with much down upon their arms or hands are
born to be rich. A child that does not cry at
baptism is too good to live. If several children
are baptised together, and the girls are taken to
the font before the boys, the boys will have no
beards when they are men. Persons called Agnes
always go mad. If a child's finger nails are cut
before it is a year old, it will live to be a thief.
If they want trimming within that age, they are
to be trimmed by biting. If you wish well to
your friend's child, you must give it, when it
first comes to your house, a cake, a little salt,
and an egg. When a child has the thrush, say
the Eighth Psalm over it three times daily for
three days. Or you may catch a duck and hold
its bill wide open in the child's mouth. The