obvious. The old nobility treated their
inferiors with jocular familiarity— the familiarity
which, it may be, bordered on contempt— and
the inferiors, mere thralls and bondsmen as
they were, took trifling verbal liberties with
their lords. Did not something akin to this
prevail in Scotland during the last century, and
is it not very well illustrated in Dean Ramsay's
story of the Scotch lord who picks up a farthing
in the sight of a beggar? "Earl!" cries out
the gaberlunzie man, " gie us the siller."
" Na, na," replies his lordship, pocketing the
coin, " fin' a baubee for yoursel', puir bodie."
When the social gulf between classes is
unfathomable, do we not sometimes affect to shake
hands across it ? But when we stand foot to
foot— " mensch zu mensch," as Schiller has it—
on the same earth, do we not often feel
inclined to shake our fists in each other's faces ?
"The loss of their rank," observes Mr. Nobody,
"has compelled the higher classes to
command respect by a distance of manner,
which has, of course, produced a similar course
of conduct in the persons beneath them." But
for that merciless date— 1801— one would
think that Mr. Nobody had travelled in the
State of Virginia since the abolition of slavery.
The planters are no longer hail fellow well
met with their serfs, and enfranchised Sambo
no longer addresses the white man as " Mas'r,"
but as " Sa." Liberty is a wonderful teacher
of etiquette.

At Amiens the Unknown drove to the Hôtel
d'Angleterre, where he was magnificently and
miserably lodged. The windows and doors
declined to keep out the wind and rain; the
fires were bad, and the supper was worse; nor
was the final touch of extravagant charges
wanting. The journey was resumed on Friday
morning; the beauty of the country and the
badness of the roads increasing at every step.
At length the weary travellers clattered into
Chantilly, found a comfortable bed, and, on
Saturday morning, visited the "magnificent
ruins" of the Palace of Chantilly. The superb
edifice of the stables only remained intact.
The government of the First Consul had
forbidden the sale of these buildings, and the
mistress of the inn told Mr. Nobody, with
tears in her eyes, that had Napoleon been at
the head of affairs only six months sooner, the
palace also would have been rescued from
destruction.

A little way out of Chantilly, a fine paved
road commenced, extending to Paris, which
city Mr. Nobody reached at two P.M. on
Saturday. He had been three and a half days
and three nights on the road. At the Paris
barrier, passports were asked for, but were at
once and civilly returned. " Carriages," Mr.
N. adds, " are no longer stopped, as formerly,
in every town, to be searched for contraband
goods; but turnpikes are numerous and
expensive." On entering Paris, the travellers
drove to several hotels before they could
procure accommodation, and such as they at last
found was wretched. Many of the hotels had
been stripped during the revolution, and had
not been refurnished ; and the few remaining
in proper gear were crowded by foreigners,
who, since the peace, had flocked hither in
vast numbers from every country in the world.
Mr. Nobody very strongly advises persons
intending to visit Paris to write some days
beforehand to their correspondents, if they desire
to be comfortably lodged on their arrival. The
Mysterious Man was not, however, disheartened
by the badness of the inn. So soon as he
had changed his attire, he hastened to call on
M. Perregaux, his banker, who, notwithstanding
his recent promotion to the rank of senator,
was as civil and obliging as ever. Mr. Nobody
must have been Somebody. See how civil
everybody was to him !

I have been an unconscionable time bringing
this shadowy friend of mine from Calais to
Paris; but I hold this record of his experiences
to be somewhat of the nature of a Text, on
which a lay-sermon might be preached to the
great edification of modern, fretful, and
grumbling travellers. " Young sir," I would
say, were it my business to preach, the which,
happily, it is not: " modern young British
tourist, take account of the four days' sufferings
of Mr. Nobody and Mrs. Dash, and learn
patience and contentment. Some eighty hours
did they pass in hideous discomfort, on dolorous
roads, or in unseemly hostelries. Much
were they baited anent passports: much were
they exercised in consequence of the stiff-
neckedness of that proud man the mayor of Calais.
How many times, for aught we know, may not
their linchpins have disappeared, their traces
snapped, their axles parted? Who shall say
but that their postilions, although civil, smelt
fearfully of garlic, and (especially during the
stages between Beauvais and St. Denis)
became partially overcome by brandy? St. Denis
has always been notorious for the worst brandy
in Europe. And the dust! And the beggars!
But for the ' smiling attentions' of those two
pretty waiter girls at Montreuil, I tremble to
think upon what might have been the temper
of Mr. Nobody when he found himself, at last,
in Paris. Thus he of 1801. This is how your
grandpapa, your uncle William, went to Paris;
but how fares it with you, my young friend?
You designed, say on Friday afternoon last, to
take three days' holiday. You would have a
' run over to Paris,' you said. You dined at
six P.M. on Friday at the Junior Juvenal Club,
Pall-mall. You smoked your habitual cigar;
you played your usual game of billiards after
dinner. It was many minutes after eight when
you found yourself, with a single dressing-bag
for luggage, at Charing-cross terminus. You
took a ' first-class return' for Paris; for which
you paid, probably, much less than Mr. Nobody
disbursed for the passage of himself and
his high-hung carriage (to say nothing of Mrs.
Dash) from Dover to Calais. A couple of
hours of the express train's fury brought you,
that Friday night, to Dover— brought you to
the Admiralty pier, to the very verge and brink
of the much-sounding sea, and bundling you,
so to speak, down some slippery steps, sent