arm launches each on a headlong flight
down the smooth inclined plane. There the
philosopher, curious in the studies just
alluded to, will see a most curious
panorama, and discover with wonder, in how
many shapes the human soul will fashion
for itself an abstract ideal of the notion,
TRUNK.

Something that will conveniently and
securely hold the articles you bring with
you; that is the aim. Not a very complex
one. Yet the world seems to have run riot
in fanciful devices. Mere varieties of size
would be intelligible—some requiring larger,
some smaller space, according to the amount
of their property—but the vagaries and
devices that go flying down in wild chase
of each other seem incomprehensible.

So characteristic are these marks and
tokens that, after a few weeks' training,
the observer could almost sort them off,
each to its proper owner. Here comes a
huge family of trunks and cases, bright
and dandified, bran new, tall, gay; ladies'
trunks, covered like the roof of a house,
of a clear new drab, with metal corners,
the pure yellow strappings without a soil;
new portmanteaus, in black shiny cases,
and name in white letters; charming bags,
with more strappings; and clean hat-cases.
We look to the deck of the vessel, and see
a tall, fat, grey father, in a white coat,
surrounded by happy daughters, who are
smiling on every one, looking out with
delight on the sea, impatient to be off: and
we know that this is their first voyage to
foreign parts. In three months those
brilliant trunks will return bruised, battered,
smirched veterans of the campaign. The
family have spent days in the delightful
packing, in the fitting on of holland paletots,
and getting "Mary" to sew on little bows
of braid (clever device!), by which papa
could recognise his own luggage at a
glance, and secure it when other benighted
travellers were wildly searching for their
own. Before two days this sweet
delusion is dispelled, and the gay millinery
quite thrown away. Again, down come
great, covered black chests, huge mourning
leather-covered baskets, stout, frayed,
abrased, worn, but with an air of service
and business: five of these huge locomotive
wardrobes together, and a glance at
the deck, show us their owners, the handsome
showy mamma, with her less showy
daughter, habituées at Homburg, and once
more bound for that pleasant seat of pleasure.
Dozens of robes, long and short, repose in
these tabernacles, and will glitter magnificently
at the Kursaal and on the promenade.
Each case has almost paid as much
as a first-class passenger.

See those not over picturesque leather
trunks, with quite a Mexican air, so
"knobbed" over are they with brass.
There is an art in them, to which our
English and French workmen have not yet
reached. They are American, and are stored
with the finery of New York and Paris:
they are strong, handsome, heavy; and the
sums that an American father has to pay
on a tour for these tremendous cases
is something terrible. It is, indeed,
surprising how the tall, heavy, wooden chests
still obtain, and that ladies with huge
armouries of apparel do not prefer the lighter
baskets. Those who watch the rough and
barbarous shifting of luggage abroad, have
only to note the special crash with which
such a chest is allowed to descend upon
the platform, and guess at the weight of
the case, which adds some pounds to the
bill at the end of the journey. See
that pluffy, rusty, rubbed, old, black-
leather portmanteau, thickly covered as a bit
of old dead wall with the scraps and strays,
of old luggage labels, with patches and
corners of "Paris," "Geneva," "Rome,'*
"Charing-cross," "Marseilles," and fifty
other places—the despair of porters, who,
in weariness, have given up tearing them
off. That faithful old receptacle has done
its thousands and thousands of miles, and
it is easy to know its master—the imperturbable
bachelor growing elderly, a sybarite,
who sensibly paid a handsome sum for
it when new, as a good article that was to
last him for life. He can be picked out
readily on the deck, in a faded check cap,
reading his newspaper, careless of the
flurry about him, as much at home as
in his club. He would not exchange his
worn, plethoric, and corpulent old
companion for a new one; he knows its ways
and corners, and he fancies it knows him.
To it and to a battered old hat-case, also
registered and spun down the plane
contemptuously, as though it were a ball, he
feels affectionately, as though they were
dogs; and the trio will wag on comfortably
together till the day or night when their
old master gives up his ghost in a lonely
lodging in Bury-street, St. James's, and
the old portmanteau is given away, or goes
up-stairs to a lumber-room, where it will
lie twenty years in dust until sold or
stolen.

Here comes a single new, glossy black
basket-trunk, with its attendant