despatch bags of the Foreign-office, which in my
hasty departure from the Dover train I had
accidentally carried off with me. There it was,
addressed to "Sir Shalley Doubleton, H.M.'s
Envoy and Minister at Hesse-Kalbbratenstadt,
by the Hon. Grey Buller, Attaché," &c.

Here was not alone what might be construed
into a theft, but what it was well possible might
comprise one of the gravest offences against
the law: it might be high treason itself! Who
would ever credit my story, coupled as it was
with the fact of my secret escape from the
carriage—my precipitate entrance into the first
place I could find, not to speak of the privacy
I observed by not mixing with the passengers
in the mail packet, but keeping myself estranged
from all observation in the captain's cabin? Here,
too, was the secret of the skipper's politeness
to me: he saw the bag, and believed me to be
a Foreign-office messenger, and this was his
meaning, as he said, "I can answer for him he
can't delay much here." Yes; this was the
entire mystification by which I obtained his
favour, his politeness, and his protection. What
was to be done in this exigency? Had the waiter
not seen the bag, and with the instincts of his
craft calmly perused the address on it, I
believe, nay, I am quite convinced, I should have
burned it and its contents on the spot. The
thought of his evidence against me in the event
of a discovery, however, entirely routed this
notion, and, after a brief consideration, I
resolved to convey the bag to its destination, and
trump up the most plausible explanation I could
of the way it came into my possession. His
excellency, I reasoned, will doubtless be too
delighted to receive his despatches to inquire very
minutely as to the means by which they were
recovered, nor is it quite impossible that he may
feel bound to mark my zeal tor the public service
by some token of recognition. This was a
pleasant turn to give to my thoughts, and I
took it with all the avidity of my peculiar
temperament. "Yes," thought I, "it is just out of
trivial incidents like this a man's fortune is made
in life. For one man who mounts to greatness
by the great entrance and the state staircase,
ten thousand slip in by 'la petite Porte.'
It is, in fact, only by these chances that obscure
genius obtains acknowledgment. How, for
example, should this great diplomatist know
Potts if some accident should not throw them
together? Raleigh flung his laced jacket in a
puddle, and for his reward he got a proud
Queen's favour. A village apothecary had the
good fortune to be visiting the state apartments
at the Pavilion when George the Fourth was
seized with a fit; he bled him, brought him back
to consciousness, and made him laugh by his
genial and quaint humour. The king took a
fancy to him, named him his physician, and
made his fortune. I have often heard it
remarked by men who have seen much of life, that
nobody, not one, goes through the world without
two or three such opportunities presenting
themselves. The careless, the indolent, the
unobservant, and the idle, either fail to remark, or
are too slow to profit by them. The sharp fellows,
on the contrary, see in such incidents all that
they need to lead them to success. Into which
of these categories you are to enter, Potts, let
this incident decide."

Having by a reference to my John Murray
ascertained the whereabouts of the capital of
Hesse-Kalbbratenstadt, I took my place at once
on the rail for Cologne, reading myself up on
its beauty and its belongings as I went. There
is, however, such a dreary sameness in these
small ducal states, that I am ashamed to say
how little I gleaned of anything distinctive in
the case before me. The reigning sovereign
was of course married to a grand-duchess of
Russia, and he lived at a country seat called
Ludwig's Lust, or Carl's Lust, as it might be,
"took little interest in politics"—how should he?
—and "passed much of his time in mechanical
pursuits, in which he had attained considerable
proficiency;" in other words, he was a middle-
aged gentleman, fond of his pipe, and with a
taste for carpentry. Some sort of connexion
with our own royal family had been the pretext
for having a resident minister at his court,
though what he was to do when he was there
seemed not so easy to say. Even John, glorious
John, was puzzled how to make a respectable
half-page out of his capital, though there was
a dome in the Byzantine style, with an altar-
piece by Peter von Grys, the angels in the
corner being added afterwards by Hans Lüders;
and there was a Hof Theatre, and an excellent
inn, the "Schwein," by Kramm, where the
sausages of home manufacture were highly
recommendable, no less than a table wine of the host's
vineyard, called "Magenschmerzer," and which,
Murray adds, would doubtless, if known, find
many admirers in England; and lastly, but far
from leastly, there was a Musik Garten, where
popular pieces were performed very finely by an
excellent German band, and to which promenade
all the fashion of the capital nightly resorted.

I give you all these details, respected reader,
just as I got them in my "Northern Germany,"
and not intending to obtrude any further
description of my own upon you; for who, I would
ask, could amplify upon his Handbook? What
remains to be noted after John has taken the
inventory? Has he forgotten a nail or a saint's
shin-bone? With him for guide, a man may
feel that he has done his Europe conscientiously;
and though it be hard to treasure up all the
hard names of poets, painters, priests, and
warriors, it is not worse than botany, and about
as profitable.

For the same reason that I have given above,
I spare my reader all the circumstances of my
journey, my difficulties about carriage, my
embarrassments about steam-boats and cab fares,
which were all of the order that Brown and
Jones have experienced, are experiencing, and
will continue to experience, till the arrival of
that millenniary period when we shall all
converse in any tongue we please.

It was at nightfall that I drove into
Kalbbratenstadt, my postilion announcing my advent