A blank, rich splendour in the tide,
The moon dips in an amber glow—
As down the river, drifting fast
With silence and the night we float,
A glory on the castle walls,
And darkness on our lonely boat.

At times, high up the lands of corn,
The roofs of sleeping villages,
Old chimneys, smoked and quaintly slacked,
Old tabards, swinging in the breeze,
Gray steeple-tops, and belfries brown,
Red tapers winking through the night,
And gables, overgrown with vine,
Rush past, like beacons on our flight—
As down the river, to the sea,
Amid the tranquil night we float,
Faint splendours on the castle walls,
And darkness round our lonely boat.

Like giant cities, to the south,
The peak'd hills prop the rifted cloud;
And, through the gorges, dark with fern,
The mountain torrents thunder loud.
The plains are steaming to the moon,
The white ash glimmers by the stream,
And, in the meadows crisped with frost,
The cattle couch within the beam—
As down the river, broadening fast,
Thro' swathing foam, we swiftly float,
Dim, dimmer still, the castle walls,
And darkness on our lonely boat.

Far, in the north, where shifts and flits
Yon vexèd brightness, in the skies,
The temple walls and mighty domes
Of the imperial city rise.
Hurrah! the frothing rapids roar.
Along the forests on our lee;
Back, like a phantom, reels the shore,
Our boat is on the wild fresh sea.
Out on the green and wrinkled tides,
'Mid silence and the stars we float;
Prayer on our lips, peace in our hearts,
And moonlight on our lonely boat.

THE TABLE D'HOTE.

IT is curious how much one table d'hôte is
like another. There is always the old gentleman
with a rosette in his button-hole, who has
dined there for fifteen years regularly, and who
would be a very agreeable companion, if his
throat and lungs were in better order, and
required a less frequent and less noisy amount of
clearing out. Then there is the particular gentleman,
a foreigner too, who is neatly dressed, who
wears gold spectacles, who inspects his plate very
closely, who frowns at it, who wipes it with his
napkin, with which he next proceeds to polish
his wine-glass; holding it up to the light afterwards,
to see how the process has answered, and
muttering to himself invectives against the
uncleanliness of the service. This gentleman is a
connoisseur in cookery too, a cheap epicure, and
openly disparages everything that is put before
him, eating, however, very freely of each dish
as it comes round. Then there is the newly
married couple, natives of England; the wife
heavy, stupid, fair; the husband one of that
class who may be disposed of in one word, that
word being Goose; a gentleman, with about an
inch between the roots of his hair and his
eyebrows, and the top of whose head would fit
into a good-sized teacup. Then there is the
oId rascal whom one sets down instinctively
as a scamp, with a grey moustache and a bald
ring upon the top of his head, who perhaps
drew his first breath in the Emerald Isle; a
country which has certainly given birth to the
old lady who sits not far off, and who seems to
consider herself, for some reason unexplained,
the patroness of the meal. This old lady is so
enveloped, so girt about, and fortified as to the
head, with braids, and twists, and intertwinements
of massive and hard-edged brown hair, in addition
to certain gigantic outworks of cap, that she is
fain, when desirous of observing her neighbours
on either side—which is frequently the case—to
screw her old eyes into complicated corner
glances; for she cannot get her neck to revolve
under such a load. One would also say, to see
how she crouches when a waiter hands anything
over her head, that she is in some fear lest the
whole structure which decorates it, hair, cap,
ribbons, and flowers, should be knocked off into
her neighbour's plate. It is a curious fact
that the proprietors of fictitious heads of hair
are always, as logicians say, for proving too
much. They are not contented with the mere
fact of having hair in great plenty at an
advanced age—which one would think would be
enough—but they are always going in for a
degree of luxuriance which would be next to
impossible even in youth. They are for ever
adding more and more massive and redundant
braids, and plaits, and festoons, to outrage all
probability.

There is something very unsatisfactory about
a table d'hôte, considered as a meal. You
are always eating too much and always feeling
as if you had had nothing. You reserve yourself
for something that never comes, and reject
condiments which you would gladly recal were
that proceeding possible. Surely, too, there is
something unsatisfactory in sitting—not in the
same room merely, as you do at a restaurant—
but at the same table, with a score or two of
people, and not knowing one of them.

I have felt this to an excessive degree. For,
it happened once that, owing to the irresistible
force of a complication of unfortunate
circumstances, I found myself dining at a table d'hôte
on Christmas-day. The agencies which brought
this about, need not be entered into. A slight
degree of mismanagement bringing with it—as it
not uncommonly does—a vengeance of untoward
circumstances, all dovetailing in with each
other to effect their terrific purpose—a missing
of trains, a falling in of the term of my lodgings
at an inconvenient season, a compulsory delay
to give time for the reception of letters—these,
and such-like matters, all combined, as stated
above, with a certain amount of mismanagement,
brought it about that, instead of eating
my Christmas dinner among beloved and
familiar faces, I had to partake of that meal in a