in your respective glasses with an appearance of
satisfaction and contentment.

Now, sir, I confess that, to me, who have never
seen anything of this kind done, this statement
of my friend did, at first, suggest some sort of
hallucination on his part. On subsequent inquiry,
however, I have discovered that this
(shall I say barbarous?) ceremony was formerly
common when people met together for convivial
purposes, and that it was called " taking wine
together."

So, my poor father, you and the colonel—who,
by-the-by, is always leading you astray—have
revived an obsolete practice before a large
company of persons essentially modern, and in one
of the most fashionable houses in England!
Truly, I am ashamed. I know not what to say.
But for the mere accident that Captain
Newmarch happened to be present, and to have his
eye upon you, you might have gone on unchecked
"taking wine" with all your old friends to the
end of the chapter.

Excuse me, I must leave off. I am so
shocked and demoralised, that I can write no
more until I have had time to recover myself
a little.

Your injured but affectionate Son,

PHILIP CHESTERFIELD, JUNIOR.

A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA.

I LEFT my unworthy self and worthier friends
and my trunks, so far as I can recollect, just
discharged from a bullock-dray at the Fonda
called El Globo, in the Calle del Obespo—let us
say Bishopsgate-street—Havana. Something
like four months have elapsed since I found
that anchorage, and, glad enough to be in any
soundings, ordered breakfast. El Globo—not
that Cuban inn, but the real rotund habitable
globe—has gone round in the maddest of
gyrations since I began to talk of the Humours of
Havana. I have been much tossed about, and
am brought very low. It was at Berlin, in a
house overlooking the bridge which has the
statues of Peace and Plenty, and over against
the great gilded dome of that Schloss which
the Kings of Prussia find so gloomy that they
are afraid to live in it, and have fled to a pleasant
modern palace under the Linden—it was
there, beneath the darkling shadow of the
Prussian Eagle's wings, that I penned the last
paragraph of my last paper about the Queen ot the
Antilles. Then the world began to roll, and
the teetotum to spin again. Just as I was
stepping into a train bound for St. Petersburg,
a civil person in uniform put into my hand
a telegram containing these simple words:
"Please go to Madrid. There is a revolution
in Spain." The next night I was in Cologne;
the morning after I was in Paris; at night I
supped at Dijon; next morning I breakfasted
at Bordeaux, and lunched at Irun; late in the
evening a voice cried " Valladolid," and I had
some chocolate; and the next day, the fourth,
being Sunday, I got to Madrid, and (it being a
great saint's day) was just in time to take a
ticket in a raffle for Saint Anthony's pig—el
santo credo, as they call him. I must tell you
about that pig, some day.

I put it to you, most forbearing of readers,
how could I, being for the first time in my
life in old Spain, take up at once the thread
of my reminiscences of Spain the new? Had I
striven to do so, the result would have been but
a sadly tangled skein. Cæsar and Pompey are
very much alike, I grant; the mañana-tree is as
sedulously cultivated in the Spanish colonies as
in the Peninsula itself; but just ask a dog-
fancier whether there are not marked differences
between those twin pugs, Pompey and Cæsar,
who to the vulgar appear, from the smallest
spiral of their tails to the minutest crinkles in
their coffee-coloured skins, to be identical. He
will tell you that there are a thousand. Knowing
this, I shrank, while I was on the thither
side of the Pyrenees, and occupied in studying
Cæsar, from saying anything more, just then,
concerning Pompey. I feared, by blending, to
spoil the portraits of both. My conscience
pricked me sometimes, I admit. Once I had a
most dolorous twinge; it was in an old library
at Seville, and turning over a vellum-bound
volume—Marco Polo's Travels, I think—I came
upon some marginal notes, written in Latin, and
in a bold, honest hand. The old canon, who was
my guide, reverently doffed his shovel-hat when
the page full of marginal notes lay bare. " They
are worth ten thousand reals a letter," quoth
Don Basilio. " Ten thousand! they are priceless.
They are by the great admiral." Yes,
these were annotations to Marco Polo by
Christopher Columbus. Of the authenticity of
the autograph there was no doubt. The old
library I speak of belonged to the admiral's son,
a learned, valorous, virtuous man, like his sire,
and to the chapter of Seville cathedral he
bequeathed all his books. I say my conscience
smote me. How had I lingered over the
humours of that Havana which Columbus
discovered! There is a picture of the admiral
hung up in the library; a picture painted by a
Frenchman, and presented to the chapter by
Louis Philippe, in exchange for a choice Murillo.
Out of the canvas the mild eyes seemed to look
on me reproachfully. I fancied the grave,
resolute lips moving, and that their speech ran:
"What are you doing here? Why don't you
go back to Havana?" But it was no fault of
mine. I was a teetotum; and to wheel about
and turn about was my doom.

Coming out of that strange and fascinating
land—the most comfortless and the most charming
in the world—I sat down one day in the
Frezzaria at Venice, and said, " I really must
go back to Havana." So, taking hold of old
Spain, I cut its throat, and tied a Chubb's patent
fireproof safe to its neck, and a couple of fifty-six
pound shot to its legs, and, towing the corse
out to the Lido, sank it just under the lee of
the Armenian convent of San Lazaro. It fell
with a plash, and sank at once. " Back to St.