gone out, and the few living things which were
there at the ebb, like "Barkis," had gone out
with it. A few flabby shore-crabs, some winkles
and pectens gasping for air and water, a
sea-urchin or two, their jackets of lime and
membrane so dry that their spines and suckers
were fixtures like themselves, several dead and
dying fish—these made up the sum total of the
treasures from the deep. It seemed a chaos
of pits, holes, and indescribable openings. There
were legions of tile pipes which appeared to
have no definite direction, leading to every
place and from every place, crossing and
re-crossing until the eye failed to take in anything
but an inexplicable confusion of holes and lines
of rope. It suggested the idea of its being the
work of beavers and musk rats, if one could
have imagined them equal to making draining-
pipes and heaping up tons of concrete. In this
state of baffled hope a Frenchman beckoned the
visitor to follow him, and shook his head at all he
had been contemplating. We crossed several
deep pits on narrow planks, threaded our way
past a pile of limey-looking rocks, down over
a slanting kind of place where water was dropping
from a stream above, that tumbled into
a chasm and disappeared, and, after winding
along a damp intricate labyrinth-like passage,
we came suddenly into an immense cavern.
The cavern is, at a rough guess, about sixty
feet long and not quite so wide. The centre is
supported on massive pillars made to resemble
stalactites, while through the arched and gloomy
roof light steals in mysteriously.

Real as the cave looks, still much more
strongly is the idea of being really under the
sea brought home to one when along the
sides and fronting the entrance are veritably,
and not metaphorically, a number of small seas;
cavern-like openings are skilfully made in the
sides of the vault, the fronts of which are of
glass, let into the irregularities of the concrete;
the interiors of these holes are of all shapes,
and are hollowed into quaint dens and lurking-
places for sea-fish to skulk and hide in; only a
few of them as yet are completed, but in those
that are filled with sea-water the light is so
artfully and cleverly admitted, that one can see
no end to the space. It is like gazing into an
illimitable extent of water—a sea, looked up
through, instead of down into.

The artist by whom this clever production
has been originated, is M. Edouard Bélencourt,
and under his clever and artistic management
it is rapidly growing towards completion.
Report whispers that this same artist is to be
commissioned to erect another monster aquarium
for the coming Paris Exhibition. There
is not a question as to this aquarium being, at
present, the largest in the world; and it is not
too much to say in praise of our neighbours on
the other side of the Channel, that they will
confer a benefit on the world, if the managers
of these little oceans exemplify the art of
pisciculture, which, as an art bearing directly
on the question of supplying food at a cheap
rate for the poor, stands second to none.

What fish do in the deep sea, we none of us
know; how they spawn, when they spawn,
where they spawn, or what becomes of the baby
fishes when they launch from the egg into the
world, are, with a few exceptions, mysteries to
us. Here, however, a chance offers itself of
playing the spy upon the habits of deep-sea
fish. Why should they not spawn in these
tanks? Oysters, too, may spat, for aught we
can tell, in such an aquarium.

All honour to the artist and to the good
people of Boulogne for setting us a good
example. It is very beautiful, even in its
unfinished condition; but when lichens, mosses,
ferns, and plants that love the damp and shade,
shall clothe with their fronds of green and
gold the concrete overspreading the hollow
bricks of which the substructure is composed,
and when seaweeds (as they are misnamed)
shall wave to and fro in the miniature seas
on every side, it will be a most striking and
an unparalleled combination of nature and art.

A GOOD HACK.

THE young man from the country, who for
the first time penetrates from the whirl of Piccadilly
to the shady silence of May-fair, will notice
at the corner of a street a signboard in a more
elaborate style of art than is common on modern
public-houses—a sprightly youth, in the
costume of the "pampered menial" of the time of
George the Second, with a pole in his hand,
stepping away at the rate of some six miles an
hour.

The sign represents an ornamental luxury
that died with the last famous or infamous Duke
of Queensberry—the running footman—a class
of servant without some half-dozen of which,
early in the eighteenth century, no great
house was complete. They ran before and
alongside the fat Flemish mares of the period
and warned the innkeeper of the coming guests,
or with their long staves helped the caravan-
like coach out of the numerous sloughs on the
northern or western high road.

Good roads and post-horses increased the
coaching-pace from six miles to ten miles, and
killed the trade of running footmen: leaving
nothing but the costume and the long staff
turned into a cane for the gorgeous creatures
who still hang behind court chariots or lord
mayors' coaches, and do ornamental duty in the
vestibules of great houses.

With the decline of the running footman, and
from the same cause—the improvement of highways
and public carriages—began the decay of
the famous British hackney, or roadster.

We may be sure that the roads were very
bad, and that travelling on wheels was very
expensive, when Alexander Pope rode to Oxford
through Windsor Forest, on a horse borrowed
from the Earl of Burlington, and met on his
way the bookseller, Bernhard Lintot, also riding
a nag borrowed of his publisher, "which he
had of Mr. Oldnixon for a debt."