Beadles, as a race. Another vestige of what may
be called Innocenticism lingered until recently
in certain, pleasant municipal excursions termed
"swanhoppings," when some corpulent gentlemen
with a considerable quantity of lobster salad
and champagne beneath their waistcoats, were
habitually seized upon by the watermen of the
Lord Mayor's barge, and "bumped " on posts
or rounded blocks of stone. The solemn usage
had some reference, it is to be presumed, to the
liberties of the City, as guaranteed by the
charter given by William the King to William
the bishop, and Godfrey the portreeve. Or it
might obscurely have related to the Conservancy
of the Thames. Substantially, it meant
half-a-crown to the Lord Mayor's watermen.

In the south of France, there may be found
growing, all the year round, as fine a crop of
ignorance and fanaticism as the sturdiest
Conservative might wish to look upon. The
populace of Toulouse would hang the whole Calas
family again to-morrow if they had a chance.
The present writer was all but stoned last
summer at Toulon for not going down on his
knees in the street, in honour of the passage of
an absurd little joss, preceded by a brass band, a
drum-major, a battalion of the line, and a whole
legion of priests. The country people still thrash
their children mercilessly whenever a gang of
convicts go by on their way to the bagne, and,
especially on the morning of the execution of
a criminal. And it is a consolation to arrive at
the conclusion, from patent and visible facts,
that wherever wisdom, in its ancestral form,
triumphantly flourishes, there dirt, sloth,
ignorance, superstition, fever, pestilence, and
recurring famines, do most strongly flourish too.

It may seem strange to tiie reader that, after
venturing upon these uncomplimentary
comments on our forefathers' sagacity, the writer
should candidly proceed to own his belief that the
human memory may be materially strengthened
as to facts and dates, by the impressions of
bodily anguish suffered concurrently with a
particular day or a particular event. Such,
however, is the fact, although, of course, it
cannot be accepted as a plea in extenuation of
the most barbarous cruelty. For example, if
the next time a tramp sought hospitality at the
Guildford union, the guardians forthwith seized
upon such tramp, and caused him to be branded
with a hot iron from head to foot, and in
Roman capitals, with the words, "The guardians
of the Guildford union refuse to relieve
the casual poor," the stigmatised vagrant
would, to the day of his death, remember
that Guildford union workhouse was not a
place whereat bed and breakfast should be
asked for. Still there is no combating the fact
that the remembrances of agony are lasting.
I have a very indistinct recollection of things
which took place twenty, or even ten years ago;
and I often ask myself with amazement whether
it is possible that I could ever have written
such and such a letter, or known such a man
or woman. Yet with microscopic minuteness,
I can recall a yellow hackney-coach—the driver
had a carbuncle on the left side of his nose—
which, once upon a time, conveyed my nurse
and myself to the residence of a fashionable
dentist in Old Cavendish-street, London. I
can remember the black footman who opened
the door, and the fiendish manner in which, he
grinned, as though to show that his molars
needed no dentistry. I can remember the
dog's-eared copy of the Belle-Assemblée on the
waiting-room table; the widow lady with her
face tied up, moaning by the window; the
choleric old gentleman in nankeen trousers who
swore terrifically because he was kept waiting;
the frayed and threadbare edges of the green
baize door leading to the dentist's torture
chamber; the strong smell of cloves and spirits
of wine and warm wax, about; the dentist
himself, his white neckcloth and shining bald head;
his horrible apparatus; his more horrible
morocco-covered chair; the drip, drip of water at
the washstand; the sympathising looks of my
nurse; the deadly dew of terror that started from
my pores as the monster seized me; and, finally,
that one appalling circular wrench, as though
some huge bear with red hot jaws—he has
favoured us all, in dreams—were biting my
head off, and found my cervical vertebræ
troublesome: all these came back to me, palpably.
Yet I had that tooth out, five and thirty years
ago.

A hard road to travel! I should have
forgotten all about that road by this time but for
the intolerable pain I endured when I was
travelling upon it. I have crossed Mont Cenis a
dozen times, yet I should be puzzled to point
out the principal portions of the landscape to a
stranger. I could not repeat, without book, the
names of the Rhine castles between Cologne
and Mayence. I am sure I don't know
how many stations there are between London
and Brighton. And I am not by any means
"letter" or "figure perfect" in the multiplication
table, although the road up to nine times
eight was in my time about as hard travelling
as could be gone through by a boy with a skin
not quite so thick as that of a rhinoceros. But
every inch of the hard road I happened to
travel in the spring of 1864—a road which
stretches for some three hundred miles from,
the city of Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico—
is indelibly impressed on my memory.
Since then, I have journeyed many thousands
of miles over roads of more or less
duresse; and in the Tyrol, in Venetia, in
Spain, in Algeria, I have often tested by sudden
inward query the strength remaining in the
reminiscence of that road in Mexico. You turn
to the right from the great quay of Vera Cruz,
passing the castle of San Juan de Alloa. You
drive to a wretched railway station, and take
the train (I am speaking of 1864) to a place
called La Soledad, some five-and-twenty miles
inland. There you sleep. Next morning at
daybreak you start in a carriage along the
great Spanish highway, and by nightfall make
Cordova. At four A.M. on the following morning
you drive to Orizaba—you are taking things