great nation. Alas! his warm panegyric
was suddenly chilled—his budding rhetoric
rudely blighted: The boat stopped, and there
skipped on board from the port of Gravesend
a couple of Custom House Officers.

I must say it was very apt of you to improve
this untoward circumstance by reciting
to your Siddons Don Juan's reception in this
country on Shooter's Hill:—

"'And here,' he cried, 'is Freedom's chosen station;
    Here peals the people's voice, nor can entomb it
Racks, prisons, inquisitions; resurrection
Awaits it, each new meeting or election.

"'Here are chaste wives, pure lives; here people pay
    But what they please; and if that tilings be dear,
'T is only that they love to throw away
    Their cash, to show how much they have a year.
Here laws are all inviolate; none lay
    Traps for the traveller; every highway's clear:
Here—'he was interrupted by a knife,
With,—' *  *  *! your money or your life!'"—

Neither do I think that, in answering the
doctor's inquiries as to the use and necessity
for these tide-waiters, you put their intrusion
in too strong a light when you declared that
as they took charge of the ship to prevent
the crew or passengers from surreptitiously
handing over the sides of the vessel any of
their carpet-bags, or hat-boxes, or cigar-cases,
or pocket-pistols, or laces, or silks, or
cambrics, into clandestine wherries or contraband
barges, their presence tacitly pronounced
every individual on board, from the engine-
boy at the hatchway to the Earl lolling over
the stern, to be a suspected smuggler.

But see, Swallow, we are off the Custom
House Quay. The official clock attests to
the perfect accuracy of the captain's word:—
it is exactly half-past four. Look alive,
Swallow; you will have enough to do.
Besides your brandy, and your widow, and
your other articles of value, you have undertaken
to "clear" the lady's luggage. "The
City of Paris" has entered the City of London,
and is lashed alongside Nicholson's Wharf.
With all your alacrity, you are not quick
enough; for, while you are investigating the
names and addresses on the various
portmanteaux and bags, your widow shows you
one of her three boxes dangling mast-high
in the air, overflowing an enormous basket
that is being craned into Mr. Nicholson's
premises. 'Before this basket has touched the
threshold of the huge hole in the wall that is
neither a window nor a door, half-a-dozen
unseen hands have nearly relieved it of its
contents. The rapidity with which all this is
done gives everybody hopes. The alderman
anticipates being seated at six with his soup
before him: the widow flutters with the hope
of being yet able to see her invalid mother
before morning: the Cantab does not despair
of reaching his rooms in "Maudlin:" and you
would bet even with Caspar or any other
sporting gentleman present, that you will
reach your stall in time to hear Thalberg's
first chords. You are wrong. The odds are
ten to one against you, Swallow; for something
prevents the people from stepping ashore.
What is it? Every ounce of the baggage is
out of the vessel. Why then do its owners
stop up the gangway?

"To be searched!" indignantly replies one
of the detained. Everything had gone on
swimmingly up to the moment that the doom
of office was inflicted upon us. Captain Tune
had rattled us over from Boulogne in nine
hours; his crew had unstowed some three or
four hundred packages of baggage, and the
wharfinger had swung it into the warehouse
with magic rapidity. Nothing remained for us
but to walk home, if the Custom House had
not set its seal upon further progress. A
Custom House Officer arrested us seriatim as
we attempted to leave the vessel. Any sort of
bundle, or basket, or parcel, was peeped into
or routed about by a pair of by no means
spotless hands—perhaps; for, as often as not,
according to the caprice of the officer, it was
passed untouched, almost unnoticed. You
asked me to take ashore the widow's reticule.
It was bulky. Bottles evidently predominated.
The lady told us it was medicine. The officer
—there was only one searching officer to some
two hundred passengers—merely felt the
bottom of the bag; discovered bottles; took
my word that they contained medicine, and I
passed on. The bag was big enough to
conceal a fortune in lace, watches, or jewels:
medicine may have meant eau-de-Cologne. If
the duty of the searcher be to search, why
were some molested and others allowed to go
free?

Your answer was excellent, Swallow.
You said, "Because one man cannot do the
work of ten; he cannot fight against such
tremendous odds as two hundred to one; and
because the whole affair is a stupid and
annoying farce."

"But a farce, though not amusing, may be
well acted," was, you will recollect, my
rejoinder. "Yet this is only the first scene."

The next experiment adopted by the
Customs department of Her Majesty's
Government, to impart to foreign visitors viâ
the Thames a favourable impression of
England and the English, is to herd them
together under the flattering designation of
"aliens," and to oblige them and their fellow-
travellers to mount to the Baggage Warehouse
by means of a flight of exterior ladders,
some part of which is exposed to whatever
cold, wind, or sunshine, may happen to be
raging. These stairs are not exceedingly
well adapted for ladies, for other reasons than
their steepness. Although your Mrs. Siddons
would, in her sylph-like days, have made light
of the ascent, yet the assistance you so
gallantly afforded to her matured figure was
not merely complimentary aid. The thanks
she panted when you gracefully seated her
on the hard bench of the dark, long, low,