hour–glass. When can it have been that I
left home? When was it that I paid "through
to Paris" at London Bridge, and discharged
myself of all responsibility, except the
preservation of a voucher ruled into three
divisions, of which the first was snipped off
at Folkestone, the second aboard the boat,
and the third taken at my journey's end? It
seems to have been ages ago. Calculation is
useless. I will go out for a walk.

The crowds in the streets, the lights in the
shops and balconies, the elegance, variety, and
beauty of their decorations, the number of the
theatres, the brilliant cafés with their
windows thrown up high and their vivacious
groups at little tables on the pavement, the
light and glitter of the houses turned as it
were inside out, soon convince me that it is
no dream; that I am in Paris, howsoever I
got here. I stroll down to the sparkling
Palais Royal, up the Rue de Rivoli, to the
Place Vendôme. As I glance into a print-shop
window, Monied Interest, my late travelling
companion, comes upon me, laughing with the
highest relish of disdain. "Here's a people!"
he says, pointing to Napoleon in the window
and Napoleon on the column. "Only one
idea all over Paris! A monomania!"
Humph! I THINK I have seen Napoleon's
match? There WAS a statue, when I came
away, at Hyde Park Corner, and another in
the City, and a print or two in the shops.

I walk up to the Barrière de l'Etoile,
sufficiently dazed by my flight to have a pleasant
doubt of the reality of everything about me;
of the lively crowd, the overhanging trees,
the performing dogs, the hobby-horses, the
beautiful perspectives of shining lamps: the
hundred and one inclosures, where the singing
is, in gleaming orchestras of azure and gold,
and where a star-eyed Houri comes round
with a box for voluntary offerings. So, I pass
to my hotel, enchanted; sup, enchanted; go to
bed, enchanted; pushing back this morning
(if it really were this morning) into the
remoteness of time, blessing the South Eastern
Company for realising the Arabian Nights in
these prose days, murmuring, as I wing my
idle flight into the laud of dreams, "No
hurry, ladies and gentlemen, going to Paris in
eleven hours. It is so well done, that there
really is no hurry!"

THE FORTUNES OF THE REVEREND
               CALEB ELLISON.
           CHAPTER THE FIRST.

THE Reverend Caleb Ellison had an odd
way of doing everything; but he was so
good a man, and so adored a clergyman, that
his being in love was an interesting circumstance
to a large proportion of the inhabitants
of the country town in which he lived. When
he looked up at the chimney-pots as he
walked the streets, or went slowly skipping
along the foot–pavement to the Reading-room
in the market-place, the elders of his congregation
might wish that he would walk more
like other men, and the children giggled at
the sight; but the ladies, young and old,
regarded these things as a part of the "originality"
which they admired in him; and
Joanna Carey would scarcely admit to herself
that such freaks required forbearance.

One Friday evening Mr. Carey returned
before the rest of his party from a strawberry
feast, to tell his wife that their dear girl had
shown him by a look, that she must now
decide on her lot for life. Ellison had
certainly spoken. Joanna must decide for
herself. If she was satisfied to have the greatest
blessings that a woman could have—high
moral and spiritual excellence in a man who
loved her—and could, for these, make light of
the daily drawbacks of his oddities, it was
not for any one else to object. Mr. Carey
could not say that his own temper would
bear with so eccentric a companion; but
perhaps he was narrow: perhaps his wife's
nice household ways for twenty-five years had
spoiled him. Joanna knew what she was
undertaking. She knew that it was as much
as the clerk and the deacons could do, to get
the pastor into the pulpit in proper time
every Sunday, and that this would be her
business now. She knew that he seldom
remembered to shave, and how he had burned
his marble chimney-piece black; and—
Well; perhaps these were trifles. Perhaps
it was a fault not to regard them as such.
If a father was fortunate enough to have
a man of eminent single–mindedness for his
son-in-law, and genius to boot, he ought not
perhaps to require common sense also; but
it had always been Mr. Carey's belief that
good sense was the greatest part of genius.

By Sunday evening Mr. Carey was little
disposed to desire anything more in his
intended son-in-law than had appeared that
day. Joanna had engaged herself to him on
Saturday evening. On Sunday morning there
was something in the tone of his pathetic
voice so unusual, in the very first verses of the
Psalm, that many hearers looked up; and
then they saw something very unusual in his
countenance. He so preached, that a stranger
inquired earnestly who this Mr. Ellison was,
and whence he came; and his admirers in the
congregation said he was inspired.

"Joanna behaved very well, did not she?"
whispered Mrs. Carey to her husband, as
they were returning from chapel.

"Very well, indeed. And it was extremely
fine, his preaching to-day. Extremely fine!"

And this particular day, the father feared
as little for Joanna as Joanna for herself.

There was no reason for delay about the
marriage. Mr. Ellison had three hundred pounds
a year from his office, and was never likely
to have any more. The interest of Joanna's
portion—one thousand pounds—was hers
whenever she married. She was four-and-
twenty, and Mr. Ellison was years older.