The above account has been communicated
by a passenger, who had frequent conversations
with the travellers.

AN ENGLISHMAN'S CASTLE.

THOUGH every English housekeeper is said
to be, and is, in the eye of the law,
theoretically at least, the lord of a castle, I should
like to know how many times out of ten, the
lawful master of the house—the payer of rent
and taxes—may be the real lord, enjoying all
the rights and privileges, the security, the
tranquillity, which might be supposed to be
comprised in the idea of a castle. And how many
times an exaggerated respect for the liberty
of another, to whom he has alienated a tithe
of his home, makes his house no longer his,
but his lodger's castle. And how often it is
his wife's castle, or his friend's, or relations'
castle; and how often he is subjected to such
annoyances, from within and without, as make
it, in these days when the law no longer
recognises the lord's right to project a domestic
disturber from an engine, or to stand at a
loop-hole, and pick off besiegers with a crossbow,
only a keen satire to remind him of the
maxim. If there were any chance of getting
them filled up honestly, I would like to have
schedules, with columns for every one of these
questions, left at every castle in the kingdom,
on a certain day. A blue book might be the
result, which should give to the foreigner a
correct notion of the English home, called,
with self-glorification, a Castle.

Ask my old school-fellow, Knightbell, who
is in the unhappy position of the hare in the
fable—having many friends—and who deserts
a comfortable home, (where his own numerous
family, besides some of his relations by
marriage, make his happiness their constant
study), to consume the midnight oil over
Thompson's Practice of Obstetric Physic, in an
inhospitable chamber, in a house in R—cq—t
Court. I have a sincere esteem for Knightbell,
and I know what he has undergone. No sum
of money, no friendly desire to remove the
unfounded suspicions of his amiable wife; no
incentive, short of racks and thumbscrews,
applied in the darkest dungeons of the
Inquisition, amid the shrieks and demoniac
laughter of other tortured victims; should
ever induce me to insert the three vowels
which are necessary to complete the name
of his place of retreat. Only myself, and a
trusty and devoted retainer—who knows
where to find his master when certain
events, which will take place at uncertain
hours, require his prompt attendance—could
make that name intelligible to the public.
We are the sole depositaries of his secret;
and, unless Mrs. K. should, Dalilah-like,
wheedle it from him in a moment of fondness
and confidence; or, unless one of my
friend's most persevering of button-holders,
under the direction of a clairvoyant, and
guided by a bloodhound, should track his
footsteps to R—cq—t Court; it will remain
for ever unknown to the world! It is vain
to say that my friend might, by a determined
exercise of the will, have secured that peace
and tranquillity at home, which he is now
compelled to seek beside a solitary hearth,
and in a stranger's dwelling. If you do not
happen to be one of the many friends alluded
to, making that remark in keen derision, I
reply that it is impossible to imagine what
you would do in any man's situation, unless
you can fully identify yourself with that man,
and take into account the whole of the
circumstances in which he is placed. Poor K.,
who endured much, and long, before he
suffered himself to be goaded into the step
which I have described, is of a gentle and
amiable disposition; but his household, I
regret to say, is not in that state of order which
can only be insured by unity in the directorship.

Again: I know another gentleman, whose
name I am not at liberty to publish. If
you were to call upon him (supposing you
knew his name and address), and casually,
in the course of conversation, were to say
(admitting you were sufficiently intimate
with him to make a familiar observation of
the kind), "an Englishman's house is his
castle;" would that seem to him other than
a bitter sarcasm? Might we not expect
that his eye would fix itself upon you, with
the intensity of a basilisk's; that his nostril
would dilate; that his lip would curl; that
his brow would darken; in short, that his
whole countenance would undergo a rapid
transformation. His story is pretty well
known, but it may be told in a few words.
On a windy afternoon, in the month of March,
1848, shortly after the occurrence of those
important events in France, which drove the
King of the French an exile (with an assumed
name) to the shores of England, a gentleman
—whose beard and moustache betrayed his
foreign origin—proceeded, followed by a porter
bearing a carpet-bag, through a retired and
quiet street in the neighbourhood of Soho
Square. From his glancing alternately at every
house on each side of the way, it might have
struck the casual observer, that he was seeking
for some particular house, in a street whose
doors had been numbered according to the
independent whim of various proprietors; or
that, knowing no number, he sought, by an
effort of memory, to recall the outward
characteristics of a house that he had visited long
ago—perhaps in the sunny time of boyhood.
But, upon more careful observation, it would
have been seen, that he did not stay to look
above the knockers, nor did he glance upward
to take into his eye the general appearance
of each house, but merely gave a hurried look
at the ground-floor windows, and passed on.

Such a course readily suggested to a thoughtful
mind that he was seeking a lodging. He
stopped at last before a house having the words
"Furnished Apartments to let," in the window,
and "Mr.——, architect," upon the door. He