with their fingers with great readiness. We
know a rich lady who spends many of her
lonely hours in reading in this way; and we
know a poor old washerwoman become blind
who has got over the difficulty of the
thickened skin of her finger, and, with eyes
upraised, sits enjoying the Pilgrim's
Progress during the time that her family are
out at work. In our blind schools, the
children read in classes, as quickly as, and
far more intelligibly than, pupils in most
schools: where the custom is to poke over the
book, and stop the harsh voice between
every two words. A monthly Magazine for
the Blind has been recently published by
Chapman and Hall, which will be a daily
blessing to finger-readers. In Saunderson's
time, who would have listened to a prophecy
that the blind would be educated much like
other people; that the girls would sew and
dress their hair as nicely as anybody else,—
and that there would be other Saundersons,
men learned in mathematics and classics; that
all would read and write to amuse their leisure;
read books in a raised type, and write on desks
so made that they can scribble private letters
in all privacy, and fold, and fasten them
without help? Yet all this we now see done;
and who shall say how much more amelioration
may grow out of it?

This embossed printing is tried on various
plans, each of which has some merit of its
own: but we feel no doubt about sticking to
the ordinary alphabet.* We have no doubt
that several changes would be desirable if
we now had to introduce the whole art of
printing; but, as it is only printing for the
blind that has to be practised, we think that
no advantage can compensate for the hardship
to the recently blind of losing their
accustomed alphabet, or for the difficulty of
preparing good literature for the use of the
blind, instead of sending our ordinary books
direct to press. We look about us and see—
first, tens of thousands of blind persons who
want to read next,—a whole literature
of noble books, which it would illumine the
life of the blind to read—then, a printing-
press, and its types ready to bring the
other two together; and we say, Do not
stand speculating, and inventing, and devising,
and keeping all that multitude waiting.
Give them what you have ready for them
now, and see about improvements
afterwards.

* See vol. vii. p. 421, "Books for the Blind."

The press is Mr. John Edward Taylor's,
at 10, Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn
Fields, London. And either he or his friend,
the Reverend William Taylor, 73, Oxford
Terrace, Hyde Park, London, will give any
information about this new magazine, or
receive any subscribers' names. The monthly
numbers are only sixpence each. Six
shillings a year will give that great pleasure
and benefit to some who said, when the films
were gathering over their eyes, and when
no straining of their sight would avail any
longer, that they should never read again.
How pleasant to ask them now whether that
was not a little mistake of theirs!

DOING BUSINESS IN FBANCE.

THEY order this matter better in France,
says Sterne, at the commencement of his
Sentimental Journey; but, as he does not
state what the matter is to which he adverts,
we are left to imagine any one of a thousand
matters, according to the amount and degree
of our faith in French excellence. A little
experience of travel in France has satisfied
me—who am not of the sentimental class
—that in holding up this unknown quality
for emulation, Sterne could not have meant
to eulogise the way in which business (as we
understand the word on this side of the water)
is carried on in many parts of that vivacious
country.

The passport question—that constant
source of irritation to the wandering Briton—
is too familiar to a Frenchman to cause him
much concern, although he sometimes likes to
make a difficulty. I remember a case in point.

Some twenty years ago, a beautiful girl
landed at Boulogne from England, surrounded
by all the éclat which attaches to a prima-
donna's successful first season. The formularies
of examination were not so brief then as we now
thankfully acknowledge them to be. When
Mademoiselle Bellarosa presented herself
with her dame de compagnie, to undergo the
ordeal, the young Custom-house clerk gazed
more intently upon her than was usual
with him in passing travellers along. It
might have been her fame or it might have
been her beauty, undimmed by the sea-
sorrow of a rough passage; or, perhaps it was
her fame and beauty combined. He limited
himself, however, to the formal
questions, and Mademoiselle Bellarosa, glad to
be dismissed, sought her hotel. The next
morning she was anxious to set out for Paris;
but, it was found that the provisional passport
usually given in exchange, until the
original was returned at the central office
in the capital was not forthcoming. The
commissionaire of the hotel had charged for it in
his bill—it was his way of doing business—
before he received it; he could not tell why
the passport had not been delivered; there
must be some little mistake; "I will arrange
you that," were his own (English) words,
"before you can think twice upon him;"
and he really departed with the intention
of fulfilling his promise. But in half an hour
he returned with a perplexed—and, if he
hadn't been a Frenchman and a
commissionaire, I should have said, a downcast—air,
without the required document. " It must,"
he observed (in English, which language, as
the lady was Italian, he appeared to prefer
in communication with her), "it must that