into the station?  A minute!  —in that
subdivision of the day how many words of
hope, or love, or murderous accusation, or
frenzied anxiety, or kindly greeting, will
throb through the sentient wires of the
telegraph, over marsh, and meadow, and lea—
through hills and tunnels—across valleys
and deep rivers?  A minute will break the
back of the strong steam-ship, and send her
with all her freight of mailed warriors, and
weather-beaten mariners, and restive chargers,
down to the coral reefs and the pearls that
lie in dead men's eyes, to be no more heard of
till the sea gives up its dead!  A minute
decides the Derby, settles whether the firm
of Ingots, Nuggetts, Bullion, and Co. shall go
into the Gazette and Basinghall Street, or
its senior partner, Sir John Ingots, into the
House of Peers. Guilty, or not guilty; the
billet of all the bullets at a battle; head
or tail;  "how will you have it?"  or "no
effects; "—all these lie within the compass of
a minute, of less than a minute, of the
infinitesimal particle of a minute!

I have heard of some little ephemeral
insects—animalculæ— billions of which they
say could dance hornpipes on a needle's
point— trillions of which could hold mass
meetings on the prickle of a gooseberry—so
small are they. Yet each of the infinitesimal
entomological Lilliputians might possess a
trifle of a hundred legs or so; and who shall
say each does not feel pain and pleasure—
heat and cold—as we bigger animals do.
The duration of life with these ephemera
sometimes reaches, but seldom exceeds a
minute. Within the sixty seconds they live
and die, and strut and fret their fifty pair of
legs upon their vegetable stage. Within a
minute they act the part for which they
have been cast by the Great First Cause  —
within the minute they serve as rivets or
links or rivets, or something microscopically
small, but not despicable, in the Great Chain
that binds all Nature to agree. If some of
them be such strong, and vigorous, and
abstemious insects as to live to the prodigious
age of a minute and a-half, they must be
looked at by the young animalculæ— the
spruce fellows some twenty seconds old or so,
as astonishing centenarians, patriarchs of
the cabbage-leaf—sages of grass-blades.
When they die, perhaps they are buried in
great pomp and state in the pores of a
strawberry—the funeral puff-ball being
drawn by four earwigs, and all the top place
on the neighbouring spear grass being at a
premium; or perchance they dye their venerable
green locks purple-black, just as they are on
the brink of the tomb, thrust their feeble
legs into tight boots, manacle their trembling
antennæ into primrose-coloured gloves; and,
with hats cocked stiffly on their palsied old
pates, hobble up and down some Regent-street
of a daisy—some Burlington-arcade
of an apple-pip, leering at the damsels who
are carrying home Queen Mab's court dress
in a cobweb band-box. How immensely
superior are you, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, looking
down on these a million times diminished
Lilliputians. How many feet you have to
look down upon these tiny things. How
strong a microscope you must have to
be able to discern even an agglomeration
of a hundred or two of these insect-things.
Dear Lemuel, are there any people up yonder,
in any of those shining orbs, who look down
upon us, who are as amazingly supercilious,
patronising, condescending as we are— none
of whose microscopes would be strong enough
to discern one hundred Mammoths all in a
row, let alone men. Do they take us for
animalculæ, infusoria, ephemera?  Dear
Lemuel, did Doctor Swift, think you, before
the chords of his mind broke, mean to write
merely a boy's story book, or did he gently,
kindly, shrewdly try to teach us that we are
not so very very great after all; and that
puzzled as we may be to find where minuteness
ends; so there may be some thousands
of planets somewhere in space where men
grow great by degrees and beautifully larger.
Antiquity!  what would be our poor little
antiquity to the men in the moon, if men
there be there, and bigger than we?

             THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.

                  A FEW MORE HINTS.

ANYTHING like hurry should be avoided in
travelling. It is better to see one country
than to scamper over three. Unluckily,
few persons seem to understand this, and
consequently carry home little else than
impressions of railroads, hotels, and
steam-packets, ending their journey thoroughly
knocked up. I met a Scotch clergyman at
Frankfort, and he was going on to Berlin,
though he had never been abroad before, and
had only a fortnight for his trip. He was a
pale, thin man, with light, straggling, frightened
hair, and in a perpetual state of nervous
excitement. I am afraid, too, he had a purse
too light to carry him comfortably so far.
He would have passed his time much more
usefully and pleasantly, if he had crossed over
from Dover to Ostend, and wandered leisurely
over the glorious old cities of Belgium, with
their noble Church architecture and pleasant
memories of olden chivalry and painters who
were almost princes. His fortnight might have
been enough for the lakes of Cumberland, or
even as times go, perhaps, for Holland. But
what, except a silly jumble of ideas, could he
expect to carry home after fourteen days spent
in gallopping through Belgium, part of Prussia,
Nassau, Darmstadt, Frankfort, Hanover,
Brunswick, and half-a-dozen other places.

As a rule, a young man travelling to
complete his education should pass at least three
months in each of the great countries of
Europe, or he is likely to carry away a very
incorrect idea of each. He should spend six
weeks or two months in the capital, to gather