turning a wheel, supplying a flax-pond, or by
bearing on his breast a not too heavy burden.
But in order to watch the youthful Aa
playing these pranks of early life, you must
turn your back on the dusty high road, with
its endless perspectives and monotonous elms,
and must wander on, in a gossiping, idling,
angler-ing mood, without caring a liard about
the rank of the auberge where you are to eat
soup, smoke a pipe, and rest yourself along
the way, but where, if you happen to be in
luck, you may light upon an Isaac-Waltonian
feast of trout and cray-fish, with beer, and
wine, and civil treatment.

The adolescent Aa becomes ambitious, and
soon feels himself capable of undertaking
labours of importance. From Faugembergue
downwards he grinds our wheat and crushes
our oil, besides performing many other little
handy jobs. He makes paper which serves a
hundred useful purposes, the first being to
furnish manuscript materials for admirable
articles in Household Words, though another,
which may perhaps be more highly appreciated
on the spot, is to provide the gay-coloured
tissues which speak eloquently from the walls
of many a market-town, announcing that a
grand "Assault of Dance" will take place
next Sunday afternoon at four o'clock, price
of admission six sous each;—that a Professor
of Scrimmages (escrimages) is on his way to
Tristeville, and will conclude an unrivalled
display of fencing, sabreing, and single-stick,
with a specimen of the English Boxe;—that
if you are asthmatical, or even poitrinaire,
you have only to look for Doctor Tuetout,
who will ease you from your pains for four or
five sous. All this budget of cheering news
you owe to the aid of the athletic Aa. He is
continually bestridden by mills and usines,
and is made to work away like a good one.
He spins the flaxen fibre for your shirts and
your sheets; he saws the planks for your
house and for your coffin; he prepares the
rye and the four-rowed barley which is to
comfort you with a dram when your spirits
are low; or, if you are foolish and wicked
enough to prefer it, he helps to make the
gunpowder with which you may blow your
brains out. He pounds, he grinds, he washes,
he tans, he squeezes, he turns, he fetches, and
he carries. He acts, in short, as the
nominative to the third person singular of half the
verbs in the dictionary, one feat by the way
being to do what few rivers can boast of—
namely, to branch off at a certain point of his
progress, and continue his course up the side
of a hill.

The Sept Ecluses, or the Seven Locks, just
a little to the south of the village of Arques,
on a pleasant slope called les Fontinettes,
are a puzzle to those accurate tourists who
delight to count the stairs of every lighthouse
and the steeples of every town. Reckon them
on your fingers as often as you will, and of
the Sept Ecluses you can only muster six. A
seventh does exist at a considerable distance,
but has nothing whatever to do with these.
It was merely brought in to swell the
importance of the popular title. The seven locks,
however, obstinately retain their undeserved
appellation. They have perhaps quite as
much right to it as the Seven Wise Men, or
the Seven Wonders of the World.

The height up which they form a watery
staircase, is about forty feet English; and the
ascent, or descent, takes from two to three
hours, according to the size, that is the
cumbersomeness, of the vessels. Although a tedious,
it is a pretty sight, to watch the barges
passing from lock to lock. Each lock is a
long stone box, partially filled with water,
and provided at each end with a strong pair
of folding doors. The doors of the lower lock
open upon the canal of the Aa, and as many
vessels enter as can be conveniently stowed
in it. The gates are then closed. In lock the
second, the water stands at a level six or
seven feet higher, and is soon admitted into
lock the first by opening, with a crank and
wheel, some little trap-holes at the bottom
of the folding-door between them. A tolerable
display of waterworks takes place on
the occasion. Jets, and spurts, and douches
burst forth, that would bear comparison with
sundry public fountains. As soon as the
water of lock the second has thus come to an
understanding with lock the first, the intervening
gates are opened, and the pilgrim
vessels are permanently raised to a higher
position in the world. The same manœuvre to
hoist the boats goes on from lock to lock, till
the sixth is entered and filled from above.
When the last gates open upon the upper
canal of Neuf Fossé, you have been floated up
forty feet into the air, and are free to roam
wherever you will in a southerly and a westerly
direction. For you have only to get once
launched upon the Aa, and you may then punt
your bark half over the continent. Below
the Sept Ecluses, Belgium, Holland, and the
Rhine, are open to you; and above them, on
the Neuf Fossé Canal and its continuations,
you may go from the Scarpe to the Escaut,
from the Escaut to the Somme, from the
Somrne to the Oise, and from the Oise to the
Seine. On the Seine you may go to Paris;
and from Paris you may go to the—to
Jericho.

It is worth while lingering by the side ot
these locks, to get a little insight into freshwater
life. Every boat is a family establishment,
where hundreds and thousands of
Christian people are born, grow up, play,
work, make merry, make love, fall ill, and
die. Their long, mis-shapen, slipper-like
vessel—which, like many a gay old dowager,
diverts your attention from her ungainly
figure by paint, and polish, and everlasting
cleansings—their clumsy barge is to them
their tent, their promenade, their castle, their
world. It has every look of home about it.
Those women hanging out their linen to dry
on a line stretched from the stubby mast to