Weather and telescopes permitting, three
kingdoms are distinguishable from this lookout.
Though it is possible to catch a sight of
the English coast, it still requires a little help
to do so; but yonder, far off to the east,
plainly rises the spire of Furnes, in Belgium.
France, of course, is conspicuous in our
panorama; and yet, much that catches our
first attention can scarcely in truth be said
to be France. There are countries in the
world which are neither fish nor flesh; you
know not where to have them, what to make
of them, nor how to class them. On the
summit of the Tour de l'Eglise, you hover over
a dubious district. If you take your flight
with one of those jackdaws which is bidding
a short good bye to Saint Eloi, you have not
the slightest idea where you will alight—
amongst Gauls or Teutons. You may leave
the North Sea out of the question, because
about that there can be no mistake; but all the
rest, till you have studied it thoroughly, is a
region of intricate amphibiism. The wide
expanse of landscape which you behold
outspread beneath you on looking southwards,
and westwards, and eastwards, is to all
appearance an unbroken continuance of the
surface of France. Your map, too, will tell
you that it is an integral portion of the area
of France. But there is often something
beneath the surface, which maps and territorial
decrees do not help to demonstrate. Listen
one instant! That sharp cry which arises
from the street conveys syllables too familiar
to an English ear for France to claim them
as hers by right. They are uttered by much
nearer relations of our own. Zee sala! Zee
sala! is a maritime vegetable, English as
well as French, both by nativity and name.
To ask in British tongue for a dish of
"sea-salad," would be of more use at
Dunkerque than in a purely French town. Parts
of our vast extended scene, and parts
irregularly and capriciously distributed, are
distinguished, though not dissevered, from
genuine and actual France, by race and by a
living ancestral language.

On crossing from an island to an opposite
continent; after passing through a thick
barrier of lofty mountains; when reaching
once more a human habitation at the end of
a wide extent of barren and unpeopled desert;
there is little surprise in finding one's self
surrounded by men and women, who
communicate their thoughts in an unaccustomed
tongue. A decided change of language is
naturally in keeping with a decided change
of scene and costume. But it is droll as well
as puzzling to the mind, to drive, or even
walk, quietly along a level fertile plain, and
then, without the least previous warning,
without passing any other boundary than
some impalpable network which has been
suspended in the air for centuries past, to
tumble over head and ears into the startling
cold bath of an incomprehensible dialect. If
this tall tower were an ivory chessman, and
the arrondissement of Dunkerque a drawing-
room chess-board, the black and white squares
that would lie around us might help us to
know what, in our chequered bird's-eye view,
was French and Flemish respectively. The
occupations, also, of our neighbouring squares
are as opposite as black and white; or, in
even more literal truth, as unlike each other
as land and water.

Although the country to the south and
towards the interior is richly-luxuriant alluvial
ground, the tract running all along the coast,
from utmost east to utmost west, offers
nothing to the eye but a sandy desert, or what
the eye assumes to be such. " Dunekerque,"
in fact, interpreted, is no other than the
"Kirk of the Dunes," or Sandhills. To the
west, apparently the least sterile side of our
watch-tower— where a tinge of green
overspreads the dull pale yellow—you distinctly
behold a scattered collection of tents, which
sparkle brilliantly in the morning sun. I
venture to call them tents advisedly;
because, though built with brick, and covered
with tiles, and neatly painted outside with
white-wash, they are merely the temporary
dwellings of a community of Sailor-Fishers,
who will not condescend to cultivate the earth,
nor allow a single member of their tribe to
become, whilst among them, the proprietor of
a freehold. Matelots-Pêcheurs they have been,
and nothing else, ever since their arrival here,
as a little colony of thirty souls, a hundred
and eighty-three years ago; and Matelots-
Pêcheurs  they will obstinately remain, till
their exclusive race becomes extinct,—an
event, just now, the reverse of probable.
French, too, they are to the very back-bone.
Have they any doubt of the truth of the
proverb that "Ninety-nine Flamands and one
pig make altogether a hundred bêtes, or
beasts? " No Flemish will they learn or
speak; not they! On the contrary, the
Government has encouraged them as a useful
wedge of civilisation, because they compelled
their next-door neighbours of Grande Synthe
and Little Synthe to communicate with them
in their old-fashioned formal French. Fifty
years ago, Flemish alone was spoken
hereabouts. Mardick, then, about which I may
have more to tell you by and bye, is a near-
at-hand square of the chess-board on which
our Tower stands, and is a bit of France in
the midst of Flanders.

It is strange enough to find a colony of
seafaring men, thus preserving their religious
faith, the manners and customs of the epoch
of their emigration, and their language of the
seventeenth century all unaltered, in the
midst of a country then completely Flemish.
Similar cases are to be found, not far off,
of this curious dovetailing of nations and
languages, which is the very reverse of
amalgamation. The border-land between
France and Flanders is exactly a slab of
breccia marble. It is in vain for a Government
to make violent attempts to abolish the