as was his due from us; but he only listened
to the directions we gave him to his aunt's,
and took no notice of our apologies.

THE CAMP AT HELFAUT.

MECHANICIANS estimate the value of any
motive agent which they contrive to invent,
by the space which it occupies in proportion
to its efficiency. What they want is, an
epitome of strength. Cumbrous machinery,
falling to pieces by its own weight, and incapable
of movement in consequence of its
own friction, finds no favour. To obtain the
greatest amount of active or resisting power
with the smallest quantity of material substance,
is the problem which clever heads
are every day more and more successfully
solving.

A pinch of gunpowder will kill your game
in better style than all the cross-bows,
arbaletês and bird-bolts in the world. A
small dose of cannon-balls will breach you a
hole in a fortification sooner and wider than
a dozen lumbering catapultas. A few atoms
of detonating powder are preferred to solid
flint and steel. A single small hydraulic
press will screw you down tighter and reduce
you more rapidly to the form of a pancake,
than countless pairs of the brawniest arms.
A steam-engine of a hundred horse power
will finish, in no time, a job which two hundred
horses strung together could not even
touch or begin. Archimedes, with all his
boasting, could have done very little with his
lever that should move the world; unless
it were a lever he could hold in his hand, and
ply like a crow-bar or a kitchen poker.

The world he thought of was the world of
matter. But there is yet another world to
be moved; the world of men, the world of
mind. And to stir it, to compress it, to
guide it, and to make it grow, miniature
apparatus, with springs and levers that are
scarcely visible, are getting the victory over
costly, enormous, and unwieldy tools.

These fancies came into my brain as I was
leisurely strolling in a foreign land, one
thought-compelling spring-tide morning. It
is not every idle stroll which has the power
of suggesting comparisons to the mind.
Critical epochs of the year, peculiar localities,
and, still more frequently, the discordant
union of incongruous objects, will often strike
out the latent spark with which to light up a
luminous idea.

I had started from the town of St. Omer
in the direction of the cemetery, and had
mounted the hill on which it lies, commanding
a view of considerable interest. Behind, a
picturesque mass of buildings grouped around
the heavy grey cathedral, the dingy, red-brick,
pretentious and desecrated Jesuit's
church, the heavy dome of the Hôtel de Ville
is all walled in and held together by a
formidable rampart of fortifications. Green
meadows and swelling hills lead the eye into
distant wanderings. Before, rises a table-land,
whose broken slope faces you boldly.
On its level plain, which forms the horizon,
you can just perceive what might be a multitude
of gipsy tents; though not enough
to accommodate the entire gipsy population
of Christendom. That is the famous
Plaine des Bruyères, the manoeuvring field, or
Camp of Helfaut. Unlike our own ephemeral
Chobham, this is a permanent institution,
performing its functions with more or less
of annual vigour, according to the aspect of
the times, or the military tastes of the ruling
powers. All sorts of reputations within the
last forty years have galloped over its sterile
surface—from the steady fame of our Wellington
to the phantom-like names of Charles
the Tenth and the Duke d'Angoulême.

I had crossed the troubled waters of the
Aa, wondering at a long wooden trough
which stood on the shelving brink of the
stream, and was half way up the grassy slope
leading to the Helfaut camp. Seen from
below its aspect is that of a continuous and
far from ugly range of hills; the outline of
whose more commanding promontories was
faintly traced and gilded by the blossoms of
stunted furze bushes. On the topmost knoll,
immediately before me, a group of cattle were
enjoying the prospect, and calmly ruminating
the sweet short herbage on which they had
made their morning meal. I could just catch
the point of a white stone spire on the summit,
apparently belonging to a village church; but
really the fleeting monument to a fleeting
memory—to Louis Philippe's heir, the Duke
of Orleans, whose statue in bronze, intended
publicly to decorate St. Omer's market-place,
has found instead a refuge and a hiding-place
in the museum of the town. But even
this form of disgrace shows an improvement
in the times. Had the reverse of
fortune happened some sixty years ago, the
colossal duke would have been stamped into
sous.

To mount at leisure the green declivity,
is even a more agreeable mode of ascent,
than to follow the zig-zags of that excellent
road. We are on level ground, and can
breathe and gaze. The camp is before us,
a wide-stretched body, like a ricketty giant
with but little soul just now to animate
it, and not at all in its Sunday clothes. For
at Helfaut the soldiers' dwellings are not
tents, but low huts, or hovels, or wigwams,
with clay walls and thatched roofs, a door at
each end, mostly, and precious little window.
In fact, they are anything but good-looking
homes, and do not promise to enervate the
men by making them too comfortable. The
vast assemblage of permanent tents is now no
better than the apothecary's "beggarly account
of empty boxes;" a boarding-school at
holiday time; Cambridge during the long
vacation; an actress in her morning dishabille;
a London theatre out of season, with