That is abominable. Now for something
horrible.

"It is saide many men have been cured
of the falling euill (epilepsy) by drinking
of the powder of dead men's skulles burnt.
The skulle of a dead-man whereon mosse
groweth, being taken and washed very cleane,
and dryed in an ouen, and then beaten to
powder, will cure this infirmitie, although the
partie grieued have been troubled therewith
many yeares before. But this skulle must
be the skulle of one that hath beene slaine, or
of one that was hanged, or that came to a
sudden death, and not the skulle of one that
dyed of any sicknesse, or else by other
maladies growing of long continuance in the
head."

By this spectre of a prescription we are
fairly frightened out of Mr. Blower's churchyard.
It is not a very long way in the
churchyard from the daisy to the dead man's
skull, and just so deeply we have dug, through
snails and moles and worms. Therefore, at
least, if for no worse reason, "the Rich Store
House" filled by Mr. Blower's wit may be as
fairly called a churchyard as a surgery.

THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.

FROM VARNA TO RUSTCHUK.

I HAD a uniform in a tin box—a German
tin box, which of course would neither shut
nor open. I had that most awkward of all
things to pack, a cocked-hat-case, and a long
frail slender sword. I was perfectly right in
resolving to take these things, encumbrances as
they are; for, in passing through a war- country,
I might come to grief, and in all lands under
despotic governments—in Russia, or in lands
semi-Russianised, such as Walluchia,
Moldavia, the Banat, Poland and Hungary, as
well as in Austria, Prussia, and even Bavaria
and Saxony a uniform goes a great way;
and, whichever route I might finally decide on
taking to England, it was extremely probable
that my uniform might come in very seasonably
in the case of any untoward occurrence.
I had also two leather portmanteaus which
might have been dispensed with, if British
friends and relatives were not always so
anxious to receive presents from the East. I
had two carpet bags, one oke (about two
British pounds) of Constantinople tobacco,—
a great treat to any one living away from the
capital, I had six game pies as a provision
for the road, and which turned out to
be worse than unnecessary. I had a
short great-coat, a mackintosh and a thick
Albanian cloak which were veiy well worth
their carriage. If I were going to make the
same journey again I would take a uniform,
most certainly, a complete oversuit of
mackintosh or oilskin, including leggings and
coverings for the feet; but I would
unhesitatingly reduce the rest of my luggage to the
smallest of all possible carpet-bags, and buy
such things as I wanted for immediate use in
the towns upon my way.

However, there these things were now,
piled up (a disheartening heap!) in the court
of a dirty inn at Varna, and the difficulty
was how to get them away. The luggage
delayed us at least six and thirty hours in
the comparatively short distance between
Varna and Rustchuk. "We could not go more
than three miles an hour because of them,
and we might have gone always five, and
sometimes seven or eight. The portmanteaus
were particularly difficult things to gird on
the pack-horses; but at last we contrived
means by which, with a great expenditure of
time and rope, we succeeded in lashing them
on with some degree of security. To be sure
they galled the horses cruelly wherever their
sharp edges and angles happened to touch
them; but we could get along, and that is the
most which can be fairly said.

We started from Varna long before daylight,
and I could not help reflecting that the
style in which we were travelling was very much
the same as that which was usual in England
during the reign of Elizabeth. So rode the
courtly Raleigh nourishing ambitious dreams
and fancies of new worlds. So rode bluff Suffolk
and the stately Earl of Leicester, when
he sped upon his stolen visits to his hidden
bride, and so came Master Shakespeare from
Stratford to London in fifteen hundred and
eighty-seven. The usages of all countries are
the same in the same stage of history. Ay!
even to the food the people eat, and the
manner of dressing it. The clothes they wear;
their houses, and their very minds.

Our Sourondjee, or hired groom, sent to
take care of the horses, rode first. Then came
our pack-horses, the halter of the foremost
tied on to the tail of the Sourondjee's horse,
and the second pack-horse's halter made fast
in the same way to the tail of the other. To
this one again was lashed on an extra horse
on which to shift the whole or any portion of
another's burthen if it should prove too
heavy, or if a horse should by mischance fall
lame; our Tatar or armed guide, guard and
courrier, brought up the rear. In his hand
he carried a long whip, and with this
sometimes he lashed the post-horses, sometimes
their owner.

Lastly, rode we, a merry company smoking
and chatting along the wild romantic road,
but also having a sort of crook in our lots
with respect to our saddles, which were
Turkish wooden saddles, bought at Varna,
and made up of galling red cloth and fringe,
exasperating brass nails rudely stuck in the
most impossible places, and unexpected bumps
wherever they ought not to have been. We
thought naturally enough of the testy invalid
who cursed his bed, because the longer he lay
in it the harder it grew. As for the Turkish
stirrups they were neither more or less than
a pair of excruciating stocks for the feet, and
their mere weight and shortness kept them so