we get to my house. This fellow will do more
mischief to the parish than fifty Mr. Wickets.
It is impossible to ask him to dinner. He
would steal the spoons. He told us he was
at one time in the habit of pocketing whatever
he could; and the old propensity might
break out. He would also find fault with
my three glasses of Twenty Port, because
he was once a deliberate drunkard, and
might object to my asking Sophy Jells to tea,
because he used to have curious ideas about
any lady he saw."

So here we are in the midst of an internal
conflagration, which nothing seems likely to
extinguish; and all because we have no
voice in the appointment of our rector;
anybody can buy the right of setting anybody to
instruct us. Cannot some way be found out
of consulting a parish on the settlement in
the midst of it of a teacher and guide? Are
German theologians to come and mystify us
with Ichs and other unintelligibilities, and
turn the heads of silly young girls like Sophy
Jells, who has lost both Charlie Baskins and
Mr. Wicket; or a ranting Boanerges to
escape by a miracle from being hanged, and
paint poor human nature as black as pitch,
as pitch only fit to be burned?—taking his
wretched self as the model, his own wicked
thoughts and depraved imaginations as the
same thoughts and imaginations which
softened the heart of Howard and ennobled the
mind of Milton? I am going to dine with
Mr. Jollico to-day, and we are going to read
a chapter or two of the Gospel of St. John.
"It is like grinding one's own wheat," he
says, "and baking one's own loaf after the
adulterations of miller and baker. Is there
no Dr. Hassall to spy out the deleterious
mixtures and unwholesome poisons retailed
in pulpits as well as shops—the alum, and
plaster, and acid, taking away the purity
and sustenance of the bread of life?"

WET GARDEN WALKS.

AFTER a stout pitched battle with the
obstinate resistance of three dinner courses,
consisting of fish, flesh, and fowl (not to
mention the volunteer regiments of vegetables),
with soup in the van, and dessert in the rear,
flanked by a sharp-shooting company of
frisky beer, popping seltzer-water, and
explosive lemonade, the whole covered by a
powerful kitchen battery smoking and steaming
close behind—at the conclusion of such a
destructive onslaught, commencing at the
early hour of half-past twelve, the sated
dining-room warrior is apt to become lazy,
especially if he has risen at five in the
morning, and has occupied his time in an
out-door campaign. At least such was the
case with myself when the great bell of St.
Orner hoarsely boomed out two in the afternoon,
to be immediately re-echoed by the
shoemaking watchman, who cobbles, strikes
the hour, and looks out for fires, on the
pleasant but windy eminence of St. Bertin's
tower. It was too early in the day, as well
as too hot, to remain in-doors, tippling old
Bordeaux, especially as the other voyageurs
had left the Hôtel du Commerce to transact
their own private commerce in town. So,
after a blink at the dazzling sunshine, and a
hesitating halt under the lofty archway,
which used to swallow up, one after the other,
whole diligences, horses and all, just as a
hungry chicken bolts grains of barley, until
the railway swallowed them altogether at one
gulp, but which now serves mainly as the
airy larder wherein crude shoulders of mutton,
fair quarters of lamb, fat legs of veal, and
ruddy loins of beef find a temporary refuge—
after a careless glance at those huge festoons
of meat, I stuck my hands in my pockets and
sallied forth. I longed for a cool and shady
garden walk; but, as the proverb says, water
goes to the river, and so did I. Like the
pailful from the pump, with which the good
"bonne " (she might have been bad, for aught
I know, though I hope not, and do not
really think so), rinsed and cooled her bucket
before pumping another, I softly slided, rather
than walked, down the gentle slope of the
Rue de Dunkerque.

In that easy descent there are some cap
shops, tempting to look into on several
accounts; there is a milliner's that is perfectly
irresistible (it has a choice geranium novelty
in a china pot stuck in the window to give
you an excuse for stopping); there is a
charcutier's (artist in pork), with a varnished
ham, a french-polished tongue, a china hen
that has been sitting upon the same eggs, to
my knowledge, for these eighteen months
past; and a large bouquet of finely-broken
tulips expressly placed to shade half a sausage
from the sunshine; there is a shoemaker's,
where four-and-twenty Crispins sit all in two
rows, who know better than the subtlest and
secretest agent of police the face and the
business of every passer-by; there is a tobacco
débit, where you find the newest fashions
from Monsieur Fiolet's world-famous pipe-
and-bowl manufactory—death's-heads with
jewelled eyes, and (with shame be it spoken)
the Empress Eugénie's busts destined to
convert the soothing weed into smoke and ashes;
there are aristocratic porte-cochères closely
shut, and stately windows densely muffled with
double curtains of crochet and muslin: nobody
ever looks out of those windows, except the
greenhouse plants, of whom the master is so
blindly infatuated that he thinks they can
never do anything wrong; there is a book-
seller's, where your choice lies between the
Life of St. Mouldibones, the Meditations of
St. Meaghermeel, the Antiquities of St.
Outotheway, the Gauger's Ready-Reckoner, and
the Serjeant's Livret. There is not a soul to
stare at all these fine things; for, except on
market-days, and the hours of going to and
from mass and vespers, you may fire a
cannon-ball down any of the streets of