very surly, and one of them asked me where
I would be,—would I have my toes trod off?
'Is your toes trode off?' said I. 'No,' said
he. 'Then give me your place, and I'll take
care of my toes.' 'But they are going to fire,'
said he. 'Then it's time for you to march
off,' said I, 'for I can stand fire. I wish your
troops may do as well.' On which he sneaked
off, and gave me his place."

A few other sketches we give for the sake
of their succinctness. Greenwich Hospital
"is a ridiculous fine thing." The view from
the hill, there, "is very pretty, which you
see just as well in a raree-show glass. No
wonder the English are transported with a
place they can see about them in."

We give also as a curiosity, because we
wonder how the lady ventured to present to
us,—King George the Second in his bedroom
at Kensington.

"There are a small bed with silk curtains,
two satin quilts, and no blanket; a hair
mattress; a plain wicker basket stands on a
table, with a silk night-gown and night-cap in
it; a candle with an extinguisher; some
billets of wood on each side of the fire. He
goes to bed alone, rises, lights his fire, and
mends it himself, and nobody knows when he
rises, which is very early, and he is up several
hours before he calls anybody. He dines in
a small room adjoining, in which there is
nothing but very common things. He
sometimes, they say, sups with his daughters and
their company, and is very merry, and sings
French songs; but at present he is in low
spirits."

Finally, let us show how Mrs. Calderwood
brings her acutely haggis-loving mind to bear
upon the English ignorance of what is good
for dinner.

"As for their victuals, they make such a
work about, I cannot enter into the tastes of
them, or rather, I think they have no taste to
enter into. The meat is juicy enough, but
has so little taste that if you shut your eyes,
you will not know, by either taste or smell,
what you are eating. The lamb and veal
look as if they had been blanched in water.
The smell of dinner will never intimate that
it is on the table. No such effluvia as beef
and cabbage was ever found in London!
The fish, I think, have the same fault."

At the want of a sufficiently high smell to
the fish eaten by the English, we are
well content to stop, and stop accordingly.

THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.
THE SHOW OFFICER.

WE go stumbling along the unpaved streets
of Galatz by the dim light of a lantern carried
before us by a servant. The town, although
the chief commercial city of the Danubian
Principalities, and numbering its inhabitants
by tens of thousands, is of course unlighted.
The outward civilisation of these countries
showy as it appears, has unhappily gone no
further, up to the present time, than jewellery
and patent-leather boots. Light air, and
cleanliness are at least two generations
a-head of it.

Our hotel, the best in the town, is not better
than a Spanish inn on the Moorish frontier.
The doors do not shut, the windows do
not open. There is a bed, but it is
an enemy rather than a friend to repose.
The bed-clothes are of a dark smoke-
colour, stained in many places with iron-
moulds, and burned into little black holes
by the ashes of defunct cigars. The bed,
bedstead, and bed-clothes are alive with
vermin. They crawl down the damp mouldy
walls, and swarm on the filthy floor,
untouched by the broom of a single housemaid
since its planks were laid down.
Battalions move in little dark specks over the
pillow-case; they creep in and out of the
rents and folds of the abominable blanket,
On a crazy wooden chair—of which one of
the legs is broken—stands a small red pipkin,
with a glass of dingy water in the
centre. A smoky rag, torn and unhemmed,
is laid awry beside it. They are designed for
the purposes of ablution.

The walls of the room are very thin; and
there is a farewell supper of ladies and
gentlemen going on in the next room. I saw the
guests mustering as we came in. They were
so ringed and chained that they would
have excited envy and admiration even at a
Jewish wedding. They are all talking
together at the top of their voices against
the Austrian occupation. The odour of their
hot meats and the fine smoke of their
cigarettes, come creeping through the many
chinks and crannies of the slender partition
which divides us. Twice I have heard a
scuffling behind my door, and I have felt that an
inquisitive eye was applied to a key-hole,
from which the lock has long since been
wrenched in some midnight freak. Derisive
whispering, followed by loud laughter, has
also given me the agreeable assurance that
my movements are watched with a lively
and speculative interest. They appear to add
considerably to the entertainment of the
company. I am abashed by feeling myself
the cause of so much hilarity, and stealthily
put out the light. Then I wrap myself up
resolutely in a roquelaure, take the bed by
assault, and shut my eyes desperately to the
consequences; doing drowsy battle with the
foe, as I feel them crawling from time to time
beneath a moustache or under an eyelid. I
am ignominiously routed, however, at last,
and rise from that loathsome bed blistered
and fevered. The screaming and shouting in
the next room has by this time grown
demoniacal. My friends are evidently making a
night of it: so I begin to wonder whether
the talisman of a ducat will not induce a
waiter and a lantern to go with me to the
steam-boat. I may pace the deck till morning,
if I cannot sleep; for the Galatz hotel-
keepers have I know protested against