barrel with breathless interest, until they
rumble away together out of sight. So,
again, with regard to the men and women
who pass my window by thousands every
day; my view of them is just as curiously
circumscribed as my view of the vehicles.
Out of all the crowd, I now find, on taxing
my memory, that I have noticed particularly
just three people (a woman and two men),
who have chanced to appeal to my peculiar
invalid curiosity. The woman is a nursemaid,
neither young nor pretty, very clean
and neat in her dress, with an awful bloodless
paleness in her face, and a hopeless
consumptive languor in her movements. She
has only one child to take care of—a robust
little girl of cruelly active habits. There is a
stone bench opposite my window; and on
this the wan and weakly nursemaid often
sits, not bumping down on it with the heavy
thump of honest exhaustion, but sinking on it
listlessly, as if in changing from walking to
sitting she were only passing from one form
of weariness to another. The robust child
remains mercifully near the feeble guardian
for a few minutes, then becomes, on a sudden,
pitilessly active again, laughs and dances
from a distance, when the nurse makes
weary signs to her, and runs away altogether,
when she is faintly entreated to be quiet
for a few minutes longer. The nurse looks
after her in despair for a moment, draws her
neat black shawl, with a shiver, over her
sharp shoulders, rises resignedly, and
disappears from my eyes in pursuit of the
pitiless child. I see this mournful little drama
acted many times over, always in the same
way, and wonder sadly how long the wan
nursemaid will hold out. Not being a family
man, and having nervously-acute sympathies
for sickness and suffering just now, it would
afford me genuine satisfaction to see the
oppressed nurse beat the tyrannical child;
but she seems fond of the little despot; and,
besides, she is so weak that if it came to
blows, I am afraid, grown woman as she is,
that she might get the worst of it.

The men whom I observe are not such
interesting cases; but they exhibit, in a
minor degree, the peculiarities that are sure
to attract my attention. The first of the two
is a gentleman—lonely and rich, as I
imagine. He is fat, yellow, and gloomy, and has
evidently been ordered horse-exercise for the
benefit of his health. He rides a quiet
English cob; never has any friend with him;
never—so far as I can see—exchanges greetings
with any other horseman; is never
smiled at from a carriage, nor bowed to by a
foot-passenger. He rides with his flaccid
chin sunk on his fat breast; sits his horse as
if his legs were stuffed and his back boneless;
always attracts me because he is the picture
of dyspeptic wretchedness, and always passes
me at the same mournful jog-trot pace. The
second man is a police agent. I cannot sympathise
with him in consequence of his
profession; but I can observe, with a certain
lukewarm interest, that he is all but worked
to death. He yawns and stretches himself
in corners; sometimes drops furtively on to
the stone bench before my window; then
starts up from it suddenly, as if he felt
himself falling asleep the moment he sat down.
He has hollow places where other people have
cheeks; and, judging by his walk, must be
quite incapable or running after a prisoner
who might take to flight. On the whole, he
presents to my mind the curious spectacle of
a languid man trying to adapt himself to a
brisk business, and failing palpably in the
effort. As the sick child of a thriving system
he attracts my attention. I devoutly hope
that he will not return the compliment by
honouring me with his notice.

Such are the few short steps that I take in
advance to get a moderately close glance at
French humanity. There are, of course,
other passengers, whom I look after day by
day with something like curiosity; but they
make no lasting impression on my memory.
What I have written thus far, honestly
reproduces the small sum of my really vivid
impressions of people and things in Paris,
in-doors and out. If my view is absurdly
limited to my own dim horizon, this defect
has at least one advantage for the reader: it
prevents all danger of my troubling him with
my ideas and observations at any great
length. If other people value this virtue of
brevity in writers, orators, and preachers as
sincerely as I do, perhaps I may hope, on
account of my short range of observation and
my few words, to get another hearing, if I
write the second chapter of my invalid
experiences. I began the first half of them (as
herein related) in France; and I am now
completing the second (yet to be recorded) in
England. When the curtain rises on my
sick-bed again, the scene will be London.

MINERALS THAT WE EAT.

IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE SECOND.

METAPHYSICIANS in speculating upon the
diverse operations of the human mind, have
spoken of man as a microcosm—a little world
typifying the outer creation, and epitomising
its phenomena. The physiologist, in examining
his form and physical endowments, may
repeat the expression with a more definite
meaning; for he can trace in the single
individual a reflex of the forms which people, the
laws which regulate, and the elements which
compose the entire material world. The
investigation of the form of man has made it
clear that the skeleton of man, having been
fashioned after a certain type, other animals
are constructed after the same model, with
less elaborate detail and narrower capabilities.
The series of created beings radiate from the
type of structure which man presents; and
the first link in the laws which control their
existence and bind them together in one