between number one hundred and sixty and
number one hundred and seventy.
Consequently, a skein, whose weight should make
it number one hundred and sixty-seven, is
marked number one hundred and seventy,
although it is a very little coarser than the
standard number one hundred and seventy.
In France, this difference is of the highest
importance. The French customs will grant no
such latitude. If there is the least encroachment
on the wrong side of their limit, they
seize forthwith—as they did on the occasion
referred to. The number one hundred and
seventy, without the least intention of any
fraudulent transaction, happened thus to be
spun to about number one hundred and
sixty-six (which does not exist in the English
trade), and was consequently within the French
limit, and liable to confiscation. But this is
not all. In company with the illegal number
one hundred and sixty-six there came other
numbers far finer, quite above what could
possibly be touched by the French margin,
all the goods being in one bale. Therefore
the douaniers logically seized the unoffending
cotton, together with the offending; because it
was travelling in bad company. Perhaps,
when it goes to Paris to be verified, the legal
thread may be restored to its owner. The
joke is that the act of bleaching—Protection
to bleachers!—should make, in addition to
the quality of fineness, all the difference
between admissibility and inadmissibility. Had
this cotton of contention been bleached
instead of unbleached, none of it could have
entered France at all, fine or coarse, on any
conditions whatever. A weaver in France
wishing to have cotton thread ready bleached,
cannot get it for love or money.

The department of the Tarif in which a
liberal spirit makes the hardest struggle to
manifest itself practically, is the class
comprising objects of art and natural history.
Articles forming parts of collections, and
not belonging to commerce, pay no more than
one per cent. on their value. When
imported for the national museums, they are
entirely freed from duty, but it is requisite
that the destination be justified. It must be
acknowledged that the French unreformed
tariff is a kinder patron to this branch of
liberal study than was the English
unreformed. We may remember how Waterton's
hard-won collections were delayed,
despised, and injured by custom-house
difficulties. Finally, rare, curious, or learned
animals, conducted by jugglers, are exempt
from duty on their entrance to, as at their
exit from France. An unenlightened pig
pays twelve francs for his admission; a
learned pig, if he has only got as far as his
A B C, marches in triumph gratuitously
with—homage to letters!—the trade fetters
handsomely knocked off.

It is natural to ask, how long such a tariff
is likely to sacrifice national welfare and
international intercourse to the supposed
advantage of a few? Answer: For some
time to come. There are Frenchmen who
are less apprehensive of the outbreak of
Revolution than they are of the outbreak of
Free Trade; because the horrors of Revolution
are known and can be grappled with, while
the horrors of Free Trade loom, in a dark,
menacing, and incomprehensible mist. The
milder class of Protectionists, in their moments
of incipient thaw, will admit that it would be a
good thing if certain duties could be reduced
or abolished; but before that can take place,
France must be able to produce the same
articles at the same price as they are sold at
by the stranger. Then, and not before, will
be the time to open the ports. Until France
can make iron, prints, and muslins, as cheaply
as England does, the great bulk of the
French people are to continue to be deprived
of them, only to favour the very few who can
manufacture them. Suppose England were
to promise to reduce her duties on French
wines as soon as we can produce home-
grown champagne and claret from English
grapes of equal quality and price, with that
which we now receive from France!

HER FIRST APPEARANCE.

THE Hothams were left orphans—the
brother at twenty-two, the sister at twenty-
one years of age—but their desolation was by
no means extreme: it was tempered to them,
as the Reverend Applepy Swete observed, by
a considerable sum of money in the Three
per Cents. Besides, the girl found in Cecil
Hotham at once a parent and a brother; more
devoted to her happiness than a lover; for
his devotion exceeded that of a wooing time:
it lasted for life.

Even if one had not been related to her, it
would have been quite possible to have
become exceedingly fond of Nina Hotham; as
Mr. Swete, the curate of Brentfell, where she
lived, proved. Swete was not a strong-minded
young person, but he was very honest and
well meaning, and the living would be
his own as soon as the then rector (who was
eighty-two) should be removed from what
was denominated, more technically than
literally, his present sphere of usefulness.
The old gentleman had indeed been put in
at seventy-four by Mr. Swete's father, the
patron, as a warming-pan for his son, and he
had already taken five years longer to keep
the place warm than was expected of him.
Still, it was plain that he could not persist in
such annoying conduct much longer, and Mr.
Applepy Swete's expectations were—since the
living was a good one—proportionably excellent.
Nina liked him well enough, though not
passionately, and her brother Cecil, seeing
that, was, in consequence, his warm friend
and supporter; for, if her opinion of the
young divine had been unfavourable, he would
have been his determined and uncompromising
foe.