soul, a something which suggests to a few what they deem memories of an antenatal life, and to others the hope of a future state of being. Or take the rainbow a pleasing effect is unquestionably produced by its variety and brightness of colour, by the round of its arch, and the symmetry of its form; but it is not these features which here produce the poetic interest and rapture which now invest it. These are produced by the ideas suggested by it. It has, for instance, a fairy aspect, a frail yet beautiful ethereality, which contrasts strikingly with the solid earth and the blue fixity of the firmament, between which it seems to mediate. It comes and goes like an apparition, but, unlike it, awakens no terror. It touches the feelings of humanity by its likeness to the light which often sparkles through tears. Evanescent daughter of the sun, it diverts for a season all eyes from him, even as men gladly turn from the manly face of a sire, to the sparkling loveliness of his fair child. A bow without an arrow, it has been the model to archers in constructing their weapons of death. A bridge without a river, its shape has been copied by all architects in spanning streams and estuaries. Itself a shadow, it has the power of producing secondary shadows, nearly as beautiful as itself. Glorious as a whole, its segments are scarcely less so, as they go glimmering away into the obscurity of distance. Mild compromise between light and darkness-half tears and half triumph-it has become a meet emblem of the reconciliation of earth and heaven; ever vanishing yet always re-appearing, it has been fitly constituted a sign of an everlasting yet earthly covenant between man and his Maker. It suggests, too, the thought of dissolving storms, and returning sunshine. It seems a dream rather than a work of nature, and whether silently shining over the unrisen morning city, or sinking both its bright limbs in the sea, like those of the angel of the waters,'-or clasping the wide and rich valley in its embrace, or bridging the crags of two mountains which had frowned at each other for ages, in one brief truce of beauty, or uniting hostile lands as though the milder day had already

dawned, or believed to commemorate the greatest of all temporal deliverances, that of the world from a destructive flood, and recalling the coming forth of earth's grey fathers' to watch its sacred sign; it is felt to be not so much beautiful in itself as in the multitude of thoughts, images, feelings, and recollections it suggests; and hence it seems one thing to the eye of an ignorant shepherd, and another to one who views it through the atmosphere of blended piety and imagination; to the one it is not much more beautiful than a bright dyed draught-board; to the other, it seems dipped in the hues of the third heaven, and seems fair as that 'rainbow which is about the throne of God.'

We could add many more illustrations, but our space is nearly exhausted, and our purpose will now be sufficiently obvious. We are not at all satisfied with Professor Blackie's theory of Beauty. That many objects are more pleasing and satisfactory than others we grant, but that any object in itself originally suggests that peculiar and ideal feeling we call that of the beautiful-till association has lent her artful aid, and imagination bestowed her unearthly colouring, and the soul asserted her imperial prerogative in modifying the impressions received from the forms of mere matter, we gravely doubt. At the same time we see difficulties on our side of the question as well as on the other, and are therefore thankful to the Professor for his Lectures, which are sure to revive the discussion of the whole question, and to lead by and bye to its better settlement. Meanwhile we incline to the modification of Alison's theory, propounded by Professor Wilson. Contending strongly that lights and sounds, etc., are beautiful or sublime not in themselves, but through association, he denies that trains of thought, or distinct personal recollections are absolutely necessary to make up the emotion. The impression is collective and immediate. We learn to perceive a rose, and to perceive its beauty by lengthened processes of association; but just as afterwards we perceive a rose to be a rose at the first glance, so we perceive a rose to be beautiful with the same rapidity. We cannot be said

by our instructed senses to perform any mental operation, when we see an object to be round, and so neither can we be said to perform any when we feel an object to be beautiful. Voluntary associations no doubt will often arise, and by producing long trains of thought, will add to the emotion with which we regard the beauty of a rose, or of the human face, or of the sun or moon, but the emotion arises independently of them.

In conclusion, so far from thinking with Blackie that the doctrine of Association is a degrading one, we think it one of the noblest in philosophy. It is spirit-stirring, cheering, ennobling

to know that the inind has a higher ideal of beauty than is fulfilled in the material universe; that, in Lord Bacon's language, it can conceive of a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things; that the earth and the stars, the sun and the moon, roses and dewdrops, and all other material objects, not only can be combined into fairer forms by the human mind, but must wait in the soul's ante-chamber ere the stamp of sublimity, or the baptism of beauty be conferred upon them, and that while great is Naturegreater far are man's mind, heart, and imagination.

'LEVITER LEGENDA'. a peculiar name! Yet I do not employ it for the purposes of alliterative claptrap, but in sober earnest. It means to be lightly read,' I think, if my reminiscences of the Latin grammar do not play me false; and therefore I have prefixed the title to these notes. They are to be lightly read, and I hope any one who may peruse them will regard them as leniter legenda' too. For they crave indulgence; they are rough and hasty, and I have forgotten to teach them to come before their readers gracefully, and wreathed in propitiatory smiles. No one will find any weight, unless, I fear, of tediousness in what follows. My pen but jots down, after the day is done, what scenes or events seem to me noteworthy: I don't moralize; I don't sermonize; I don't philosophize. I am not an antiquarian, a geologist, botanist, conchologist, or physiologist. Far be it from me to boast of classic learning, or of historic lore, or of artistic research. I can pretend to no acquisitions greater than those of my humble neighbours.

If you press me for the reason of my writing, perchance I might make reply, 'Homo sum-humanum nihil a mealienum puto; indicating that a catholic interest in human affairs prompted me to record my impressions of the men

PART I.

and things I have beheld in other countries than my own. Perhaps, however, without pretending to sport any such grand sentiment as that of the old Roman, I might answer that, in writing this journal-if journal that can be called which is no diurnal chronicle but only a general record,-I wished merely to note down for my own satisfaction, my memories and impressions of a continental tour and residence, that, looking back upon them long after this it may be, I may remember at a hint they give something that is pleasant, and learn something that is useful. Perhaps, too, there may be those who look upon what I note down with a kindred interest; and perhaps, last of all, it may fall out in the great plan of existence, that long after the present writer has become nameless dust, the fragile written paper may remain, and afford to some human being or beings in the faroff years a glimpse of the great and everchanging world, of the manifold yet common humanity as these appeared to one pair of eyes, through a not very clear and piercing eye-glass, in the years of grace 1857 and 1858-noteworthy years in many ways.

London, again, with the old and ceaseless roar and rush-the smoke, the flare, the jostling crowds of vehicles

and passengers-London in December is no inviting spot. Right glad I am, that but a day or two will be the whole extent of my stay.

I left London Bridge Station at 8.30 on Saturday, December 5th, for Folkstone, which the train reaches before eleven. The day was bright, and the cliffs of Albion really looked clean and whitish; white they never are, whatever they once may have been, and for the sake of the veracity of poets, one is led to hope that the present greyish yellow has not been their tint always. Distance lent enchantment to the view, and they looked purer and finer the farther the steamer receded from them. We started at 12 noon; so one could not have any excuse for quoting, 'My native land! good-night! and to say, 'My native land! good-morning!' would be a sheer burlesque so the shade of Byron is unmolested for once, and a good deal of sentiment is spared for future use. The passage was calm, and only a few females were sick, kept in countenance by the children on board. The invalids were nonchalantly supplied with basins, and tended by an old tar, who stood by, while his active interference was not needed, eyeing them half contemptuously, half pityingly.

We reached Boulogne in about two hours and a half. Here there were, as usual, a tedious wait till the lug gage was examined, a lot of stupid passports to be viséd, a number of rascals to be paid, and a slow couple of hours to be passed ere starting for Paris, at 4.30.

One fine sight I saw here, and it really was a fine one; the view of the town from the bridge as you cross to the railway station. The town lay behind me, the hills rising blue beyond, a violet haze brooding over their lower slopes, taking its substance and its tint partly from the mists of the evening, partly from the light smoke of the chimneys. The houses along the quays shone brightly in the level radiance of the setting sun; on the streets was a throng of passengers, fisherwomen, soldiers; at the quays, a few vessels with the sails furled, a fishing boat or two, with red canvas and tarry hull; the harbour was 'oily calm' and glistening in the sun; over

all was 'a great peacefulness of light'-it was like a scene Canaletto would have loved to paint, and struck me as calmly and truly beautiful. From Boulogne to Paris the journey occupies about six hours, and if you have luggage, it will be ransacked again at the metropolitan railway-station, unless you are successful in bribing the officers to pass it without a second intromission with the contents of your boxes.

Here, in Paris-Anglicized though the section of Parisian life one sees be-I felt that I was decidedly out of Britain, and in a new atmosphere, and when I changed the time by my watch from that of Greenwich to that of the French observatories, I seemed to cut the final cord of connexion with my fatherland, and might have said or sung, 'the last links are broken that bound me to thee.' And it is much better one should feel expatriated and should denationalize one's-self as much as possible, so as to enter really into the life of other countries and the habits of other people, and to look upon these with some sympathy, interest, and appreciation. Why should a man go through the world calling everywhere for roast beef, drinking London stout, as I saw a man, who looked like a bagman, systematically doing in Paris, and measuring everything as sensible and bearable just in proportion as it comes near the standard of British custom? The great impediment to thoroughly entering into travelling, and enjoying and benefiting by it, is defective knowledge of continental languages. French, at least, every one travelling on the Continent should know, so as to be able to converse in that language; without this, travelling will be socially a slow and unprofitable undertaking. But few out of the mass of British travellers possess this accomplishment; the want of it I have often had occasion to deplore. The French one is taught in Britain, is somehow not the French one hears in Paris; and the Anglo-French, that ingenious lingua franca which renders one's gastronomic and other domestic wants intelligible in a hôtel, is not the graceful and sparkling speech that trips along the tongue of the ladies and gentlemen of France, and indeed of most people of any good education on the Continent.

Even in buying a pair of gloves in the Palais Royal, the officiating grisette got at once beyond my depth in a flood of animated declamation, to me incomprehensible. However, I got the gloves, and then she volunteered toganter me; and as I concluded this must be the verb transitive to glove,' I assented, upon which, powdering the inside of the article with a little chalk, she proceeded with a graceful agreeable fashion of her own to urge it up my clumsy digits. I enjoyed the process, and though the damsel was no Venus, could not help wondering what was the subtle Parisian grace which rendered an action pleasing and pretty in her, which one of my own countrywomen would in all probability have performed either with the gaucherie of a milkmaid, or a repulsive forwardness.

My travelling companion-who, by the bye, spoke his native English everywhere, and always with a confidence and faith in its being understood, that refreshed one in this distrustful era took me a drive in the afternoon along the Champs Elysées and to the Bois de Boulogne.

We got a handsome open carriage with a fine pair of horses, and a driver in quiet livery, all on the hôtel establishment, and sallied forth from the spacious glass-domed court in great ease and dignity. The streets were crowded with gay equipages, mingled with which were humbler vehicles, hired cabs, tradesmen's carts, riders on horseback and assback, soldiers, horse and foot, gendarmes, foot-passengers, hawkers, and the usual tagrag and bobtail of a long and thronged thoroughfare. Suddenly, as we approached the noble Arc de Triomphe, there was a crushing together of the carriages-a pause, a buzz and hush; then appeared over the heads of the mass of people the flutter of the pennons of a small squadron of Lancers. The Lancers passed at a trot; then came two carriages, and in the second one, drawn by four horses, sat two ladies, one of whom held up conspicuously in her arms a bright-looking fine little boy. He was the Prince Imperial. Offspring of a fateful and not too happy marriage-heir of an imperial adventurer-scion of an unprincipled and ambitious line, what

will your fate be? Throne, dungeon, scaffold, exile-to fall in foughten field' to rule like your father by an iron military despotism, or to be whirled away like a red leaf in autumn before the raging tempest of an insurgent nation? No one can forecast your destiny, poor infant! but over no child in Europe does the future hang so uncertain, so bodeful, as over him who has been proudly styled The Son of France.' His father's rule is a military despotism. Look at Paris, and see if it is not; and Paris is the microcosm of France; nay, essentially it is France. The city is altogether in the grasp of the army; an army is quartered there; every 'coigne of vantage' is occupied by a barrack; every street, gate, building, is grimly guarded by armed men ; there are underground passages whereby troops can pass from point to point in silence and darkness, terrible as doom. Fancy them, bearded and accoutred, stern and merciless, fiercely emerging on some uproarious faubourg!

Paris is concentred on the Louvre. The telegraphs that rule Paris and spread all over France converge there to the Emperor's bureau. He raises his finger and the blow is struck. An army devoted to him obeys him blindly, and France from Marseille to Boulougne, from Strasbourg to the Atlantic, knows that he and his armed soldiers are for the present invincible lords of the land.

So be it; it cannot last for ever. A rule of fear and force is but a robber or bandit government. When the supreme bandit ceases to command the adherence of his rascals, the system collapses and his head rolls off.

At any rate, such rule cannot be hereditary, unless in such a realm as that of Russia, where the brutalized serfs stolidly acquiesce and know or dream of nothing better or higher than their bondage.

But I am not going to be political, so let us bid adieu to the Emperor. I wish him all luck. I feel convinced he is unprincipled, and history knows he is perjured and hard-hearted; but he is for the present the first man in France-the supreme man-the hero-the one man fit to rule and sway that people, incapable as they are

of wise or prolonged self-government. He is better than anarchy--than turbulent republicanism-than besotted Bourbonism; therefore let him reign, let him fulfil his destiny.

Paris is a most graceful city. Everything there has a dash of piquant gay elegance about it. The Parisians know thoroughly well what is neat, pretty, graceful. I am not sure that they rise to the truly Beautiful. Certainly their beautiful is not the beautiful of the old Greeks. Their worship of it is a sensuous worship; I should think they do not coneern themselves about the ideal. The sublime, the pure, the spiritual is beyond them. They please, but they do not touch; they excite the nerves and the fancy, they do not quicken the spirit or stir the imagination; they amuse, but they will not solemnize. They know the stealing wood-nymph and the merry faun; they have never looked upon the grand calm front of Jove, or the pure pale brow of Pallas.

They are masters of the art of pleasing; but they cannot rise to the high regions where the pure forms dwell.' While the Greek would have chiselled his breathing marble, we can fancy a Frenchman of the period' would have contrived some new monstrosity of crinoline. Statuary on the one hand; the most charming millinery on the other.

But I dare say all this has been thought and said before, so let us change the theme. On Tuesday at eleven I left Paris for Dijon: the station is near the Place de la Bastille, a long drive from the hotel. The traveller in France is systematically treated as an infant. His baggage is seized, priced, and ticketed, and taken out of his agonized sight; his person is surrounded on every side by gendarmes, and superb individuals with collars, sashes, cocked hats, and decorations; he is shut into a close pen, from which he is released at the ringing of a bell, to be hustled into a carriage and packed off; ever and anon as he fares along a guard visits his cell, and requests a sight of his ticket, and probably nicks it or makes some mark or other on it, apparently just to assure himself that the poor fellow has not lost the indispensable 'billet,' and to record by means of the mark

its exhibition at certain stages of the journey.

The system has its advantages and comforts-and the entire absence of bother about luggage is a vast relief; but the constraint and enclosure at the stations is a nuisance to a free Briton. The charge for baggage is not high, and is leviable chiefly on British travellers, as foreigners generally travel with a pack of most economic dimensions. On the Continent, one should travel in as light marching order as possible; but still, how few boxes soever you may have, keep a corner here and there to accommodate any knicknack or engraving you may pick up. You will often be tempted to buy, and you should indulge the inclinationmoderately of course for you will find many pretty and valuable things in a continental shop, that you could not get so well and so cheap at home.

The country between Paris and Dijon is flat and uninteresting; a large portion of it laid out in vineyards, which at this season look very unlovely. Arriving at Dijon about five, we went to the Hôtel de la Cloche, a comfortable enough little place near the station. Here we were the only British at the table-d'hôte; the wine and cooking were good, and the charges moderate. Dijon was once the capital of the duchy of Burgundy; but its great days are over now. It is well worth seeing, however, and I regretted that my late arrival and early departure prevented my exploring it. It has some grand churches, and other ancient buildings. It must also always be interesting, because within its walls were born Bossuet and Crebillon, and a mile beyond them is to be seen the castle in which St. Bernard first drew breath. These names are no mean civic crown to any city.

We left for Lyon early next morning, passing through a rich wine country. The whole face of the land for miles was covered with vineyards. On your right, as you come out of Dijon, is the Côte-d'or (Ridge of gold, I suppose, it may be rendered), terraced to the top for vines, and from these the primest Burgundies are made. The names of the stations as you travel on are pleasantly suggestive. Vougeot, where Clos de Vougeot is