II.

NAUDERS, TYROL, September 7, 1867.

SIR,-Edward is growing a beard.

I am sure he

wouldn't have done this at Margate, and it is one of the set-offs against foreign travel that I don't think you have made proper allowance for. A beard is picturesque, I dare say, and all that, like the pine woods-excuse the local illustration-towards the top of a pass, but I think it is rather appropriate to patriarchs and brigands, and that kind of person, than to decent civil servants with a young family and fanciful superiors in any of Her Majesty's Offices. I have known a beard passed over as suggesting unbusinesslike associations, when very inferior men with clean-shaven chins have been promoted. Besides, beards are scrubby, and in early stages very frightful. Edward didn't dare begin it till he left Paris, and at Schaffhausen the other day, as we were leaving the hotel in an Einspanner,-unassuming onehorse vehicle, adapted for two persons and two-thirds,a waiter who observed the situation politely suggested that he might perhaps wish to have himself shaved ("Der Herr möchte vielleicht sich rasiren lassen") before starting. Edward blushed, and hastily got into

the Einspanner, and I could see for a day or two after that he looked uneasily into the glass, and would have hurried its growth if he could. This is what comes of cutting yourself loose from social restraints. In Mrs. Shrimpaty's front parlour he would never have had courage to let his beard grow, and I am sure I don't know whether I shall ever shame him out of it again. I suppose it's no use trying at present. Perhaps when he sees his little family again, and he hears Hannah exclaim, Laws, Mum! how odd master do look!" and bethinks himself of the observations at the

Office, he will

have it shaved off. Talking of Hannah, how I do long to hear of my darlings! Edward says I may to-night. But it is a week since I left home, and we have only just reached the first place I told Hannah to write to. With telegraph all the way too,-I have never lost sight of the wires, it seems almost cruel.

Well, at Bâle we stayed a day to lay in our English Tauchnitzes, which Edward says he never fails to do in a journey abroad. I am ashamed to say I got a lot of novels of a trashy description. Edward chose Kinglake's "Crimean War," which he had never properly read, and Warren's "Diary of a Late Physician," over both of which he pished and pshawed all the rest of our journey, and, with regard to the latter, abused the last generation for thinking so well of it. As to the other, he said Mr. Kinglake could not be natural, and was always on his literary stilts. I asked for the day's rest at Bâle, and was sorry afterwards that I had, for when you have once enjoyed the rush of the great river, by daylight and by

night, and walked over the pretty, quaint bridge to KleinBasel, and meandered a little about the town, there is not much else to see; and when you have nothing homelike about you, I think the excitement of some little change every day is almost necessary. I found a little in embarking largely in household brushes (I have a weakness for brushes), which I lighted upon in a little shop in the town, and thought nice and cheap. Our portmanteau is apoplectic in consequence. But Edward was not enthusiastic about the brushes and had time to get hipped. Besides, as we had heard that the attendance at the principal Rhine inn had lately become bad and supercilious, Edward had taken me to one of the others on the Rhine, where we were very comfortable in other respects, and had a beautiful room with a view over the river; but the two beds were secreted in a windowless. alcove or deep cave, in the extreme recesses of which you could only see the light, even at midday, like a star in the distance," on the glimmering limit far withdrawn." The consequence was that the air was very oppressive there, and though we opened both windows till the rushing of the Rhine made me dream that the pipes had burst at home and my little Colin was washed off his bed, Edward woke the second morning giddy and sick, and so ill altogether, that I thought of sending for a German doctor, and writing you a letter of reproachful expostulation. It was partly owing to his taking coffee, which he tried because these Germans make it better than tea, and which never suits him. Luckily I had taken the precaution to bring with me two pounds of good 4s. 6d.

tea (North's), and Edward, having dictated to me enough German to make the good-natured German chambermaid au fait at the situation, I obtained means to make him a good cup of tea, and carried it to him in the recesses of that dim retreat. Not, indeed, that that said chambermaid felt any delicacy about conversing with him directly on the subject of his ailment. I had scarcely finished my learnt sentences, when she rushed into the cave and opened an unreserved interchange of views with him on the stomach and its maladies. I thought to myself that German chambermaids rush in where Hannahs fear to tread. But really I am forgetting our journey in all these little drawbacks. A good cup of tea, and some very weak preparation, believed to be dilute veal broth, set Edward sufficiently up to leave in the afternoon. I did not wish to have him sleeping another night in that excavation. Before we left, Edward pointed out to me in the great book the names of two old Miss B.'s, who, with their brother, were "arrivés d'Avignon," and (oh!) “partis pour Pontresina, Engadin," just where we are going. Edward turned pale, and murmured something about wishing for the wings of a dove. The truth is, they are scientific ladies (they have a gyroscope!) and dreadfully friendly,-persons who will go into the geology of a district, its religious history, its political constitution, its sanitary arrangements, anything but its beauty. I comforted him, and hoped we should miss somehow. But the omen was fatally true.

However, when we got into the train for Schaffhausen Edward cheered up, and began making lively observations

on the Badenserinnen, who got in and out of the train in the oddest head-dresses you ever saw. Black-ribbon horns they were. I suppose the ribbons were stiffened out with some wire framework; for they stuck out like horns behind each ear,-what the Old Gentleman would wear if he were in mourning. Edward asked a fat old lady in the carriage if they were always worn so, and always black, and she replied in the affirmative. Certainly one of the ugliest head-dresses I ever saw! but they did Edward good. He said it showed such nice, modest feeling to put such frightful erections into mourning, and that English hideousness of that kind is usually flaming yellow or red. The Rhine, on our right as we went towards Schaffhausen, was one long rapid, and very beautiful. If our tickets had not been taken to Schaffhausen, and our little Koffer irrecoverable till we got there, I think we should have stopped at Laufenburg, where the great Rhine narrows almost to a brook, and rushes with tremendous violence between two rocks scarcely five yards apart. On each rock is the quaintest little grey tower; and a covered bridge, such as is so common and pretty in Switzerland, connects the towers. The brown hills behind, with young green vineyards creeping up them, were most picturesque and tempting. But we had given a pledge to society, in the shape of our yellowred Koffer, that we would go as far as Schaffhausen ; and we went. Before we got there Edward's veal broth was all assimilated, and his stomach crying out for dinner, but, as the authoress of "Emilia Windham❞ somewhere finely observes, "ere that haven could be reached

C