angle on the Mediterranean, every warm nook on the " Corniche," has its three, four, or five mild-faced, pale men, sauntering amongst the orange groves, and whispering through a respirator. There is something so interesting in these people, deserted in a measure by physic, and left to the slow influences of climate-soft airs and softer attentions being their only medicamentsthat I found myself eagerly engaged in thinking, first, what it might be that predisposed to the affection; and, secondly, how it might be met by precaution. Cure, I need not say, I was not presumptuous enough to consider.

I cannot now record how the subject baffled me-what combinations of difficulty met me here, what new and unexpected phenomena started up there; but I went steadily, carefully on. I amassed my facts, I registered my observations; and at last-I hope it is not in vain boastfulness I declare it I solved my problem. Few words will tell my explanation. The Parson throat is not the malady of necessarily loud talkers or energetic speakers; it is not introduced by exaggerated efforts in the pulpit; it is not brought on by terrific denunciations delivered in the trumpetcall, or mild entreaties insinuated in the flute-stop of the human organ. It is simply and purely brought on by men persisting in preaching in an assumed unnatural voice-a conventional voice, imagined, I suppose, to be the most appropriate tone to call sinners from their wickedness and teach them to live better. You are startled by my explanation, but grant me a brief hearing. Who are the victims of this throat-affection? Not the high-and-dry old rubicund parsons, with bright frank eyes and well-rounded chins, neat of dress, knowing in horse-flesh, strong in horticulture. These hale and healthy fellows have one voice, just as they have one nature; the same note that summons the gardener to look after the dahlias cries to the congregation to take care of their

souls. They are not, perhaps, outand-out divines; there is a bucolic element through them that makes them what Sydney Smith used to call "Squarsons." They are, at all events, a very noble set of fellows and thorough gentlemen. These men are totally free from parsonitis; a case has never been known amongst them. Next come more

muscular Christians, whose throats, attuned to the hunting-field, could perform, if called on, the office of a railroad whistle. These have no touch of the complaint.

All "Colenso," I am told, is exempt, which is the more singular, as the men who deny everything and oppose every one are necessarily called on for vocal efforts of the most forcible kind. This is remarkable.

It is, then, amongst the more distinctively pious of the clergy that the disease commits its ravagesthose who, by distinctive epithet, are called Evangelicals. Now there are numbers of these-vast numbers-who labour throughout their whole lives, and labor arduously, untouched by the affection. They are of all classes of the clergy the most untiring, the most devoted, and the most intensely imbued with the duties of their calling; but there are others who have all their zeal, all their devotion, and all their sincerity, and none of their abilities. These men, eager to emulate the usefulness of their superior brethren, bent on displaying in themselves the splendid success around them, cannot rise to the intellectual heights of their more gifted_neighbours, and are driven to imitate not the wellargued statement-not the close narrative of facts-not the impassioned appeal, or the startling exhortation, but simply the tone of voice in which these were conveyed. Hence is it that these men, good and excellent men in every way, but of very commonplace minds and unelevated views, copy the one sole trait that has no merit or value the tone and delivery of those

allow him to have one shot at the brood? The fellow replied, "A crown." Sheridan fired, and tumbled seven of them. "Well, my honest friend, how do you like your bargain?" asked he, triumphantly. "Well enough," muttered the other; "the dooks is nane o' mine."

History, they tell us, repeats it self, and I am disposed to believe it; for this story of the ducks is precisely the story of the French policy in Italy. The Emperor no more owned the duchies of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany, than the clown owned the ducks, but he gave Victor Emmanuel a "shot at them " in exchange for Nice and Savoy. Like the country fellow, too, he went off grinning, and saying, "They be none o' mine," thereby hinting that there might come a day of reckoning with the owner which might be far from agreeable.

Now we are in the daily habit of hearing the most fulsome praises of this great Prince; and so successful is success, that even the journals which once took a fairer and juster measure of his capacity, are now, simply by force of the fact that he sleeps nightly at the Tuileries, disposed to accord him all the prescience of a statesman and all the skill of a great general.

I declare I have an ardent desire always to agree with the people around me. I am never so well pleased as when I can concur with a prevailing opinion; and I'm not sure that I wouldn't rather put a little mild coercion on my conscience than dissent from the judgments of "the company." But here I own I cannot. I could no more believe in the greatness of Louis Napoleon than in spirit-rapping. Our credulity is sorely taxed in England: we have to believe Lord Palmerston a wit and Mr. Cobden a sage; we have to swallow Carlyle's English, and affect to like it; and when I land at Dover I do each and all of these things. I prefer the muttonchop at the Lord Warden to my little dinner at the Cadran Rouge. I like the red-petticoated damsels in the

Bad-moral boots better than the trimmest Parisian ankles. I go in to admire Buckstone and bitter beer, and all that is English; butand this I resist to the deathnothing shall persuade me that the Emperor of the French is other than a third-rate man," who might have possibly distinguished himself as a police functionary or a solicitor, but has as much claim to high statecraft as Jem Mace to be an authority on the Pentateuch. Let any of us humble folk only enjoy that nice privilege I have just spoken of -- let us only sell what doesn't belong to us and what a snug little competence we should lay up for our declining years! His last coup of this kind was the Franco-Italian treaty. This time it is indeed a very choice lot he submits to public competi- : tion. "No reserve, gentlemen; His Holiness must be knocked down to the highest bidder, for the place is already disposed of to the 'party next door.'" What a condition for a Pope! Garibaldi's Hymn thun- ! dering at the Vatican! infallibility going, one may say, for a song!

Austria would like, if she dared, to make a bid. She would like better still to protest against the sale, but how can she? The Pope was not true to the Holy Roman Empire once before, and he cannot be trusted; besides, Austria is weak.

66

Sheridan-I go to him once more for an illustration - coming home full of wine from a dinner, heard a voice from the channel of the street, in tones of evident ebriety, saying, "Lift me up-lift me up." "No," said Brinsley, "that's impossible; but I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll lie down beside you." Such is the answer Austria gives the Holy See "We can't lift you up, but we'll lie down beside you."

It is very consoling to us small fry in the world's fish-pond that these leviathans only repeat in their policy what we blunder out in our potations.

But this is not all. When by any accident there is a European

rumpus, in which France takes no active part, maintaining what the Parisian papers call the "Dignified Attitude that becomes her," the Emperor, who naturally feels he cannot give away that for which others have fought and conquered, coolly steps in and declares that whoever obtains it will have become, by the added territory, inconveniently strong for France, and that, in consequence, he himself must have something somewhere of somebody else's to redress the balance, and enable France to go on maintaining the "Dignified Attitude" aforesaid. Now, when these two elements constitute a policy, I cannot but think that the rest of the world must fare ill at every attempt they make to recolour the map of Europe.

This is in reality, in our own age, very little else than the practice of feudal times. It is blackmail over again, and Louis Napoleon is the Gregor Macgregor of Europe. The Prussians have let it get abroad that they mean to annex some of the Danish spoils. Austria, who lent her aid to win them, sulks; but France, the generous France-that country which alone of Europe enters the arena for glory, and not for gain steps in and says, "The price of this piece of Jutland is Sarre-Louis; don't higgle. This is the prix fixé establishment, and we neither come down nor give credit."

Last of all, where he cannot take territory he takes patronage. If he can't absorb the estate, he at least names the agent, as we saw a few days back in Mexico.

have the "zero" for themselves, and the advantage is estimated at about eight or ten per cent on all the sums staked at the table. Of course, the more money that is played the more is their gain. You and I may wage a fierce war on each other in black and red, but the Messrs. Benasset, who look on, have only to wait for their zero; and eventually, by a mathematical certainty, if we only play long enough, we shall both be ruined, and they acquire all that we once possessed. This is precisely what the Emperor does. He seldom plays, but merely contents himself with the zero. Ten per cent on the game, gentlemen, and the aprés. Ah, these aprés; these are my perquisites. "Faites votre jeu," and you'll see what will come of it.

I don't wonder John Bull sulked, and took an oath against play. He used to like his game once well enough; he was generally lucky, and though he was not always goodhumoured when he lost, he booked up like a gentleman, and nobody ever called him defaulter. Now, however, this newfangled game irritates him. It's not on the square. That "Mossoo" there knows more about the balls than he ought, and he charges, besides, too much for the "tables."

My own impression is "Bull" is right. A respectable tradesman cannot mind his shop in the day if he passes his nights in a hell. We all know where the business would go if he were to do so; and for this reason I say, Keep away from that French roulette-table; or if you must play, play low-never "stake a Sovereign."

66