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coffee-room window.. Doubtless that is Stevenson himself whose head appears over a fragment of the window-blind, razor in hand, his face disguised in soap-suds, engaged in making his Sunday toilet, and his chin smooth.

ADDISON, NEWSAGENT,

appeared in grass-green and gold next door. In the coffee-room of the King's Head at Tamworth there is no newspaper of any kind; nothing save the Midland Railway Time Table for February, 1848. This I spelt over and over, but by "no hook or crook" could the first and only train for Derby be construed into departure before a quarter to seven; and there it stopped.

I then rang the bell, which Elizabeth and her black eyes answered, and departed in search of a newspaper. The door opposite has shut with a bang, and a glimpse of a most elaborate neckcloth and waistcoat is sufficient evidence that the tailor and draper's toilet is complete, and that the bang of the door followed his exit, for an exceedingly pretty profile, which probably belongs to his daughter, has taken the place of the soapsuds and his shorn physiognomy, and is gazing after his retiring steps; and now that he has turned the corner, and is, as poor Power would have said, "clean out of sight," the profile has suddenly turned to a full face, and has lost nothing by the transfiguration, for two dimples are exposed and come into play instead of half a one, and two laughing blue eyes are evidently endeavouring to fathom the obscurity of the commercial room. The bagman is not bad-looking, but is what ladies' maids would call an exceedingly smart gentleman; and, moreover, has an enormous pair of whiskers. Probably, then, it is his custom to put up at the King's Head on occasional Sundays-possibly he may be hers-of the dimples -Sunflower.

Oh, the heart that has truly loved!

Elizabeth enters with the Times of Saturday-the great Cotton Lord's speech at Manchester on the Thursday before-national defences-bales of cotton, not bad ones either in every sense, as we found them to be at New Orleans long ago, for old Hickory made his ramparts of them.

But our beefsteak makes its appearance: "done to a turn-perfect-gravy; a light pile of horseradish, and fine powdery, mealy-looking potatoes smoking in a deep round dish. The cover matches the dish, and is of the old willow pattern-the two men going over the bridge represented in quaint Chinese perspective. I always had a weakness for this old blue and white delf-now rapidly being superseded by showy and vulgar patterns.

"What have you got to drink?"

"Bitter beer, sir."

"Is it good?"

"Our customers like it, sir; there are no complaints."

"Vulgar dog!" from Mr. Demmi, the would-be swell; "beefsteaks and beer-low!"

The ale is excellent-just bitter enough-clear and sparkling; and so are Elizabeth's eyes!

The bagman has finished his correspondence, sealed his letters, locked his gig-box up, and has approached the window, hat in hand.

From where I am seated I can just discern the blue orbits over the

way peeping over the blind, which hides the dimples as well as the rosy lips, and I pick out a delicious onion from amongst the accompanying piccalilies, and proceed vigorously with my repast, the bagman still at his post in the bay-window-immovable, tiresome dog.

I have begun to munch the very crispest bit of celery it was ever my fate to encounter, when the bagman shows signs of a move, and I am fast coming to the conclusion that he knows what to order and what he is about in Tamworth. He passes out, and I rush to the window; the double-barrelled dimples have excited my curiosity. No one is to be seen in the window, but passing towards the opposite corner, where the tailor and draper disappeared, is a black chip bonnet, particularly well put on, with one scarlet rose placed, and so piquantly, too-in stable phraseology, if proper to apply it so on the off side! Briedenback once told me he recollected a man in Paris whose sole employment was to determine the exact spot where a flower should be fastened on each capote, and his charge was a Napoleon! It was worth it, too, for if there be one thing more than another offensive to good taste, it is that overloading amounting to disfigurement which one generally sees on those worn by our fair country women. When will they learn better? No matter whether it be ribbon or artificial flowers, they must have them in profusion, and so laden with artificial fruit, as to call to mind nothing short of a market garden!

But to return to the possessor of the black bonnet and scarlet rose. All of her figure visible was faultless, though a good deal is enveloped in a Scotch shepherd's plaid shawl, with a deep maroon-coloured border, exceedingly well adjusted. Rigolette could not have arranged it better. She holds her dress up as she paddles along on tiptoe to avoid the puddles on the defective trottoir, and exposes well fitting boots, and stockings so well pulled up that the slightest wrinkle cannot be detected; her petticoats are as white as the driven snow, and possibly the riddle of the housekeeper, and a great deal of bustle about a little waist, might apply.

An Isle of Skye terrier is following.

My inclination is to run out and get a nearer view of the owner of the scarlet rosette, to see if she is really as pretty as my fancy pictures. She must be. But at the moment she turns the corner, I imagine, from a reflexion in an opposite window, she has joined some one. She never once looked behind her; her umbrella is up, as it should be, for the rain descends in torrents.

Well, I finish dinner, cogitating over and dreaming all sorts of things, and work myself into a dreadful fever as to the face that belongs to so faultless a figure. Elizabeth enters. I must have killed a deal of time in this most unsatisfactory manner, for it has become dark, and she proceeds to close the window-shutters, draw the curtains, put on fresh coals, poke the fire, brush the cinders under the grate, and is fumbling for the hook to hang the brush upon; and she departs, and I am again alone, and ruminate once more. The fire light strikes full upon

FINEST HOLLANDS and Geneva.

I pull the bell. Elizabeth with her black eyes soon appears. "Confound the fellow," from Demmi, "the vulgar dog is going to make love to the chambermaid." No such thing, Mr. Demmi; I

VOL. XLV.

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am too much interested about the possessor of the black bonnet, and anything that may have struck me as remarkable about Elizabeth's orbs has been eclipsed for ever by the imaginary ones which must live under that same bonnet.

"Which is the best-Hollands or Geneva ?" "Our customers like both, sir. There are no complaints, sir. Mr. Gallyshield takes Hollands, sir; Mr. Fustian always drinks Geneva, sir; and Mr. Dimity likes 'em both, sir!"

you

re

"But which do you like? I only want one kind, which do commend, eh? I'm sure you know which is the best. Come, now?" "Indeed I don't, sir; I never drinks none. Mr. Shrub, sir-that's him that's just gone out-invariably prefers the 'Ollands; the young man is a good judge, sir, for he's in the trade; he's the gentleman as travels for that 'ouse, sir, and that card with the eunuch-corn and lion upon it comed from him."

"Oh, then, bring me some Hollands and hot water, and mind that the water boils."

"Yes, sir."

The brew is made.

What is to be done? "Drink it, to be sure!" from my friend Demmi, who has become interested, and is impatient, to know something more of her of the dimples.

And so I intend, and interrogate Elizabeth a little while so doing. What does he do with "What sort of a person is this Mr. Shrub? himself here on Sundays? I thought I saw him looking very hard at a young lady in the opposite window just before he went out, and she must have gone at the same time. Does she wear a black bonnet with a red rose in it? I fancy she is very pretty, is she not? Is there anything between them ?"

"Oh dear no, sir, I don't think there is nothing between them; she is a very pretty girl, sir, but

Mr. Shrub enters the room, and my curiosity is again doomed to disappointment, for he at once takes his place at a table by the closed shutters and calls for his dinner, which very shortly appears, borne in by Elizabeth, who looks unutterable things.

His dinner is precisely the same as that I have just discussed, but he has ordered half a pint of pale sherry-which looks very pale indeed. The shop (the Geneva) he wishes, perhaps, to sink in our presence, but that may come later.

He has finished-has drunk the moiety of his half-pint, the remaining half he has put carefully away: and now approaches the curtains of the window, which, after some fumbling, disclose the canework of the window, and above, in the room where the tailor had committed shaveology, a human head; probably a nearer observer, say, Mr. Shrub, from his proximity, could discern whether it was the same face that had first appeared in soapsuds, or that which succeeded and was dimpled-but I

could not.

Mr. Shrub takes an elaborately embroidered cigar-case from the breastpocket of his coat-turns over three or four uncommon good-looking weeds, and selects one; and I think I should not mind to choose from

those left, for a most aromatic and fragrant whiff finds its way to the olfactory nerves as he has lighted it in the hall.

The rain beats against the window, but is drowned by a rumbling noise, as if a carriage of some sort had been pulled up before the door. I have drained a glass of Geneva to the dregs, and right good it was; and Elizabeth enters in rather a bustle, but I must interrogate her, the little minx.

"Sir, the omnibus is at the door. You will have to be quick, sir." I jump in the omnibus. The door is banged to.

"All right, Bob."

It is pitchy dark-a faint glimmer, as from a lighted cigar, quickly recedes, and a very flickering lamp makes me aware there is one person at the further end of the long coffin-like contrivance.

A faint lamp is again passed; a female figure is there ensconced. A third lamp reveals a scarlet rose on a black ground; a fourth and fifth, the Scotch shawl with the purple border; a sixth, a rough Skye terrier upon the sitter's lap; and finally, the tout ensemble of the lady en face of the commercial room of the King's Head at Tamworth is revealed to my eager eye. But, provoking creature, she averts her head, and it is impossible to get a good look at her.

The jolting omnibus has passed rapidly over the ground, and has arrived at the station.

She cannot now escape me.

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Down, Thistle; down, sir," in such a voice-so sweet! Now I have a chance.

"Confound the thing!" It is all darkness, the omnibus has drawn up in such a manner as to totally eclipse the only light at the back of the station, and there may not be a chance of seeing her face; but as I move the terrier flies at my legs, and she leans very forward. The very thickest possible veil is down.

"Pray, beat him, sir"-(to me)-in the same sweet voice. "Thistle, come here; down, sir! down!"-(to the dog).

"No time to lose, sir!"

And I descend-and leave to mount a steep stair to the upper platform; she follows-it's all right then, she must be going to Derby!

I have taken my ticket, and stand aloof, anxiously and fixedly staring at the impenetrable veil, and my heart beats quickly as she turns to the light at the booking-place, Thistle held tight in her arms.

"A ticket to Lichfield, if you please."

"We do not book for Lichfield in this office, marm; in the one below. You must go down the steps. Here, porter, show this lady to the Trent Valley."

She turns to descend. There is nothing for it. I must see her face at all hazards; what is to be done? A lucky accident-her veil has caught in the crook of my umbrella, and is rudely dragged on one side. The gas is flaring, and brilliant, and she is-dreadfully marked with the small-pox!

Alas for day-dreams!

A shrill whistle. "This way for Derby! Take your places for Derby, gentlemen!"

Another whistle-an almost imperceptible stir, a palpable one-whish! I am off.

364

POLITICAL MEMOIRS: M. GUIZOT AND LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

ALMOST simultaneously there appear new volumes of political memoirs, by two ex-Prime Ministers, French and English; by the former, of himself; by the latter, of his party's sometime chieftain, traditional glory, and abiding oracle, Charles James Fox.

M. Guizot resumes his Memoirs at a memorable date, July, 1830. On the 23rd of that month he left Nismes for Paris, which he reached on the 27th, at five in the morning. Six hours later he received a note from M. Casimir Périer inviting him to meet several of their colleagues, and discuss the fatal decrees, and the incipient struggle they had already occasioned, betokening another Revolution, very imminent if not quite inevitable.

Ministers and nations live fast in hours of crisis. They know not, in the morning, what a day may bring forth, but they every evening see what it can. Seeing is believing; yet is it hard in some such cases to believe one's eyes. It was only on the 26th, as M. Guizot was passing through Pouilly, that he obtained from the guard of the mail the first intelligence of the decrees. And now, before noon on the 27th, a dynasty was manifestly doomed.

His description of the state of things in Paris at this juncture, gives animation and excitement to the very opening of his new volume. "The struggle had scarcely begun, and already the entire establishment of the Restoration,-persons and institutes, was in visible and urgent danger. A few hours before, and within a short distance of Paris, the decrees were unknown to me; and by the side of legal opposition I saw, on my arrival, revolutionary and unchained insurrection. The journals, the courts of justice, the secret societies, the assemblies of peers and deputies, the national guards, the citizens and the populace, the bankers and the labouring classes, the drawing-rooms and the streets, every regulated or unlicensed element of society either yielded to or pushed forward the general movement. On the first day, the cry was, Long live the Charter! Down with the Ministers! On the second, Up with Liberty! Down with the Bourbons! Long live the Republic! Long live Napoleon the Second! The decrees of the preceding eve had been seized on as the signal for exploding all the irritations, hopes, projects, and political desires accumulated during sixteen years.

"Amongst the evils with which our age and country are afflicted, one of the heaviest is, that no serious trouble can burst forth in any part of the social edifice, but immediately the entire building is in danger of subversion; there exists a contagion of ruin which spreads with terrible rapidity. Great public agitations, extreme abuses of power, are not new facts in the world. More than once nations have had to struggle not only by law but by force, for the maintenance and recovery of their rights. In Germany, in Spain, in England before the reign of Charles I., in

* Memoirs to illustrate the History of My Time. By F. Guizot. Translated by J. W. Cole. Vol. II. London: Bentley. 1859.