with its irregular, pointed roofs, its long sea-wall, and the mixture of rock and sand below. There were tents on the sands, and huge, many-colored umbrellas, and girls playing croquet on the smooth, flat sand. And then we found ourselves in the one narrow street of Arromanches. The omnibus had just arrived loaded with our baggage, and we all met in front of the Hotel Chrétien. hot plate. As we sat there resting, there "It is the fée," said Hilda with a kindly glance at the anxious mother, who replied with a look full of meaning, but was too quiet and shy to say anything. a Our shoemaker, having taken a modest gratification for his cider, showed us a footpath that led over the cliffs along the border of the sea to Arromanches narrow track used by the douaniers who keep a vigilant outlook all along the coast. We met a pair of these as we started, in their faded blue uniforms. They always go in pairs, with their chassepots over their shoulders. And here, in a little shallow dell, where a tiny brook tumbles over the cliffs, the douaniers have built a small shelter-hut, covered with turf, and undistinguishable at a little distance. This hut commands a ridge of broken, crumbling rock, that stretches from the top of the cliffs down to the sea, the one point along this coast for miles and miles where it would be possible to land anything even in the calmest weather. The cliffs are dark and gloomy in color, of a light, friable limestone which breaks off in great patches every now and then, where the cliffs are undermined by the sea. Under these cliffs, it is said, were wrecked such vessels of the Spanish Armada as escaped the English ships of war and the terrible rocks of the Hebrides. The scene is not so grand or imposing as the jagged, splintered rocks of the northern isles; but to a sailor's eye, at least as menacing, with its sharp, sunken rocks running far out to sea, and its inhospitable, iron bound coast. Soon, however, we approached more civilized regions, a kiosk appeared on the slope of the cliff- -a restaurant with an awning in front, and people taking their beer in full view of the ocean. The gap between the two lines of cliffs is just big enough to hold the little town, VOL. XLIII. 2235 LIVING AGE. And here is Mère Chrétien herself, come us. Her house has wonderfully grown and increased of late years, and besides the pleasant, old-fashioned auberge, with its balcony over the street and a pleasant nook below in its shadow, inviting pipe and glass on the hot summer afternoon, all kinds of buildings have grown up about the place, and Madame Chrétien shows with pride her long salle à manger that will seat a hundred and twenty guests. "They have not all arrived as yet — oh no," said Madame Chrétien. "But some to-day and more to-morrow, and soon not a place will be vacant. And Auguste the waiter from Paris is sunning himself on the terrace looking over the sea; and the chef has just arrived by omnibus; and altogether-yes, the season has commenced - it has well commenced, andBut it is all labor and sorrow," sighs madame, dropping suddenly her song of triumph; "more work and more worry, and so on to the end." But Arromanches pleases us; there is an atmosphere about the place that is decidedly agreeable. There is no fuss, no parade, but there is a good tone about the people who come here. Then the sands are good, and the country landwards pleasant and diversified. Altogether it is a place where one feels inclined to unpack the big valise, and settle down for a while. With dinner comes twilight and a fine glow of sunset over the sea, the tide dimpling out in long lines of ripples, and a few sails touched with rosy hues shining here and there. Dark figures are out among the rocks, shrimping, while on the sands and all about, people are sitting, walking, talking, with a general cheerful buzz of life, which pretty well ceases while the world in general is dining, and which bursts forth with increased power as the evening is more advanced. Quite in the distance lies the "Sea-Mew," to be distinguished by her anchor-light; and now by an occasional sparkle in the dark waters we can make out that a boat is coming ashore. It is a long pull, and the men have to wade some distance, the | On each of these deserted houses a board tide being so low, but presently there ap- was to be seen Apply to the Hôtel de pears the sailing-master of the yacht, who Repos. Well, we reached the Hôtel de brings word that there is something wrong Repos. Happy name! never was rewith one of the engines, and that the pose more complete. The house itself "Sea-Mew" will have to run across to seemed to sleep, with all its persiennes Portsmouth to get the thing put right. closed like eyelids over sleeping eyes. If The night is fine and the sea calm, if any- there is a tide in the affairs of men that body would like the run. But everybody tide had not yet reached Asnelles. Arroseems quite comfortable at Arromanches, manches was fairly afloat; but high water and not inclined to move. Certainly was later here, it seemed. Next week, Hilda and her father have no fancy for perhaps, all these houses will be filled the voyage; Miss Chancellor has re- with life and animation. Bathers will be sumed her interrupted flirtation with ambling over the sands, children playing, Tom; Wyvern and his sister have gone dogs barking, all the world astir. But toover to Bayeux for the night; the director day the town is like an enchanted palace and his wife are congratulating each other buried deep in repose. The feeling grows that there is no parting in prospect; and quite uncanny as we make the circuit of Mrs. Bacon is quite taken up with the the town and meet with not a soul, so that Mère Chrétien and her cuisine. So there it is quite a relief at last to come upon a is no one to go on board, and the master woman seated on a parapet of the searetires with a sigh of relief, being a lover wall, with a cat in her arms, looking out to of solitude, happiest when there is not a sea. soul on board but the crew. When the boat has put off from shore, and we feel that we have done with the "Sea-Mew" for a few days, I think that everybody is more or less relieved. Hilda is certainly more bright and joyous. She is no longer under the influence of Mr. Chancellor, and can give me a little more of her time and attention. The evening is so pleasant that a walk is proposed along the sands, which are firm and dry. Asnelles is there in full view upon a long, low promontory beyond the next range of cliffs. It seems close at hand, but perhaps it is farther than it looks; anyhow it will be an object for a walk. And we start, Hilda and I, and Miss Chancellor and Tom, along the firm yellow sands, the sea murmuring restfully in the distance. The walk certainly proved longer than it looked; but it was not a very long one after all; and we mounted the sea-wall by a flight of steps like mariners advancing to explore a strange country. There are three signs, says a Welsh triad, by which you may know an inhabited country: the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, and the cries of children. Well, all these signs were wanting at Asnelles, and so far the Welsh saying proved truthful, for certainly there were no inhabitants. Houses there were in plenty of every shape and size, mixtures of Japanese, Chinese, and Swiss in style - pretty houses and curious houses, with gardens all in trim and full of flowers; the houses all completely furnished and waiting for tenants, but not a soul to be seen. But the woman was not an inhabitant after all, but lived at the village a mile or two away, and had come down to look at her house-she had one to let if we were looking for a furnished house. But to speak accurately, the place was, after all, not quite uninhabited. Behind a sandy knoll were lying sundry fishing-boats, and two or three fishermen's cottages were in the background. And there was even a fisherman's café, where beer was to be had. But we had no time for further investigations, for darkness was coming on, and we descended upon the sands, still with the feeling of mariners who had landed on a strange coast and found it deserted. Tom proposed to fix up the union jack somewhere, as first discoverers, but no one happened to have a union jack handy, and so the proposal fell through. As we returned, the murmur of the sea had become louder and more ominous. According to our reckoning, the tide should hardly yet have turned; but it had not felt itself bound by our reckoning, for turned it was, and speeding in with a quiet, vengeful determination. And then it had come over quite dark, and we could hardly make out where we were going, only we found that patches of sand that had been dry enough as we came, were now just covered with water. We had a quick breathless race under the cliffs that frowned over us, dark and inexorable. I supported and encouraged Hilda, while Tom did his best with Miss Chancellor. It was a near thing, for just as we reached the foot of the sea-wall, with steps leading up to safety above, a broad line of dark | to a crisis now, and the future must be arwater came with gathered force and ranged either for good or ill. dashed after us. Nobody had missed us, "Hilda," I whispered, pressing her Hilda looked doubtful, as if she thought it would be difficult to make drowning pleasant under any circumstances; but Miss Chancellor looked at Tom with quite a soft, dewy look in her large grey eyes. As for the dripping skirts that Justine grumbled over, they caused no remark, for dripping skirts were everywhere. They dripped on the staircases, on the landings, and you heard them pit-a-patter on the floor above your head. And with that, innumerable prints of wet feet in all the passages. For everybody was bathing with great punctuality and regularity. You met figures in white sheets with gleaming ankles at every turn. From Macmillan's Magazine. ON A NEGLECTED BOOK. IN the "Table Talk of Samuel Rogers we read: "Dr. Johnson said to an acquaintance of mine, 'My other works are wine and water; but my "Rambler" is pure wine.' The world now thinks differently." So differently indeed, does the world now think that I doubt whether, to one-person in a thousand, even among those who have some acquaintance with books, "The Rambler" is anything more than a name. If we were to meet any one who had read it through, we should feel inclined to address him in much the same way as Johnson addressed Bennet Lang ton, when Clenardus's "Greek Grammar" was mentioned, "Why, sir, who is there in this town who knows anything of Clenardus but you and me? We never have "The Rambler" quoted, we never see it referred to. In fact, we may go so far as to say that we know but one person besides ourselves who has read it from the first number to the last. He, however, had gone through it five times. It was one of the very few books that he had been able to get hold of in the early struggles of a laborious youth, and he had read it and read it again with such delight, that whole passages, almost whole numbers, he said, had at one time been in his memory. It still retains a kind of reputation that is at once majestic and overpowering. It is a clarum et venerabile nomen, but its life and spirit are forever fled. It is one of those works which, with all their merits, get hopelessly stranded, and are left high and dry far above the fast-rushing stream of life. It no longer stands the author's own test for excellence of writing. "That book," wrote Johnson, "is good in vain, which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with But altogether we enjoyed ourselves eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure amazingly at quiet Arromanches, and it are perused again; and whose conclusion came with quite a shock that letter to is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such Hilda from Mr. Chancellor, announcing as the traveller casts upon departing day." that he could manage to get away from Even at its very birth it met with little Friday to Monday, and that he was com- favor. "I have never been much a favoring across in the "Sea-Mew" from South-ite of the public," "The Rambler" conamp on to the port of Caen. I caught a fessed in his last number. He had not, quick glance from Hilda as she read out he continued, been animated by the rethe news. Evidently matters were coming wards of the liberal, or the praises of the And so for a time we followed the customs of the place. We went out shrimp ing in the morning when the tide served. Capital fun was this, the rocks swarming with crustaceans, of active and vigorous habits, however, that were not easy to catch. In the afternoon we bathed, walking in solemn procession from our rooms across the sea-wall and over half a mile of sand. In the evening we chatted on the terrace or took walks into the pleasant inland country. There was Ryes, a pleasant little village with a good church and an old manoir, and on the way many pleasant lanes, footpaths, and bridle-paths, with here and there glimpses of the sea through the trees, and Douvres, that was farther afield, but still accessible with Contango's help-Douvres with its fine church and some few remains of the château of the bishops of Bayeux, the two places causing mild astonishment and speculation as to the why and wherefore of a Rye and Dover on this side of the Silver Streak. four thousand and more. As many as twenty thousand, it is stated, were often sold in a day. Mr. Forster, indeed, says that "it must often have circulated before the stamp [the halfpenny stamp, first imposed in 1712] thirty thousand, which might be multiplied by six to give a corresponding popularity in our day." eminent, neither had the number of his some general calamity, and that by it the friends ever been great. Murphy, who coffee-houses had lost more customers was likely to know, says that the number than they could hope to retain by all their sold on each day did not amount to five other newspapers put together." The hundred. "Of course," he adds, "the circulation of "The Spectator" is varibookseller, who paid the author four ously estimated. It is said that the daily guineas a week, did not carry on a suc- sale at first amounted to three thousand cessful trade." "The Rambler" was copies, and that it gradually increased to published every Tuesday and Saturday, the price of each copy being twopence. The bookseller, therefore, had not two guineas a number left him for his outlay and his profit. It was, no doubt, in the collected editions that his gain was made. Ten of these Johnson lived to see. "His posterity," writes Murphy, borrowing, as he says, the thought from a French au- In stamp-duty alone it was paying at its thor, "began in his lifetime." Each of close not far short each number of the tothese editions, according to Hawkins, tal receipts of a number of "The Ramconsisted of twelve hundred and fifty bler." Besides this it had a great circulacopies. So that Johnson saw, if not tion in volumes. While "The Rambler" "thirteen thousand copies spread over was scarcely known so near London as England," as Macaulay says, yet, at all Norfolk, we are told that in Perthshire, events, five hundred more than twelve "when the gentlemen met after church on thousand, while "separate editions were Sunday to discuss the news of the week, published for the Scotch and Irish mar- The Spectators' were read as regularly kets." Dr. Burney has recorded the as the Journal." In judging of the popgrowth of its popularity. When he went ularity of such papers as these, the sale into Norfolk in 1751, while it was still of each number should be more attentively appearing, he found but one person who examined than their sale when they are knew anything of it. Before he left gathered into volumes. When a book Norfolk, nine years later, "The Ram- once gets its reputation for morality and blers' were in high favor among persons piety firmly established, it is largely of learning and good taste. Others there bought by those who hold that a man's were devoid of both, who said that the character may be judged not only by the hard words in it were used by the author friends he has, but by the books he gives to render his Dictionary indispensably away. Of the twelve thousand five hunnecessary." It was for one of the Norfolk dred copies of "The Rambler" that were admirers that Burney, the first time he sold in the latter half of last century, called on Johnson, cut off, on the sly, a how many, we may ask, were bought by wisp of an old hearth-broom that he saw one person in the intention that they in the chimney-corner, and sent it, folded should be read not by himself, but by anin silver paper, as "a token of his admis- other? The greatest compliment, it has sion to the habitation of this great man.' ." been said, that can be paid to an author, With what difficulty "The Rambler" is to quote him. This is a compliment made its way is shown in two letters that that has been as commonly paid to "The passed, just after its last number had ap- Spectator " as it has been denied to "The peared, between Mrs. Carter and her Rambler." Yet if he has been but little friend Miss Talbot. One of these ladies quoted, he can boast at all events that wrote: "Indeed,'tis a sad thing that such one of the first writers of his time owes a paper should have met with discourage- him a large debt. As Goldsmith acment from wise and learned and good peo- knowledged, the character of Croaker in ple too. Many are the disputes it has cost"The Good-natured Man" is borrowed me, and not once did I come off trium- from "Suspirius." We have thought it phant." To this the other replied: very likely that Mrs. Hardcastle's famous Many a battle have I fought, too, for him in the country, but with little success." How different was the triumphant march of "The Tatler" and "The Spectator"! When "The Tatler" came to an end, Gay wrote to a friend in the country that its sudden cessation was bewailed as 66 66 drive over Crackskull Common was sug- and 3 r forced to spend all the night on a heath, drowned in rivers, or burned with lightning. We had now a new scene of terror, every man we saw was a robber, and we were ordered sometimes to drive hard lest a traveller whom we saw behind should overtake us; and sometimes to stop, lest we should come up to him who was passing before us. She alarmed many an honest man by begging him to spare her life as he passed by the coach." Dickens also in his "Old Curiosity Shop" is, we are inclined to think, indebted at second hand to Johnson. He says that the beautiful thought of Nell's grandfather wandering about after her death, as if looking for her, he owes to Rogers's lines: And long thou mightst have seen An old man wandering as in quest of something, Something he could not find- he knew not what. Had not Rogers borrowed not only the thought, but almost the very turn of the lines, from Johnson's "Allegorical History of Rest and Labor," "his favorite composition among all that The Rambler' contains," if we may trust Mrs. Piozzi? There he tells how "nothing was seen on every side but multitudes wandering about they knew not whither, in quest they knew not of what." There are other causes besides the natural difference between Addison and Johnson that rendered "The Rambler" so much less a general favorite than "The Spectator." Even this difference, great though it undoubtedly was, perhaps, was not so great as any one who has not somewhat carefully studied the two men might imagine. The light side of Johnson's character is not sufficiently brought out in Boswell's work. 66 Johnson," wrote Murphy, who had made his acquaintance two years after "The Rambler" ceased, and who knew him well, "Johnson had a fund of humor, but he did not know it." In another passage the same writer says: "He was surprised to be told, but it is certainly true, that, with great powers of mind, wit and humor were his shining talents." Miss Burney, who only saw him in his old age, recorded in her "Diary:" "Dr. Johnson has more fun and comical humor and love of nonsense about him than almost anybody I ever saw." To this humor, for more reasons than one, Johnson gave but little play in his "Rambler." The circumstances in which he wrote were not such as to fit a man "to write, converse, and live with ease." Addison was caressed by the great, he was in the enjoyment of an ample pension, he held a lucrative office, and was fairly on the way that leads towards a secretaryship of state. Among his friends, he reckoned not only the wits, but wits who were wealthy. Johnson was overwhelmed with work, with poverty, with a diseased body, and with the shadow of a great sorrow that the failing health of his wife cast before him on his path. It is indeed astonishing that the man who, single-handed, was writing our great English Dictionary, "the unhappy lexicographer," the "harmless drudge," who year after year was "bearing burdens with dull patience, and beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution,' should at the same time write two hundred essays, each of which he was bound to produce on its stated day. In length, each "Rambler" is about equal to a column and a quarter of the leading article of the Times, and two of these, we have said, he wrote each week. Addison, with Steele for his lieutenant, was strongly supported indeed. He had, moreover, as every one knows, other auxiliaries. "To attempt a single paper was no terrifying labor; many pieces were offered, and many were received." Moreover, as Murphy points out, "he was not bound to publish on stated days; he could watch the ebb and flow of his genius, and send his paper to the press when his own taste was satisfied. Johnson's case was very different; he wrote singly and alone." Of the two hundred and eight "Ramblers" two hundred and three were by his hand; while of the five hundred and fifty-five "Spectators,"_Addison wrote two hundred and forty. Each "Rambler," however, was longer by a good deal than each "Spectator.' On the average, Johnson wrote, we estimate, about thirty-four more lines a week than Addison. Boswell accounts for the occa sional compositions very different from lexicography, in which Johnson exerted his talents while he was engaged on his Dictionary, by saying that his "enlarged and lively mind could not be satisfied without more diversity of employment." He forgets that Johnson was not willing to allow that there is any pleasure in writing, though there might, he said, be pleasure from writing after it was over, if a man had written well. He wrote, we may be sure, because he needed the money. Much of his life, as he said in the preface to his great work, had been |