who, like a poet, might be said to be born, and not made, in wild-beast fashion in a cage, but giving him the run of the house, and a fair share of confidence. This was how it came about. We were in the extreme south of India, and were ordered to take up our station in a little town at the edge of an alluvial plain. We heard the order, however, with some dismay, for this town bordered on the territory of a certain little tributary rajah whose reputation was more than dubious. It is a delicate operation to discuss the petty failings of royalty, but the painful truth must be told: the prince was a thief, and a receiver to boot, while every one of his amiable subjects followed the same ancient calling. You may inquire whereabouts his royal highness's dominions lie, but I am not at all sure that my worshipful masters of the Honourable Company would approve of my being very exact in that particular. The rajah is rather a pet with the Council at Madras, and in good odour in Leadenhall Street and Cannon Row, for he is punctual with his tribute, though somehow he always takes back with the left hand what he pays with the right. So I must content myself with observing, that this potentate reigns near the river Cauvery, and not very far from the Ghauts. On arriving upon the frontiers of his light-fingered highness, we were strongly advised by the garrison whom we came to relieve to pay black-mail to the rajah, and to hire a certain number of his people for our protection. On this subject there was a difference of opinion, and most of the ladies protested vehemently against admitting such allies within their doors. 'It's the only plan, I assure you,' said Jack Tompion of the artillery: these fellows respect no houses but such as contain one of their own tribe. Mere vigilance is useless. They'd steal the eye-teeth out of your head without your missing them." Then followed a long catalogue of predatory doings, evincing, certainly, wondrous dexterity and craft on the part of our unpleasant neighbours. Still, the ladies declared they could never sleep comfortably with a thief, a wretch of a thief,' in the house, until the old colonel lost patience, and silenced his wife by alluding to an oft-lamented crimson satin, which an ayah was more than suspected of having cut up into turbans and loongees for her two swarthy sons. Then every lady present took up the cry, and amid endless tales of domestic trickery and pilfering, declared that never, never, never were such dishonest servants as theirs. 'Then,' said Jack Tompion, 'can one more thief in each bungalow be so very formidable?' And so the matter was settled. 'But, Jack,' said I, 'if one hires a thief, can one rely on his vigilance ?' 'Set a thief to catch a thief!' answered the artilleryman pithily. 'And will he be trustworthy?' asked Mrs Colonel Pypeley. 'Honour among thieves!' responded Jack, who, in proverbs, was a match for Sancho Panza himself. So we hired thieves-that is to say, the majority of us, for some obstinately held out, headed by the police magistrate, who thought it infra dig. to bargain with plunderers, and chose to trust to his own grimfaced peons. Well, we took possession of our bungalows, bought mutton and poultry, beat the jungles for peafowl, and sent a foraging party of reckless subalterns to kill snipe in the swamps, and explore for wild hogs. On the whole, we made ourselves pretty comfortable, barring a trifle too much heat and a few fevers. But we, who had feed and housed thieves, soon had cause of self-congratulation. All the obstinate ones suffered. Mrs Girder's fat poultry were conjured out of a walled yard in open day; the adjutant's pistols were taken from under his very pillow; a six-foot hedge of prickly pear did not save the chaplain's plump sheep; and while the paymaster lost a bag of rupees from a Bramah-locked chest, his wife's pet Arab horse, a pretty white creature, with just the pinkish nose and long tail that ladies love, was conveyed out of a stable in which slept two armed syces, with a grass-cutter lying across the threshold, and a watchman with a lantern hard by. Endless were the laments, terrific the apprehensions. Guards were posted, sentinels doubled, traps set, but all to no purpose; something vanished daily. Young Hall's new uniforms, fresh from Buckmaster's-Lieutenant Straddle's big Australian mare, the Flyer, that had won the Bellary handicap, and run second at the Ascot meeting, were missing on the same morning. Then the police magistrate's turn came. He had set our neighbours at defiance, and his whiskered peons had sworn great oaths that their swords should make mince-meat of the first robber who should approach the verandahs where they kept ward; but alas! one night the magistrate's house was thoroughly looted. Every coin, every weapon, the contents of all the wardrobes, every ounce of plate, down to the egg-spoons, disappeared; and when the peons, who had smoked themselves stupid with hemp and opium, were aroused to active life by the kicks of their irate master, thieves and spoil were miles away, never to be traced to their lair, for nothing that crossed the rajah's borders could ever be recovered. Still, such as had hired marauders had no reason to lament it. Mine was a civil, intelligent lad of twenty, with a handsome face and bright eyes. He slept all day, and by night sat in the verandah, a red paper lantern beside him, beating a small drum at intervals, and calling out in his own language, though he spoke Hindustani fairly. His presence kept all his kith and kin aloof, and I never lost the value of a single pice. When I passed, the lad would rise and gravely salam, and I often conversed with him, and was much pleased with his ready wit and sense. I paid him good wages-about_double those of a common chowkedar. One night I was awakened by a crash and clatter without, and the noise of a violent struggle. Pistol in hand, I darted out. A prostrate form lay on the ground, with a sack beside it, and another figure was crouching beneath the brandished sword of a man whose left foot was pressing on the breast of the first, while his left hand compressed the throat of the other. A number of bundles lay around, containing various portable articles of value, among which were my epaulets and my wife's bracelets and rings. A robbery had been evidently attempted, and frustrated by the gallantry and vigilance of-my thief. Yes, to my unutterable amazement, I found the sprawling wretch on the ground was my trusty mussaulchee; the other fellow, whose teeth chattered with terror, my respectable butler, or khansumah; and the triumphant swordsman, who hailed my appearance with a cry of delight, was no other than my invaluable thief, who had surprised the rascals in the act of absconding with their booty. 'Upon my word, Ghoolab Ramdeen,' said I-'upon my word, my worthy thief, you are the honestest fellow I ever knew in my life!' Will the reader say nay? Now, improbable as the above narration sounds, I beg to assure those who doubt its accuracy that what I have related is strictly and literally true, and I have no hesitation in saying that few officers, who have been quartered in the extreme south of the Madras presidency, can fail to have become acquainted, at least by report, with the robber rajah, his tribe, and the singular custom of thief-hiring; while many will no doubt smile as they recognise an anecdote which they first heard among the torrid plains or tangled forests of Southern India. MINERAL WATERS. Ir is a common complaint that the titles of books have little or no affinity with their contents. The purchase of Miss Edgeworth's Essay on Irish Bulls for an agricultural society may have been no fault of the author; but, generally speaking, title-pages are without apology, mystifying us, as they do to the best of their ability, as to the nature of what follows: earth. These substances are chiefly soda, magnesia, lime, iron, and sulphur; and the acids combined with them are the muriatic, sulphuric, and carbonic. "Thus the muriatic acid uniting with soda, magnesia, and lime, will give origin to the compound salts, muriate of soda, muriate of magnesia, and muriate of lime, and distinguish the group of mineral waters known as the muriated saline waters. In like manner, the sulphuric acid will give rise to sulphates of soda, magnesia, and lime, and constitute a group of similar bases will form carbonates of soda, magnesia, sulphated saline waters; and the carbonic acid with and lime, and compose a third group of carbonated saline, or, more correctly, carbonated alkaline waters. Iron is the basis of the chalybeate waters, and, to be held in solution, requires in the first instance to be united with oxygen, forming an oxide of iron; and it combination of the oxide of iron with carbonic acid gas, constituting a carbonated or acidulated chalybeate water. Sulphur, forming the peculiar characteristic of the sulphureous waters, is present in the shape of with the muriated saline water, constituting a sulsulphuretted hydrogen, and may be combined either phuretted saline water; or with the carbonated saline water, so as to produce a sulphuretted alkaline water. In addition to the above, the presence of bromine and iodine in the waters gives rise to a bromated and iodated saline water; while certain waters are met with which are so deficient in salts of any kind as to deserve the distinguishing title of negative waters.' Perhaps it may turn out a sang, perhaps turn out a is rendered additionally soluble and efficacious by a sermon. This is not the case with the volume before us-a Tramp, tramp along the land he speeds, Hurra, the doctor can ride apace- We don't: but the book, nevertheless, is so preter- The doctor feels this too; for he flings in here and there, as he passes, some bits about mineral waters, and ties on to the end, like the steadying tail of a kite, an appendix on their nature and uses. It is from these parts of the volume we mean to draw a few points of information, which, placed in a collective form, will serve to give an idea of a subject on which even the habitual frequenters of mineral springs are, generally speaking, in profound ignorance. Mineral waters are either cold or thermal (warm); and the latter must always be sought for in a mountainous country, in the neighbourhood of volcanic operations, however long suspended, where the fires of the earth's centre approach nearest the surface. The surrounding scenery, therefore, is usually beautiful and picturesque; the thermal spring is sedative, the feeling of warmth and comfort it bestows upon the skin penetrating to the inner man; and, influenced by this natural medicine, the pains of chronic rheumatism, the twitchings of disordered nerves, and the morbid fancies of the brain, are laid asleep. Thermal baths may likewise be stimulant, according to the temperature employed and the mode of administration. When the waters are taken internally, the warmth increases the action of the salts they may contain, and enables the patient to drink more freely. Cold mineral waters, as well as thermal, owe their medicinal properties to the substances they contain in solution, derived from the soil or rocks through which they have passed in rising to the surface of the *A Three Weeks Scamper through the Spas of Germany and Belgium, with an Appendix on the Nature and Uses of Mineral Its 1. Muriated saline waters are alterative, aperient in a slight degree, and tonic; but in choosing the special waters, it will be necessary to ascertain the relative proportions of their qualities. The chief types of this class are the Kochbrunnen of Wiesbaden, the Elizabeth brunnen of Homburg, and the Ragozi of Kissingen. The first of these waters is thermal, the second cold, the third 52 degrees of temperature. The popular Selters water is of this description. sparkling and piquant qualities are caused by the large quantity it possesses of carbonic acid gas, which is 30 cubic inches to the pint. It is found useful in dyspepsia, gout, rheumatism, acid secretions from the kidneys, and in scrofulous and glandular affections. It has also some popularity in chronic catarrh and bronchitis, and it is used with warm milk or asses' milk in consumption. 2. The sulphated saline waters are found for the most part grouped in the mountainous parts of Bohemia; and we may take as their types the Sprudel of Carlsbad, the Kreutzbrunnen of Marienbad, and the Franzensbrunnen of Franzensbad. These waters are primarily aperient, and secondarily alterative, differing in these respects from the muriated saline waters, which are primarily alterative, and secondarily aperient. They have likewise the alkaline element wanting in the others. They are applicable to all the diseases of the blood and the digestive system for which the muriated saline waters are useful, and are less likely to create congestion of the brain. 3. The carbonated alkaline waters are represented by the springs of Ems, Fachingen, and Geilnau. Their peculiar properties are derived from the presence of carbonate of soda, and an excess of carbonic acid gas; being thus antacid and solvent, or in other words, with the power to soften and dissolve morbid tissues. They are used remedially in chronic affections of the mucous membrane of the air-passages, in threatening consumption, gout and rheumatism, neuralgia, gallstones, tumours and chronic thickening of organs, and in female complaints. The chalybeate waters, which are represented by Spa and Langen Schwalbach, owe their character to the tonic element, iron, and are likewise alkaline, aperient, and alterative. The diseases in which the chalybeate waters are of essential service, are those of debility from deficiency of blood in the body, either from previous loss, or from imperfect formation. They are sometimes employed as the after-cure in maladies of various kinds attended with debility; and are particularly serviceable in anæmia [deficiency of blood] from whatever cause, and debility of the mucous membranes of the body, whether of the respiratory, digestive, or organic system. Chalybeate waters are also indicated in cases of scrofula, accompanied with inertness of the general powers.' The sulphuretted waters, such as those of Aix-laChapelle and Weilbach, are essentially alterative, acting especially on the liver, the kidneys, and the skin-indeed, on all the mucous membranes of the body. These waters are divided into several kinds, being modified by the muriated saline, sulphated saline, and alkaline elements they possess. The diseases these waters, taking them generally, are used for, are gout, rheumatism, neuralgia, chronic bronchitis, certain cutaneous eruptions, chronic dyspepsia, chronic disease of the liver and lower stomach. The bromated and rodated waters are characterised by the presence of the salts bromine and iodine, in combination with soda or magnesia. They are alterative and tonic, with little or nothing of the aperient element. They are serviceable in scrofula, and all diseases springing from a scrofulous origin. The negative waters, which are always thermal, owe their medical qualities chiefly to their warmth. "They may be either stimulant or sedative, according to their temperature and their mode of application; stimulant to the skin, so as to increase its functions; stimulant to the nerves, when used in the form of douche and combined with friction; and sedative when employed at a moderate temperature and 'in a passive state of the muscular system and brain.' It will be seen from the above slight sketch that mineral waters form a very complicated study. No person should use them without skilful advice; for, in fact, even if they should contain in their composition the very quality the invalid wants, this may be modified by other qualities, or altogether neutralised by some component part, which our doctor terms the drag. There can be no doubt, however, that if one must swallow medicine, this is a very nice way of doing so. The travelling before you get at the brunnen, the scenery when there, the new faces, the new manners all are powerful aids of Hygeia that give double effect to the actual remedy. They are, in fact, like the springy buoyant parts of this amusing volume, which lead you to the important matters, and make you accept them as a component part of the amusement. For our part, we have on this occasion reversed the common process: instead of skimming the surface, we have exhibited the minerals at the bottom. And the doctor has nothing to complain of: for he will get plenty to scamper with him, and tramp and splash, who would otherwise be but little sensible of the riches they pass over. A ROYAL CUP OF TEA. The following curious anecdote is taken from a very elaborate article in the Spectator of January 30, on the origin, intermarriages, and connections of the royal families of Europe. Gustavus Adolphus had been deposed from the Swedish throne, and his uncle crowned as Charles XIII., with the reversion to Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's generals, who had worked his way up from a corporalship of marines. 'As soon as the deposed king had left the country, the new heir-apparent came to Stockholm, where he was well received by the whole royal family, with the exception of the wife of the ex-monarch, who had not followed her husband into exile, but, for Sudden indis some reason or other, preferred to stop in her old residence. She was continually shut up in her palace, and seldom mixed with the gay world, except when she could not help doing so without offending her kind uncle, the new king, who always treated her with the greatest consideration. At last, wishing to draw her out of her seclusion, he succeeded in persuading her to receive the crown-prince, John Bernadotte, who all the while had stood aloof respectfully, not intruding himself on the ex-queen, nor on anybody else. Having consented to receive him, the wife of Gustavus Adolphus arranged the meeting at her own palace; stipulating that the entertainment on the occasion should only consist of tea and cards, as music had never been allowed under her the whole court and all the distinguished foreigners roof since her misfortune. To this rather meagre fête residing in Stockholm were invited. position prevented the old king from joining the party, affability. She played a rubber of whist with Prince but the ex-queen did the honours with great seeming Bernadotte and the ambassadors of England and Russia. After cards, the tea was served, with a magnificent plateau, prepared for the queen and prince. The queen advanced, and poured out the tea into two cups, indicating one to Bernadotte, who was just in the act of taking it, when suddenly he felt the pressure of a thumb on his shoulder, forcible and significant enough to convince him that it was meant for a warning. Calm and collected, as Bernadotte was throughout his life, he did not move his eyes, but quietly and in the most unconcerned manner exclaimed: "Ah, madame, it is impossible that I can permit your majesty to serve me!"-which saying, he seized the plateau, and turned it round adroitly in such a manner that the cup which was intended for him was placed before the queen, and the other before himself. On this, the ex-queen turned deadly pale, and made a movement as if fainting. However, the hesitation was but momentary. Collecting herself suddenly, she bowed to the crown-prince and the company, and, taking the cup, drank its contents to the last drop. Great was the astonishment of the citizens of Stockholm, when they read next day, in the official gazette of Stockholm, the following short paragraph-"The Queen Dorothea died suddenly during the night. The cause of the death is refers to the Diary of Thomas Raikes, Esq., iii. 199. believed to be apoplexy."' The writer of this anecdote ALONE. PATIENT and faithful, and tender and true, Give me once more my wild energy back, Yet, though the hopes that I cherished are dead, you As my standard and type of the leal and the true; O'er the wreck of my life I would never repine, If the peace I have lost were but added to thine. T. D. A. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 23 Upper Sackville Street, DUBLIN, and all Booksellers. POPULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. No. 219. SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1858. POPULAR PARADOXES. MR WALDO EMERSON is a person of great talent, but he has done society much evil: he has increased the admiration of paradoxes amongst us to an alarming extent. The love of common-place folk for paradox has been long one of the small unpleasantries of social life, and it has now got to be absolutely rampant. To one who is at all enamoured of fact and truth, conversation seems at present to have become little more than a series of contradictions. Polite society appears to have got one degree beyond the three stages of M. Comte's philosophy, and to the religious, the metaphysical, and the positive, has added the, paradoxical-the tenets of which are, that everything is in reality the reverse of what common sense and reason would suppose it to be. The cause of it all, of course, is, that the true is now felt to be trite, and we are too smart and too fond of excitement to bear triteness, or any approach to it. The process followed is almost mechanical, consisting simply of a catching up of exceptional cases, and converting these into rules. For instance, let a boy at a great public school chance to distinguish himself not only in the examination-hall but in the playground, be not less excellent at hockey than at hexameters, surpass all at fives, and carry away the foundation scholarship-his astonished companions circulate young Crichton's fame; and innumerable paterfamiliases, with sons all for hockey and fives, protest straightway that animal vigour and talent-mens sana in corpore sano, if nothing more rare and applicable strikes them are generally found united. Byron was a great swimmer and also a man of genius. Popular paradox has thus got its rule complete-made out of a couple of exceptions-and is prepared to contend that most heads of elevens, most captains of boats at public schools, are in the habit of carrying off prizes from the studious and unathletic of their own standing; nay, that young men at the universities competing for high wranglerships and first classes in the tripos, are so far from being necessitated by the severity of their course to give themselves up almost entirely to study, that the senior is generally selected from the racing-boats, and the head of the classical year from among the members of the drag. We have ourselves had much school, and the ordinary amount of university experience, and in both cases have doubtless seen one or two exceptions, such as popular paradox delights to point out; but certainly, as a rule, the youths who gave most attention to the amusements of the playing-fields, shewed, as was naturally to be expected, less diligence PRICE 14d. at their books; while the sappers, or readers out of school-hours, for the most part rose-nor were we surprised at it-to the head of their forms. We don't mean to state that the great football players or first-rate bowlers were fools-no person who excels in any pursuit whatever can well be termed so-but they were, upon the whole, although very good fellows, the dullest amongst us. The school of so-called muscular Christianity has been supposed to give some colour to popular paradox in this respect, but we think without reason. It only protests against an undue proininence being given at our schools to the mere development of intellect, and insists upon the great advantage and moral benefit of athletic sports. Mr Kingsley's Tregarva did not write poetry because he was a gamekeeper and always out in the open air; nor is it asserted that gamekeeping is the profession most suitable for a bard to follow during his uninspired hours. It used to be acknowledged that men of genius did not make good men of business, or men of the world; but latterly, a few instances of the reverse having appeared, the paradoxical are now heard asserting that such men are quite as acute and knowing as their neighbours. Now the fact is that, to be a man of genius implies a nervous organisation of great delicacy, impressionableness, and excitability—a frame of mind little suited for bearing well the rubs and contendings of common worldly life; while to pursue the path of a man of genius, in poetry or in art, demands an abstraction and concentration of thought which usually unfits one for paying attention to common worldly things. Hence it is not to be expected, as a rule, that such men are to shine in the world of affairs, or even in ordinary social life. But sometimes there is an instance of a poet or a highclass painter being successful also as a man of the world or of society; and the paradoxical accordingly discovers that it is a mistake to speak of men of genius as heretofore-see such and such instances. Or perhaps he points to instances of men who are merely men of ability, as verifying his rule; when the truth is that all the successful men of the world are men of ability—a different thing, however, from being men of genius. Another very popular paradox is this, that the cleverest persons are the most modest. As we do not happen to have known, nor even to have read of, any person at all remarkable for cleverness who was not aware of the fact, and perfectly conscious of his superiority, in that respect, over his fellow-creatures, we are at a loss to conceive how this opinion first arose: it must, we think, have been from whom all are conscious of having received the most affection. While autobiographies are generally favourable to this paradox, biographies shew its fallaciousness; there we find whole strings of menfather, son, grandson-all eminent in some particular walk, and not a word of the mother. The truth is, ability sometimes comes from the one parent, and sometimes from the other. It is perhaps an equal Proverbs, from the necessity of their being sententious and epigrammatic, are very often paradoxical, and not seldom contradictions in terms. The fact, for instance, that, here and there, circumstances have occurred in real life so extraordinary, that no one could have imagined them, and far less ventured to embody them in a work of fancy, assumes, proverbially, the form of 'truth is stranger than fiction;' although, when anything particularly astounding appears in the public prints, it is straightway ascribed to America, and turns out, as was to be expected, not to have had foundation in fact. coined in malice to cast at some conceited wit; just as one might viciously invent, for the setting down of a vain young woman, that really pretty people were always the least cognizant of their prettiness. We do not, of course, contend that there is not a charming modesty, the companion of true talent, which shrinks from a comparison with even an inferior rival; but that is not at all what popular paradox in this case means. It means, we believe, simply to convey some-chance-no more. thing disagreeable to a clever antagonist, or to one who thinks himself so-who, in the matter of confidence, has often, it is true, the advantage of him of genuine powers. In the same spirit, it is alleged that your new great man is always exclusive and proud, while your old aristocrat is the reverse. We have had opportunities of observing people of all ranks and conditions, and of every kind of history; and our conclusion is, that there is, with scarcely ever an exception, a hesitation and want of assumption in those who have risen from mean estate, and even in the children of such, as if feeling how unbecoming anything else would be in them; while the utmost affability of the old aristocracy—and affability is with them the rule-always leaves a certain halo of dignity reserved, which is never to be broken through. On this latter point, let us only consider-is it to be expected that a class of persons studiously toadied, or, to say the least, most deferentially treated, from their bassinets with Valenciennes trimmings, to their coroneted fourfold coffins, by nine-tenths of those who surround them, should not be proud?-that persons exempt from the ordinary cares by which they perceive the rest of the world to be annoyed, should not consider themselves as superior beings?—and Let us forget these sad reflections in the recital that those who, by the accident of birth, find of an amusing circumstance very illustrative of the themselves entitled to rule their fellows, should not fallacy of a similar proverb. We had occasion once fully estimate that accident? The contrary cannot in our hot youth to start from Oban on the west coast reasonably be looked for; nor is it, save in excep- of Scotland to join a reading-party at Inverary, and, tional cases, found. Popular paradox is in this as is sometimes the case in that locality, it was matter guilty of a flattery so gross, that snobbism raining; the third silk umbrella which we had purherself for she is certainly less male than female-chased within that year had been 'mislaid ' on the seahas forged an excuse for it: she calls the pride of birth a proper pride. Now and then, and to our extreme disgust, we find some virulent democrat abasing himself to the dust at the feet of a lord; and from our astonishment at chance specimens of this kind, arises the not uncommon saying, that there is no toady like your radical. Such a sweeping paradox must, in the very nature of things, be false. What a vain disguise must the mantle of independence be to that poor wretch who strips himself, and spreads it for a carpet for the first great man who comes his way to tread upon! What possible end can it serve? Its would-be proprietor can scarcely get a single day's wear out of it; not to mention that his less pretentious fellows are always ready to tear off the flimsy garment, and expose him in his cringing nakedness. So difficult, indeed, is the assumption of this independence by a character to which it is not natural, that the vulgar have a popular paradox to excuse their laying claim to it at all-the superior mind minds its superiors; which, although somewhat plausible-looking, is, as it stands, next to meaningless, and, in the sense which they would have it to signify-persons most conscious of their individuality, are the most ready to defer to the authority of rank-is simply untrue. Now and then, a man of distinguished talent is found to have had a clever mother, while the father was an ordinary person; and paradox, delighted with the unlikelihood of the weaker vessel thus manifesting the superiority, rushes to the apothegm, that talent always comes through the maternal parent. Perhaps the illusion is assisted by an amiableness in men of ability themselves, which disposes them to attribute as much as they possibly can to that parent What terrible mistakes in the judgment of character have arisen from a proverb such as this: A little straw shews where the wind blows;' that is to say, an individual and unimportant act may be taken as an index of a disposition; as though, of all the thousand springs which influence a human soul, we could lay our finger upon the particular cause that has actuated it in some transitory matter, and, far less, as if from that action we might assume the mainspring of a nature. How often has a mere kindly impulse been thus mistaken for a noble principle, or a thoughtless deed ascribed to the dark influence of self! passage, and we were resolved to buy no more: a very ugly cotton one, however, bulgy as Mrs Gamp's, and without even the decoration of a handle, tempted us by its very reasonable cost of one-and-ninepence, to become its proprietor; and with that we started on the coach-box, where it did its duty through the whole journey as bravely as though it had been valued at thirty shillings. At Inverary it was the most useful machine possible; its ferrule happening to fit into the rudder-hole of a somewhat rudely appointed boat, in which we navigated the loch, and so steering us; and its ample folds forming an admirable drag-net for shrimps, much better than either pocket-handkerchiefs or towels, in the pools left upon the rocks when it was low-water. Finally, it answered its original purpose in keeping off the rain so far as Tarbet upon our homeward journey; but at that fashionable hotel we were of course not desirous that attention should be directed to it. It was old, indeed, in years already (for we had bought it at second-hand), and besides that, the uses to which it had been put had prematurely aged it. It was much worn, in some places even to baldness; more than one of its ribs were broken; and the action of sea-water had very much affected its original colour. Now that we had thrown off our long-vacation toggery, and were on our way to the metropolis, we would not indeed have been seen in its company upon any account; therefore, on the morning of our departure, we laid it carefully beneath the bedroom window-seat, as in a tomb, intending to bid it a good-bye for ever, and forget it like any other old friend in evil circumstances, who was become no longer necessary to us. But while the company were waiting upon Loch Lomond pier for the arrival of the steam-boat, and we |