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he should. It might be imagined that so independent a person as her ladyship would have solved the difficulty by what might be justly called French leave; but there were various reasons against such a step. In the first place, she could not travel without her cousin, to sweeten by his presence the bitter dose of matrimony; and, secondly, she could not travel with Charley, solus cum solâ, because such a step would have given fresh point to the winged darts of scandal, which were already whizzing through fashionable London. In fact, everybody had made up his or her mind on that matter, and joined in laughing at "poor" Sir Norton, who, of course, was profoundly innocent of these suspicions, and would have laid down his life for milady's probity.

Frequent dropping wears away a stone; it may do so; but I am certain a woman's tongue can perform that operation with far greater rapidity. At any rate, Lady Flora, determined as she was to revisit Baden, which she had not seen since her father had resided there during a winter, owing to some trouble with his Irish agent, that prevented him going further, made such constant assaults on that portion of Sir Norton's anatomy which represented his heart, that he hummed and haed, willinillied, shilly-shallied, until at length the fiat was issued, and en route for Baden was the word. Sir Norton made his will before starting, leaving all he possessed to his adorable milady, and off they went to Paris.

Strange to say, Sir Norton found his prejudices rapidly dissipated in that frivolous city. Charley, who accompanied them, and performed the duties of amateur courier, was invaluable. He deposited the old gentleman at Galignani's, and even managed to procure him an introduction to court, whence, of course, he came away raving of the beauty and grace of the empress. In his fit of exaltation, he never checked the milliner's bills, which were in due season handed him by his cara sposa for liquidation; even though, in calmer moments, he might have made some slight objections to six-and-thirty yards of velvet being required for each skirt. But Sir Norton was quite in his element in Paris. He was a good French scholar (I won't repeat here his anecdote of how he learned it), and he was delighted to find that, in whatever society he mixed, he was always on his battle-horse. Money, money, money! such was the one universal topic, from dukes down to chiffonniers. Every one was speculating, and god Mammon reigned triumphant in his temple on the Place de la Bourse. He enjoyed those little suppers in the Rue Montorgueil, which successful speculators gave him, owing to his reputation for money, and wisely swallowed his champagne without performing the same process with the schemes which were proposed for his participation. In short, he was in a perfect state of Elysium, and was almost vexed with my lady when she suddenly proposed that they should start for Baden instanter. What was the cause of my lady's sudden dislike for Paris frivolity, as those call it who find the grapes sour, I cannot say. As far as I am concerned it remains a solemn mystery; nor am I inclined to accept the solution maliciously offered by Lady Macaw, that the empress, with her truly English views on morality, had intimated to Lady Flora, through some channel only accessible to rulers, that her conduct with regard to Charley Fitzurse was rather too prononcé for the present straitlaced age. What

a magnificent proof of the force of public opinion, when even courtiers find it necessary to become externally respectable.

At any rate, without endorsing this story, I must repeat that Lady Flora issued her mandate, and her husband saw to the arrangements for leaving. He paid his bill at Meurice's, and instituted a mental comparison between that establishment and the Clarendon, rather in favour of the latter; but he paid like a milord Anglais, or rather, I ought to say, like a milord Américain, who has quite cut out his English prototype as far as throwing away money is concerned. Before long, Baden rung with the praises of Lady Flora's beauty. It was a regular hunt whenever she appeared on the Promenade. Every son of la jeune France basked in the light of her beaming eyes, and Auguste and François, as they played their domino, uttered fierce oaths against cette bête d'Anglais, meaning thereby our friend Charley, as handsome a fellow as any in the Guards, red, blue, or black. But it was all of no avail: my lady was regarded as a miracle of virtue, and the young France was compelled to take refuge in interminable boasting of impossible triumphs. Cold as an Englishwoman is a stereotyped phrase with those young gentlemen, and consequently they consoled themselves with this apophthegm, after throwing away vast sums (for a Frenchman) in white kid gloves and bouquets, by which combination to assail the unimpressionable heart of my lady. C'était une vertu farouche: such was the unsatisfactory result of all their endeavours.

Of course Sir Norton was duly told by Lady Flora of these attacks, and much he rejoiced that his wife was so fond of him. At Baden, Sir Norton was as happy as the day was long—and it is very long at Baden now and then, especially if you have lost all your money at rouge-et-noir, and are awaiting remittances from an impracticable governor. He enjoyed a degree of domesticity which, in London, had been rapidly assuming the proportions of a myth; but, at the same time, he was growing terribly affectionate. To check this unpleasant development, my lady took a sudden fancy for gambling, and induced Sir Norton to join her. The old gentleman, loving gain in any shape, soon got entangled in the interminable mazes of a martingale, and spent nearly all his time watching the chances, and waiting for his opportunity to break the bank. In the mean while, my lady and Charley amused themselves in their way: they tookst rolls round the country, enjoyed the scenery excessively, and regretted greatly at dinner-time that Sir Norton was not with them. The old gentleman, however, fancied he saw his way to a fine speculation at M. Benazet's expense, and remained deaf to persuasion, not at all to the regret, I fancy, of Lady Flo and Charley.

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Ir was the summer of 1855. My annual thirst for Markgräfler had assailed me, and I had fled from stony-hearted London to assuage it.

* Advice to the Printer.-The effect of this heading would be greatly improved if you could get a wood-block of a handsome tombstone cut with this word in white letters, as suggestive of the moral death of Sir Norton Folgate's felicity.

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I shall not tell you here how many bottles I imbibed on my first night at the Hirsch-the best hotel in Baden for the quiet observer, but I will merely note the fact that I thirsted for absynth, and had strange visions of bitter beer floating across my brain, as I lounged up the Promenade the morning after my arrival. After a quiet renewal of my acquaintance with those charming young ladies at Weber's, and sundry petits verres in honour of the undiminished brightness of their sparkling eyes, I sauntered through that little side-door, so suggestive of evil, which leads from the smoking-room into the rooms. Suddenly, I planted my old friend, Sir Norton Folgate, busily engaged in covering the numbers at roulette with a heap of florins. He was in high spirits, and evidently gaining, for the croupiers were looking glum, though intensely polite, as they handed over the winnings. It was useless to disturb him, so I waited patiently till he grew thirsty, or wanted to smoke a weed, while I amused myself by an inspection of the various persons collected round the table. They were, as usual, the very lowest of humanity; the outcasts from decent society; men whom I or you, reader, would inexorably cut, if they accosted us in the Quadrant, and yet at Baden we sit down at the same green table with them, and squabble furiously about a stray florin. If misery make us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, how much more is this true of the gamblingtable and its play-fellows. The only exception from the general rule of vauriens was an English lady, who played recklessly.

Ere long, I strolled out disgusted, and, after reading the papers, came back to meet Sir Norton on the steps, slightly overcast, and evidently a loser. He, however, met me most cordially, and expressed his pleasure at seeing me. This was honest enough, considering he had just lost two hundred pounds by his own folly. I ventured an inquiry about my lady, and then the old gentleman brightened up-money and all was forgotten at the thought of his dear little wife. Heaven bless her! she had gone with Charley to the top of the Mercurius Tower. She had chartered a donkey after ten, and, by Jove! she must have got there by this time. And by some impulse of Satan, Sir Norton's eyes rested upon that confounded telescope, which is placed for public use a very serpent in Paradise between two orange-trees-on the Promenade. "I'll have a look, and see whether they are on the Tower," quoth the knight. Said and done. The telescope was adjusted to the proper focus, and he gazed steadily in the direction of the Tower.

"Yes, there she is, bless her little heart, just a-coming up on the Tower; and there's Charley behind her he takes care of her, he does, while her husband is a-losing his money down here. Yes, that's her bonnet, and now she turns round I can see her face"—(a pause, during which the husband may be supposed to be revelling in the sight of his wife's features), and then-a very naughty word-"he's a-kissing her!!! -and, by Jove!" the knight added, unconsciously parodying the Fat Boy, of whom he had probably never heard, "She's a-kissing him again."

And the old man shook like an aspen-leaf; he seemed prematurely old in that brief moment; at last, with a sudden energy, he dashed his strawhat firmly down on his brow, and rushed along the Promenade, I following discreetly in the rear, fearful of mischief, and yet not liking to

intrude. And he led me a pretty chase up that steep old Gernsbach road, the sun pouring down with the full fury of an August day, as it can only do at Baden. But still the old man held on vigorously, swinging his huge stick, and smashing imaginary foes. At that moment I would not have given much for Charley's head. At a turn of the road we came in sight of the happy party, my lady mounted on the donkey, Charley walking discreetly by its side. I expected to see murder done at least; but, strange to say, on the mere sight of his wife, so serenely beautiful, Sir Norton quite forgot his fury. He quietly went up, congratulated her on her good looks, and said that, as they were late, he had come to meet them. And down the hill we went again, the happiest party apparently that ever scaled it.

What explanations took place afterwards I cannot say; the fact of its only being a cousin, however, did not avail. Charley was suddenly recalled, so he said, as his regiment was ordered to the Cape, though I never saw the announcement in the paper; while Lady Folgate is now living in Paris on a thousand a year allowed by her husband, and the interest of the thirty thousand pounds settled on her whenever she can draw it from her father. Of course, she is sincerely pitied in London circles; her husband was always a brute, and folk only wondered how she could have lived with him so long, &c. In the mean while, Sir Norton has resumed his bachelor existence, and gives capital dinner-parties. He drinks rather more than he used to do, and appears to be suffering from a settled gloom of melancholy. At any rate, he never mentions my lady's name; and I, knowing what I do, and having a due regard for the old claret, never approach so dangerous a subject.

ALDERSHOT AND ITS ENVIRONS.*

THE bleak moor and barren heath near Farnham, traversed by the Portsmouth road, on which coach travellers in winter shivered as they passed, has become the scene of an encampment more populous than many a cathedral city, for some 15,000 or 20,000 men have now been collected there, with all the heterogeneous followers of a camp; and fielddays, mimic engagements, and even royal reviews, have brought her Majesty's lieges from far and near to the once solitary plain of Aldershot. Upon an area, seven square miles in extent-having Cæsar's camp, and the field where Alfred defeated the Danes, to give it some martial associations with British history-England has marked out a great training ground for her soldiers, and assembled a greater number of men than, in the days of the emperors, garrisoned the famous Roman wall.

The camp at Aldershot is a vast assemblage of alphabetically grouped huts, covering the large area we have mentioned, and separated by the

*Aldershot, and All About It: with Gossip, Military, Literary, and Pictorial. By Mrs. Young, Author of Our Camp in Turkey, &c. London: 1857.

Basingstoke canal into a northern and a southern division. At first sight this great encampment seems a wilderness of huts upon a plain, contrasting strikingly enough with the beauty of the country around it. Upon a nearer approach, the huts of (for example) the south camp are found to be dispersed in twenty-three rectangular groups, or "blocks," each block distinguished by a letter of the alphabet, and containing twenty-three huts for the men, besides officers' quarters and other buildings, and designed to receive a regiment not exceeding four hundred and eighty-four in strength. In the formation of these buildings, all that is not wood is iron, and all that is permanent is described to be of a type beyond which ugliness can no further go. But a rude exterior seems to be united with some appliances of civilisation in the interior of the camp buildings, without, however, the achievement of any comfort; and the evil genius of official blundering seems to have directed even their construction, for Aldershot, it is said, would have long since become a heap of ashes if hearths of brickwork had not been substituted in the huts, after the significant warning of a few "Christmas fires." The roads about the encampment are described to be on a loose soil, that gives forth clouds of dust in dry weather, and becomes an adhesive bog after rain; but there appear to be plenty of wells, and there are breezy heaths, and a plain on which taverns spring up abundantly, if flowers do not.

What future advantages the British army may derive from this great experiment is a question upon which we are not now going to enter. But in those very particulars, in which the encampment at Aldershot affords such unexampled opportunities for adopting measures calculated to raise the moral character of the soldier, and fit him to cope with the emergencies of actual service, it does not appear that the government arrange ments are what the public might reasonably expect. The demoralising influence of the camp has spread to every little town around it; and within, the system does not seem to be any improvement on that of barracks in any garrison town:

The English soldier (says the intelligent and observant author of the book which has occasioned these remarks) requires social training as well as exercise in the field. .. It is a duty we owe as well to ourselves as to our soldiers, to render them an intelligent, moral, useful class; and every commanding officer can bear witness to the fact, that the more respectable the men of his corps the easier is its discipline. Educate the soldier; and let him have not only the school and the reading-room, but his theatre, his ball-room, and his singing club, with such advice, example, and restriction as shall enable him to enjoy all these recreations and abuse none of them.

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It is very deplorable that so small a proportion of the men in the British army know even the alphabet of their own language; but the schoolmaster and the chaplain are not the only educators whose services need to be brought home to the soldier—a less dignified functionary is also wanted. The contrast is much to our disadvantage when British soldiers are compared with those of France in aptness at useful industrial occupations, and in knowledge of "common things" necessary to be known. Remembering how helpless our men have proved in the simple yet essential particular of preparing food, we hoped to find the cook, as well as the schoolmaster, employing a part of the soldier's leisure time in "the great military playground" of Aldershot; but Mrs. Young writes: April-VOL. CIX. NO. CCCCXXXVI.

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