ment for Young Ladies. By the Misses Crane. » Why it should be called Lebanon House, appears a mystery, seeing that the building stands not on a mountain, but in a flat; but the truth is, that the name was bestowed in allusion to a remarkably fine Cedar, which traditionally stood in the forecourt, though long since cut down as a tree, and cut up in lead-pencils.

The front-gate is carefully locked, the hour being later than 5 P. M., and the blinds are all down--but if any one could peep through the short Venetians next the door, on the right-hand, into the Music Parlour, he would see Miss Parfitt herself stealthily playing on the grand piano (for it is Sunday) but with no more sound than belongs to that tuneful whisper commonly called the ghost of a whistle." But let us pull the bell.

Sally, are the ladies at home?

«Lawk! sir! - why haven't you heard? Miss Crane and Miss Ruth are a-pleasuring on a Tower up the Rind—and the Reverend Mr. C. is enjoying hisself in Germany along with them."

Alas! poor Sally! Alas! for poor short-sighted human

nature!

"

Why, in the name of all that's anonymous, what is the

matter? »

Lies! lies! lies! But it is impossible for Truth, the pure Truth, to exist, save with Omnipresence and Omniscience. As for mere mortals, they must daily vent falsehoods in spite of themselves. Thus, at the very moment, while Sally was telling us but let Truth herself correct the Errata.

For

Miss Crane and Miss Ruth a-pleasuring on a tower up the Rind

Read Wishing themselves home again with all their

hearts and souls.»

CHAPTER VIII.

It was a grievous case!

To be taken ill, poor gentleman, with his old spasms, in such a place as the road between Todberg and Grabheim, six good miles at least from each, and not a decent inn at either! And in such weather too-unfit for anything with the semblance of humanity to be abroad-a night in which a Christian farmer would hardly have left out his scarcecrow!

The groans of the sufferer were pitiable-but what could be done for his relief? on a blank desolate common without a house in sight - no, not a hut! His afflicted daughters could only try to sooth him with words, vain words-assuasive perhaps of mental pains, but as to any discourse arresting a physical ache,-you might as well take a pin to pin a bull with. Besides, the poor women wanted comforting themselves. Gracious Heaven! Think of two single females, with a sick, perhaps an expiring parent-shut up in a hired coach, on a stormy night, in a foreign land-ay, in one of its dreariest places! 'Twas enough to have broken their hearts with grief and terror-to have unsettled their reason! The sympathy of a third party, even a stranger, would have been some support to them-the advice of a more composed individual a valuable assistance-but all they could get by their most earnest appeals to the driver was a couple of unintelligible syllables.

If they had only possessed a cordiala flask of eau de vie! Such a thing had indeed been proposed and prepared, but alas! Miss Crane had wilfully left it behind. To think of Propriety producing such a travelling accompaniment as a brandy-bottle was out of the question. You might as well have looked for claret from a pitcher-plant!

In the mean time the sick man continued to sigh and moan

-his two girls could feel him twisting about between them.

粒

Oh, my poor dear papa!» murmured Miss Crane, for she

did not father» him even in that extremity. Then she groped - again despairingly in her bag for the smelling-bottle, but only

found instead of it an article she had brought along with her, Heaven knows why, into Germany-the French mark!

་

Oh-ah-ugh!-bah!» grumbled the sufferer. "Am I

to-die-on-the road!

"

Is he to die on the road!» repeated Miss Crane through the front window to the coachman, but with the same result as before; namely, two words in the unknown tongue.

Ruth, what is

Ruth shook her head in the dark.

"If he would only drive faster, » exclaimed Miss Crane, and again she talked through the front window. My good man(Gefallig?) « Ruth, what's gefallish ? » But Miss Ruth was as much in the dark as ever. Do, do, do, make haste to somewhere (Ja wohl!) That phlegmatic driver would drive her crazy!

Poor Miss Crane! Poor Miss Ruth! Poor Reverend T. C.! My heart bleeds for them-and yet they must remain perhaps for a full hour to come in that miserable condition. But nohark-that guttural sound which like a charm arrests every horse in Germany as soon as uttered-« Bur-r-r-r-r ! »

The coach stops; and looking out on her own side through the rain, Miss Crane perceives a low dingy door, over which by help of a lamp she discovers a white board, with some great black fowl painted on it, and a word underneath that to her English eyes suggests a difficulty in procuring fresh eggs. Whereas the Adler, instead of addling, hatches brood after brood every year, till the number is quite wonderful, of little red and black eagles.

However the Royal Bird receives the distressed travellers under its wing; but my pen, though a steel one, shrinks from the labour of scrambling and hoisting them from the Lohn Kutch into the Gast Haus. In plump, there they are-in the best inn's best room, yet not a whit preferable to the last chamber that lodged the great Villiers. But hark, they whisper, Gracious powers! Ruth! What a wretched hole!

Gracious powers! Priscilla !

CHAPTER IX.

I take it for granted that no English traveller would willingly lay up-unless particularly inn-disposed-at an Inn. Still less at a German one; and least of all at a Prussian public-house, in a rather private Prussian village. To be far from well, and far from well lodged-to be ill, and ill attended to be poorly, and poorly fed-to be in a bad way, and a bad bed- But let us pull up with ideal reins, imaginary nag, at such an outlandish Hostelrie, and take a peep at its Entertainment for Man and Horse. »

6

Bur-r-r-r-rrr!

an

The nag stops as if charmed-and as cool and comfortable as a cucumber-at least till it is peppered-for your German is so tender of his beast that he would hardly allow his greyhound to turn a hair

Now then, for a shout; and remember that in Kleinewinkel, it will serve just as well to cry Boxkeeper! as «Ostler! »

but look, there is some one coming from the inn-door. 'Tis Katchen herself with her bare head, her bright blue gown, her scarlet apron-and a huge rye-loaf under her left

ȧrm.

Her right hand grasps a knife. How plump and pleasant she looks! and how kindly she smiles at every body,including the horse! But see-she stops, and shifts the position of the loaf. She presses it as if to sweeten its sourness against her soft, palpitating bosom, the very hemisphere that holds her maiden heart. And now she begins to cutor rather haggle-for the knife is blunt, and the bread is hard but she works with good will, and still hugging the loaf closer and closer to her comely self, at last severs a liberal slice from the mass. Nor is she content to merely give it to her client, but holds it out with her own hand to be eaten, till the last morsel is taken from among her ruddy fingers by the lips-of a sweet little curly chubby urchin ?-no-of our big, bony iron-gray post-horse!

Now then, Curteous Reader, let us step into the Stube, or Traveller's Room; and survey the fare and the accommodation prepared for us bipeds. Look at that bare floor-and

that dreary stove-and those smoky dingy walls-and for a night's lodging, yonder wooden trough-far less desirable than a shakedown of clean straw.

Then for the victualling, pray taste that Pythagorean soup -and that drowned beef-and the rotten pickle-cabbage-and those terrible Hog-Cartridges-and that lump of white soap, flavoured with caraways, alias ewe-milk cheese

And now just sip that Essigberger, sharp and sour enough to provoke the « dura ilia Messorum » into an Iliac Passionand the terebinthine Krug Bier! Would you not rather dine at the cheapest ordinary at one, with all its niceties and nastities, plain cooked in a London cellar? And for a night's rest would you not sooner seek a bed in the Bedford Nursery? So much for the Entertainment for Man and Horse a clear proof, ay, as clear as the Author's own proof, with the date under his own hand

Of what, sir?

་

Why that Dean Swift's visit to Germany-if ever he did visit Germany-must have been prior to his inditing the Fourth Voyage of Captain Lemuel Gulliver,-namely to the Land of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos.

CHAPTER X.

To return to the afflicted trio-the horrified Miss Crane, the desolate Ruth, and the writhing Reverend T. C.---in the small, sordid, smoky, dark, dingy, dirty, musty, fusty, dusty best room at the Adler. The most miserable party in a parlour- »

"

'Twas their own faults! exclaims a shadowy Personage, with peculiarly hard features-and yet not harder than they need to be, considering against how many things, and how violently, she sets her face. But when did Prejudice ever look prepossessing? Never since the French wore shoes à la Dryade!

'Twas their own faults, she cries, for going abroad. Why couldn't they stay comfortably at home, at Laburnam House ? »