There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of the little town to buy another. In the small sunny shops-mercers, opticians, and druggistgrocers, with here and there an emporium of religious images-the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat contemplating one another across bare counters, while the wasps, who seemed to have taken military possession of the town, and to have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike manœuvres in the windows. Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and nobody came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of custom. What I sought, was no more to be found than if I had sought a nugget of Californian gold: so I went, spongeless, to pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy.

by post) from Ma Mère towards the end; the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the provincial young man that if he were not supremely happy-which he seemed to have no reason whatever for beinghe ought to be. This afforded him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted. Audience more attentive or better behaved there could not possibly be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places of first rank a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon it, the kind Heavens know.

The members of the Family P. Salcy were so What gorgeous china figures of knights and fat and so like one another-fathers, mothers, ladies, gilded till they gleamed again, I might sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts-that I think have bought at the Fair for the garniture of my the local audience were much confused about home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, the plot of the piece under representation, and and had had the money! What shining coffeeto the last expected that everybody must turn cups and saucers, I might have won at the turnout to be the long-lost relative of everybody tables, if I had had the luck! Ravishing perelse. The Theatre was established on the top fumery also, and sweetmeats, I might have story of the Hôtel de Ville, and was approached speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy at a multitude of little dolls in niches, and situation, one of the P. Saley Family -a might have hit the doll of dolls, and won francs stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, -took the money. This occasioned the greatest I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, water-quintain: which, unless I sent my lance and reveal in the person of the young lover clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over (singing a very short song with his eyebrows) me; to fend off which, the competitors wore groapparently the very same identical stout gentle- tesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being Frenchman imperfectly repressed by a belt, than every- Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I might body rushed out to the paying-place, to ascertain have circled all night on my hobby-horse, in a whether he could possibly have put on that stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, dress-coat, that clear complexion, and those interspersed with triumphal cars, going round arched black vocal eyebrows, in so short a space and round and round and round, we the goodly of time. It then became manifest that this was company singing a ceaseless chorus to the music another stout gentleman imperfectly repressed of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals. On the by a belt to whom, before the spectators had whole, not more monotonous than the Ring in recovered their presence of mind, entered a Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for third stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by when do the circling company sing chorus, there, a belt, exactly like him. These two "subjects," to the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace making with the money-taker three of the an- their horses round the neck with both arms, nounced fifteen, fell into conversation touching when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the a charming young widow: who, presently ap-tails of their gallant steeds? On all these pearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by any means-quite a parallel case to the American Negro-fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided over the check-department. In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had the inevitable Ma Mère, Ma Mère! and also the inevitable malédiction d'un père, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once. The story was wrought out with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which arrived |

revolving delights, and on their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the Hôtel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined and apparently afilicted with the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all around. Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prisonalley (its sign La Tranquillité, because of its charming situation), resounds with the voices of

the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a neighbouring street. A magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner.

Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the wall. Monseiur in uniform gets behind the table and surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming diabolically intellectual under the moderators. "Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist. He will commence with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window. The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window, and about the room. He will be with difficulty caught in the hand of "Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you Monsieur the Ventriloquist-he will escapeat this Fair, as a mark of my confidence in the he will again hover-at length he will be repeople of this so-renowned town, and as an act captured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and of homage to their good sense and fine taste, will be with difficulty put into a bottle. the Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist! Further, Achieve then, Monsieur!" Here the proprietor Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the is replaced behind the table by the Ventriloquist, Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect. Changer of countenances, who transforms the While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him Proprietor sits apart on a stool, immersed in into an endless succession of surprising and ex- dark and remote thought. The moment the bee traordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs is bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and as we applaud, and then announces, sternly expressive, of which the human face is capable, waving his hand: "The magnificent Experience and all the passions of the human heart, as Love, of the child with the whooping-cough!" The Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! child disposed of, he starts up as before. "The Hi hi, Ho ho, Lu lu, Come in!" To this effect, superb and extraordinary Experience of the with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his tambourine-bestowed with a will, as if it re-dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in the presented the people who won't come in-holds cellar; concluding with the songsters of the forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a mangrove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-yard in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he animals." All this done, and well done, Monsieur possesses of the inner secrets of the booth. the Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the "Come in, come in! Your opportunity presents Face-Maker bursts in, as if his retiring-room itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for were a mile long instead of a yard. A corpulent ever. To-morrow morning by the Express Train little man in a large white waistcoat, with a the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand. the Face-Maker! Algeria will reclaim the Ven- Irreverent disposition to laugh, instantly checked triloquist and the Face-Maker! Yes! For the by the tremendous gravity of the Face-Maker, honour of their country they have accepted pro- who intimates in his bow that if we expect positions of a magnitude incredible, to appear in that sort of thing we are mistaken. A very Algeria. See them for the last time before their little shaving-glass with a leg behind it is departure! We go to commence on the instant. handed in, and placed on the table before the Hihi! Ho ho! Lulu! Come in! Take the Face-Maker. "Messieurs et Mesdames, with money that now ascends, Madame; but after no other assistance than this mirror and this that, no more, for we commence! Come in!" wig, I shall have the honour of showing you Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy a thousand characters." As a preparation, the speaker and of Madame receiving sous in a muslin Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply after the and turns his mouth inside out. He then beascending money has ascended, to detect any comes frightfully grave again, and says to the lingering sous at the turning-point. "Come in, Proprietor, "I am ready!" Proprietor stalks come in! Is there any more money, Madame, on forth from baleful reverie, and announces "The the point of ascending? If so, we wait for it. If Young Conscript!" Face-Maker claps his wig not, we commence!" The orator looks back over on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and his shoulder to say it, lashing the spectators with appears above it as a conscript so very imthe conviction that he beholds through the folds becile, and squinting so extremely hard, that of the drapery into which he is about to plunge, I should think the State would never get any the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker. Several good of him. Thunders of applause. Facesous burst out of pockets, and ascend. "Conte Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings up, then, Messieurs!" exclaims Madame in a his own hair forward, is himself again, is shrill voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled awfully grave. "A distinguished inhabitant finger. "Come up! This presses. Monsieur has of the Faubourg St. Germain." Face-Maker commanded that they commence!" Monsieur dips, rises, supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, dives into his Interior, and the last half-dozen toothless, slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, of us follow. His Interior is comparatively evidently of noble birth. "The oldest member severe; his Exterior also. A true Temple of of the Corps of Invalides on the fête-day of his

master." Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the where the Fair was held-when the windows wig on one side, has become the feeblest were close shut, apparently until next Fairmilitary bore in existence, and (it is clear) time-when the Hôtel de Ville had cut off its would lie frightfully about his past achieve- gas and put away its eagle-when the two ments, if he were not confined to pantomime. paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving "The Miser!" Face-Maker dips, rises, clutches population of the town, were ramming down the a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end stones which had been pulled up for the erection to express that he lives in continual dread of of decorative poles-when the jailer had slammed thieves. The Genius of France!" Face-his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed charges. But then, as I paced the ring which flat, little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on put a-top of it, Face-Maker's white waistcoat the market-place, pondering in my mind how long much advanced, Face-Maker's left hand in bosom some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in of white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand public ways, and how difficult they are to erase, behind his back. Thunders This is the first my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. I of three positions of the Genius of France. beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing In the second position, the Face-Maker takes the Place together, in the sunlight, evidently snuff; in the third, rolls up his right hand, and not belonging to the town, and having upon surveys illimitable armies through that pocket- them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not glass. The Face-Maker then, by putting out belonging to any town. One was clad in a suit his tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in of white canvas, another in a cap and blouse, particular, becomes the Village Idiot. The the third in an old military frock, the fourth in most remarkable feature in the whole of his a shapeless dress that looked as if it had ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does been made out of old umbrellas. All wore dustto disguise himself, has the effect of rendering coloured shoes. My heart beat high; for, in him rather more like himself than he was at first. those four male personages, although complexionThere were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had less and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the pleasure of recognising several fields of glory the Family P. Salcy. Blue-bearded though they with which I became well acquainted a year or were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Mexican victories. The change was neatly Albion a Whitechapel shave" (and which is, effected by some extra smoking of the Russians, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to the and by permitting the camp followers free range jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their them. As I stood admiring, there emerged from uniforms. As no British troops had ever happened the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the excellent Ma to be within sight when the artist took his Mère, Ma Mère, with the words, "The soup is original sketches, it followed fortunately that served;" words which so elated the subject in the none were in the way now. canvas suit, that when they all ran in to partake, The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting he went last, dancing with his hands stuck anguthe particular night of the week on which the larly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after ball took place, I decline to commit myself; the Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, the merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-last I saw of him was, that he looked in through yard so very close to the railway, that it is a a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one leg. mercy the locomotive did not set fire to it. (In Scotland, I suppose it would have done so.) There, in a tent prettily decorated with lookingglasses and a myriad of toy flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence in English money, and even of that small sum fivepence was reclaimable for "consommation:" which word I venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment, though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.

In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple enjoyment that it poured into the dull FrenchFlemish country life. How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering when the Fair was over-when the tri-colored flags were withdrawn from the windows of the houses on the Place

Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town, little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. But more was in reserve. I went by a train which was heavy with third-class carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayer spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest hilarity. After a while, however, they began to leave off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled with their laughter the barking of a

Until of late years the herring fishery had been carried on solely by intercepting the shoals of the fish in their course, with drift-nets. An Act of Parliament, as old as the year eighteen hundred and nine, ordained that the meshes of such nets should be not less than an inch square. That has remained ever since, the usual and legal size of mesh. It lets the small fry pass, it does not admit the largest fish, but it catches those which are just of the size to stick fast in the act of passing through a mesh. They remain fixed in the position of swimming,-whereby, it is said, their capture does not attract the attention of the shoal,-and when hauled up in the morning they require no sorting, but are all fish of the same size, ready for the curer.

dog. Now, I had to alight short of their destina- daily bread or potatoes. Our herrings are the tion, and, as that stoppage of the train was at- very life of thousands of fishermen. On the tended with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ring-poorer Scotch coasts, since the failure of the ing, and proclamation of what Messieurs les potato crop, it is Jupiter Herring who makes Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in fast the house for those ashore. But among order to reach their respective destinations, I British legislators Herring worship has degehad ample leisure to go forward on the plat-nerated into hurtful superstition. What that form to take a parting look at my recruits, superstition is, and what harm comes of it, whose heads were all out at window, and who know all men by these presents. were laughing like delighted children. Then, I perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on his hindlegs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the train went off. This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior officer, who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained staunch on his post until the train was gone. He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform-coat into the absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the platform in his white gaiters, wagging his tail to an exceeding great extent. It struck me that there was more waggery than this in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker! Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle's Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle went their mysterious way.

HERRINGS IN THE LAW'S NET.

THE ancients placed among their gods many a worse creature than a red herring. Often to the poor Lancashire meal of bread and tea, from which the luxuries of butter, and of milk and sugar, have perforce been banished, the penny herring, as good relishable victual as any tit-bit that the Bank of England could be paid away for, has given a brisk, wholesome savour. Through out whole counties of England are (unless the world has mended with them of late years) bronzed labouring men and women to whom, and to their children, herring and bacon are, in the way of meat, almost the sole companions of the

Now, it has come to pass that within the last dozen years a profitable innovation, hitherto confined among us to some parts of the coast of Scotland, but long customary in Norway, Labrador, &c., has found favour with some fishers. But it has been denounced so loudly by the previously existing interest, that it has been fought against with Acts of Parliament, and fought against (as we are now told by the report of a commission appointed to inquire into the subject) to the detriment alike of the fish, the fishermen, and the fish-eating public. Laws passed in error are still unrepealed. The manner of fishing that has been, and still is, unjustly interdicted, will have many prejudices to encounter, and many enmities to overcome, even after the legislative ban shall have been lifted from it. It is well, therefore, that all should know what new light has been thrown of late upon the subject of this one very particular friend of the poor.

The light shines from a Parliamentary report issued by Dr. Playfair, Professor Huxley, and Colonel Maxwell, after an official cruise in search of evidence. In Loch Fyne, the head-quarters of the disputed question, the commissioners spent nearly a month taking evidence from experts and persons variously interested in the fisheries; they visited also the other fishing stations on the coast of Scotland.

Orthodoxy in catching herrings consists, as we have said, in the use of drift-nets with an inch square mesh. The Scotch fisherman's boat, which has sails as well as oars, and costs, according to its size, from twenty to a hundred pounds, carries from three to six men, and from six to sixteen barrels of net. The net is measured by the barrel: a barrel holding about a hundred yards, which, mounted and buoyed, will be worth four or five pounds. The nets of the several barrels are joined together by a rope, so that the net wall, when spread, varies from six hundred to

two thousand yards in length. Its height or depth is from twenty to twenty-four feet, but it may be sunk to different levels in the water by arrangement of the buoy - ropes. The nets, spread at night from buoys, drift with the tide, and the fish are caught as before described.

to legalise fishing for sprats; and at the same time ordained seizure of boats and fish, as well as of nets, from persons who were caught trawling for herrings. This did almost put an end to the trawling, and thereby caused hunger in many families on Loch Fyne and elsewhere. But, at the same time, bewildered by conflicting statements, the wisdom of Parliament appointed three efficient men to go and see what was the truth of the whole matter. They went, they saw, and they have just reported that the whole course of meddling with the trawlers has been an injurious mistake.

Heresy in catching herrings is the use of the trawl, which is, in truth, simply a seine-net without a distinct pocket. For herring fishery, it has found acceptance among us only in the west of Scotland, and at one or two places on the eastern coast. It first appeared as an exceptional notion five-and-twenty years ago, but The argument of drift-net orthodoxy against it is only during the last seventeen years that it admitting within the pale of the law, heretics has been anywhere defended or adopted as a who trawl, is fairly reduced to the following system. The Scotch trawlers for herring gene- seven heads: "(1.) Because immature herring rally use rowing boats, worth fourteen or fifteen may be caught by trawling. (2.) Because, as they pounds apiece, which work in pairs. The trawl consider, the seine-nets disturb and disperse net when mounted is worth from fifteen to twenty the shoals of fish in entering the estuaries from pounds; it should have meshes of the orthodox the sea, and in consequence the fish desert the size, but some trawlers, for a reason hereafter waters which they would otherwise have freto be given, have had as many as forty or forty-quented. They term this breaking the eye of five instead of thirty-six squares to the yard. In the fish,' and assert that when the shoal is thus fishing, the trawl-net, buoyed by corks, has scattered, it does not again unite. (3.) They drag ropes attached to it. One end is held firm state that the seine fishers sweep across the beds either on shore or in a stationary boat, or where the fish are depositing their spawn, and attached to a buoy, while the other, on board not only take the spawning herring, but destroy the row boat, is carried out, and then, by rowing the spawn which has been deposited. (4.) round in a circle, brought back to the stationary They consider that the herring caught by the point; whatever fish the trawl can sweep and seine are not fit for curing, on account of the hold being thus brought together in a net that, injury received by them in their capture. (5.) before it is lifted, has been turned round on They accuse the trawlers or seiners of being a itself into the shape of a bag. The fish bagged turbulent set of men, who wanton in mischief, in this way are of all kinds, but chiefly herring and love to cut away drift-nets, or stab the buoys the ground being trawled where herring is known which float them, and thus produce much damage to be abundant. to property. (6.) They deny that the two systems can be carried on together in narrow waters, as the trawlers get foul of the drift-nets, and drive away the fish which would have meshed themselves. (7.) They state that the extravagant gains of the trawlers, monopolised by a few, alter the market prices by sudden fluctuations, to the great detriment of the drift-net fishermen, who prosecute their labour in a more steady and less gambling manner."

This manner of fishing for herring was, twelve years ago, made illegal. Herrings might only be caught by the drift net. But the act to this effect was not constructed to secure its end. It hardly repressed trawling, even the Fishery Board does not seem to have respected it, and the bolder fishermen trawled on, till an outery from the drift-net interests and the great curers produced an act of eighteen 'sixty, giving greater restrictive powers, and confiscating all the nets To each count of this indictment the reply of of trawl fishers. It did not confiscate the fish the trawlers, brought into an equally small or boats, and the nets were not difficult to hide compass, is as follows: "(1.) They admit under the sea. Still, therefore, the purpose of that, when the mesh of the net is less than the the act was missed; but the wisdom of Parlia-legal standard, they catch immature fish; but ment contrived, as often happens, to achieve they deny that it is their interest as a class to do something that it did not intend. It forbade so, and state that larger and finer herrings were nets that might be used illegally for catching herrings, to be used at all during the herring season. This ruined the sprat fishers. Fishing for sprats is a source of livelihood to many, in the Firth of Forth, during the winter months. It is a fishery that requires the use of a trawl with small meshes; and as the herring fishery, when all trawls were liable to seizure, was appointed to continue from the end of May to the last day of December, great misery was produced among those who depended on sprat fishing for

their bread.

Therefore, in the following year, 'sixty-one, the wisdom of Parliament produced a new act

caught by the trawl than can be got by the driftnet. (2.) They deny that the enclosure of herring in a circle by a net drawn gently round them in a retired locality on the coast, can disturb the general shoal of fish so much as their meeting numerous walls of netting, often miles in length, let down into the sea to obstruct their progress. (3.) They deny interference with the spawningbeds, asserting that there is only a small market for full fish on the west coast, and that it is not their interest to catch fish in that condition. They state that the destruction of the spawning-beds was not produced by them, but by the drift-net fishermen on the coast of Ayrshire, who sunk