Out of

eover, there is a responsibility and restraint in wandering about, ink-horn and notebook in hand, from which I would fain be free. Nature and Art have been created for sublimer ends than merely to sit for their portraits, even if all had the power to take them. I have not but I can feel what I see, and something of my impressions I have endeavoured here to record. So much by way of preface, and now for some account of my tour. Disgusted with the so-called summer of England during the months of June and July last, I left London about the middle of August, determined to enjoy myself, if the weather would permit me, in a three months ramble whithersoever my fancy might take me, keeping always pretty briskly on the move. I had but recently arrived from Australia on a limited leave of absence and, as my native land had welcomed my return with about six days tears to one days smiles during the two months I had passed there, I thought I would try whether I might not meet with a more agreeable reception on the other side of the Channel. I was not insensible to the feeling in which the bard of Erin, in reference to that particularly rainy gem of the sea, affectionately ejaculates More dear in thy sorrows, thy gloom, and thy showers, Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours but, though proud enough, I trust, of my country, I was not disposed just now to address the white cliffs of Albion in a strain precisely similar to the above. On the contrary, I made up my mind to say good-by to the aforesaid cliffs as speedily as possible, with the express intention of discovering whether other parts of the rest of the world would afford me a gleam of those sunniest hours at which the patriotic minstrel turned up his nose in comparison with the gloom and the showers of his own dear Emerald Isle. I was accompanied by a wife and family, who had never before been 011 the Continent-human beings who could help themselves, and me too for I am somewhat of a valetudinarian without the aid of courier, footman, or valet-de-place. w a th en , , we were all whisked to Folkestone by one of those peculiar trains which occupy nearly as much time in performing the last half mile of the journey, as has been consumed in accomplishing the whole of the former part. I may as well say here, that I hate railway travelling, and am selfish enough to wish it had never been invented. My reasons for this barbarous anti-utilitarian sentiment will sufficiently appear in the course of these pages. Folkestone to Boulogne, whence, per Diligence to Calais, and thence, per railway to Lille, brings us on well in our route Rhinewards. From Lille we are projected to Brussels, where we arrive in the midst of preparations for an illumination in honour of the marriage of the Duke of Brabant. The ceremony had only just finished, and Brussels was swarming with about three times the number of its ordinary population, all parading the streets in holiday costume, and with holiday faces. Have you not written to secure beds said an old hand, as me reached Brussels. I am afraid, then, you will get none good morning Nonsense thought 1 but it was no nonsense. Up and down-he...