ing, then you have the start. Fancy also some hours of crawling and jolting, and you have its progress. Imagine stiffness, weariness, and the intense delight of ended toil, and you may have some faint idea of the pleasure of your arrival. But perhaps I am too hard on the poor old diligences. When you have only a short journey to make, and the day is fine, it is not a bad thing to sit in the banquette, and from that elevated position survey the country. The banquette is a seat immediately behind the driver, roofed in, but open to the front, a stout leather apron covering your legs; and when once you have climbed up, it is rather comfortable, unless your legs are long. Below is the coupé, shut in with glass, for which the fare is higher, and which is therefore, of course, affected by English tourists. Behind this is the intérieur, like the inside of a

stage-coach; and most diligences have behind this a compartment opening to the back, like a section of an omnibus. On the top, under a waterproof covering, are the luggage and the poorest class of passengers, who lie huddled there like swine.

If you have a large party, or wish to be exclusive, you may travel by vetturino, a large roomy carriage, holding eight or nine persons, besides luggage. For a party these will generally be found to be no more expensive than travelling by diligences, though the sums given vary according to the demand, and your sharpness in bargaining with the proprietor. For instance, at the beginning of the winter a vetturino to go south would cost much more than the same vehicle for the return journey north. But you would have the disadvantage of going much slower than the diligence, unless

you went to the expense of having relays of fresh horses-that is, in long journeys. In short journeys, among hilly country, the lighter weight of the smaller carriage of course gives it an advantage. The lumbering diligences have often to go at a walking pace for miles over the hills. I recollect, while I was going by diligence from Ventimiglia to Mentone, that one passenger jumped off and walked on, informing the driver that he would pick him up ahead. We never saw him again; so next time, when making the same journey, I tried the experiment of walking all the way, and having had a very slight start, beat the diligence into Mentone by ten minutes or so.

This brings me to the useful and yet despised manner of travelling that familiar biped Shanks, his mare.' Believe me, this is by far the pleasantest way of travelling. The public must take my word for it, as I am a convert from a still greater laziness than enthrals the majority of my countrymen. Once I could not walk ten miles without being knocked up, and disliked all such exercise; but, acting on the advice of judicious friends, I practised, and grew gradually stronger and more persevering, till I could do at least thirty miles without inconvenience-more than that would hurt the average of men. I can now say that I have spent some of the happiest hours of life in walking-through the Highlands of Scotland, the moors of Devon, the

bare steep paths of the Alps, the lemon and olive groves of the Riviera, the rich fields and gardens of Campania, and last, not least, the quiet lanes and shady meadows that are the familiar charm of England. Some day I hope to walk through Switzerland in a quiet sober way, without risking my valuable life on any precipices or glaciers. I don't grudge the Alpine Club their reputation, nor do I envy it. And to me, as to many other hearts, there is this year a shadow on those snowy masses. Once I had a friend, fair-haired, blue-eyed, wise and strong-one of thousands such that are the pride of Britain, and the admiration of foreign lands-brave, too, and, alas! too brave. I remember him as the companion of what I think were the pleasantest hours of travel I ever had in my life; and I remember my last meeting with him in a foreign townay, and last parting too, and last shake of his hand; for scarcely had the press ended telling of the wellwon distinction that opened out to him a splendid path of honour and usefulness, than the telegram followed swiftly announcing that his mangled body was lying at the foot of the mountain which he had just successfully ascended. His friends will know of whom I write, and will know, too, the sorrow which is shared with his noble house by those who knew his active foot and his cheerful eye, ere that fatal slide down the gloomy slope of the Matterhorn. J. H. M.

VOL VIII.-NO. XLVIII.

2 K

IN

N vain they argued, father, mother, sister, brother; in vain from morning till night they dunned into my ears the complicated evils of a theatrical career. The spell was upon me, the fascination of the footlights held me with a charm too potent for resistance-I was-let me see-yes, that's the term for itI was stage-struck.

The younger son of a baronet, but heir to neither his title nor his estate, it was necessary that I should become the architect of my own fortunes. I rejected with contumely

the career of a barrister mapped out for me by my father. I would become an actor; or, if thwarted, would cast myself headlong into the care-expelling lethean waters of the Serpentine.

Thus urged, my father applied to an actor of the Theatre Royal between whom and himself there had been of late some business transaction. What transpired I know not. Suffice it that a few days subsequently the actor appeared with a broad grin on his face, and made the announcement that he

had procured for me an engagement at the little Theatre P-, in Shropshire. Could that honoured disciple of the immortal Thespis have witnessed the gleam of ecstatic happiness that irradiated my bosom as the result of that single piece of intelligence, he would have sought his pillow that night with the assurance that he had performed an action, the magnanimity of which would compensate for all the errors, great and small, committed by him within the term of his natural existence.

I pass over, in as few words as possible, these necessary preliminary details: and humour the impatience of my reader by coming at once, as Hamlet says, in characteristic phraseology to Hecuba.'

I arrived late at night at the little town of P--, Shropshire. The next morning I proceeded early to the theatre, having been summoned to attend a rehearsal, arranged for ten o'clock punctually, of Shakespeare's world-renowned tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. With some difficulty I found my way to the stagedoor, and thence through a mystifying labyrinth of passages on to the stage itself. Here I was met by the stage-manager, a very pompous individual, with a remarkably red nose and shiny countenance, who presented me severally to the members of the company, eyeing me, as he did so, with a look of condescension perfectly appalling; and who wound up his brief introductory formula with the following meritorious appeal to his coadjutors and brethren in the art.

'A novice, ladies and gentlemen, a perfect novice; a defect time will rectify. Treat him leniently, my children, treat him leniently. We were all novices once, you know; yes, all novices once-upon a time.' The last words were almost lost in a sharp, shrill, prolonged whistle, which was immediately taken up by the male members of the company, and responded to by a low, stifled tittering amongst those of the opposite gender. 'Clear the stage!' shouted the stage-manager, throwing himself across a three-legged stool that stood facing the centre

footlight. 'Clear the stage, ladies and gentlemen. Off at wing, sir, off at wing!' turning on me a wrathful, injured countenance. 'Is the man deaf or contumacious? Fine him, sir, fine him '-turning to a quaint, spare-looking individual at his elbow, and who, I afterwards ascertained, fulfilled the office of prompter in ordinary to the company- fine him one shilling and sixpence for contempt of green-roomi regulations.'

Clear the stage! off at wing!' terms of mysterious import. I began to get bewildered. While I was speculating upon the probable exposition of those ambiguous phrases, a rude gripe was fastened on my throat, and I found myself ejected, by an unpleasantly summary process, from the centre of the stage into one of the narrow recesses of the side-scenes. Enter Romeo' was shouted from the vicinity of the three-legged stool that stood facing the centre footlight. Not that entrance, sir,' as I made a dart from the recess in which I was standing on to the middle of the stage.

Door-flat, sir, door-flat. 'Sdeath, how the fellow stares! Sharpen your wits, sir, sharpen your wits. Can't stand here all day teaching you your business. Enter Romeo. Door-flat. Sharp's the word, sir, sharp's the word. The Lord help us! these novices!' This was said in an effective stage-aside. 'Here,' shouted the stage-manager at the top of his stentorian lungs, 'will any member of the company make short work of this gentleman through the entrance door-flat?'

The same hand that had before so unceremoniously griped my throat, now seized me by the collar of the coat, and with a sudden energetic swing impelled me forwards through a door inserted in a set chamber scene, which occupied the whole breadth of the stage between the two extremities of right and left.

'Mind the flies, sir; mind the flies!' was next ejaculated from the vicinity of the stool, before I had time to recover the equilibrium of my thoughts, 'mind the flies! That scene a little firmer in the grooves,'

aside to the master carpenter.' 'Mind the flies, you idiot!'

I snatched my kerchief from my pocket, and began wafting it backwards and forwards in the air as a precaution against the too close inroad of these troublesome companions against which the august stage-manager had uttered a prophetic warning. 'Confound the fellow!' roared the presiding genius of the place, stamping his foot with infuriate energy, if some of you don't eject him from his position he'll be murdered.' As he spoke, a huge mass of mountain scenery, impelled by an unseen hand from some mysterious region of the upper grooves, fell with a terrific crash upon the stage, not a couple of paces from where I stood in blissful ignorance of the impending danger. A general buzz and exclamation; and then, my personal safety ascertained, all again subsided into the routine of order.

'Take the stage, sir; take the stage!' was the imperious mandate which now assailed my ears, and which threatened to subvert the little power of reasoning still left within the region of my obfuscated intellects. Take the stage, sir. Life and death, man, can't you hear? take the st-a-ge;'. the inflection of the voice rising on the last syllable, till the word was lost in one sharp, prolonged, excruciating scream.

I was petrified, dumbfounded with astonishment. Here stood I, a gallant emulator of the immortal Thespis, and there stood he, the veritable stage-manager, coolly uttering his directions to take the stage.' What did he mean? Did he intend that I should raise the floor from its base and bear it on my shoulders? Had that Herculean feat come within the range of human capability, I should have felt strangely tempted to hurl the offending article at the semi-devoted head of the illustrious stagemanager thus issuing his instructions. As it was, I simply stood and stared, receiving, as a reward of my inability to proceed, a number of ejaculatory epithets from the lips of the pompous individual enthroned upon the stool.

'Taking the stage, means simply crossing it,' broke in the little cracked voice of the prompter, humanely anxious to relieve me from the perplexity of my unpleasant situation.

'You're a muff, sir,' growled the stage-manager, as, the rehearsal over, I feebly inquired of him the way to the stage-door.

The night came, the night of nights, on which a young gentleman was about to make his first appearance on any stage in the world, in the renowned character of Romeo. My entrance was greeted with a round of applause from half a dozen little urchins in the gallery, who, at the opening of the piece, were reckoned up as the sum-total of the audience. As the play progressed, two or three ill-looking stragglers found their way into the pit, who, together with a solitary individual in the boxes, composed during the evening the principal spectators of Shakespeare's highly-wrought and touching tragedy. By degrees I worked up into the spirit of the part; and towards the conclusion of the third act became so startlingly energetic, as to elicit the marked astonishment of the individual in the boxes, and the vociferated ‘braa-voes' of the little grinning-faced urchins in the gallery above. I began to gain immensely in my own estimation, and was moving about the stage with an air of importance, bewildering to the company, when an incident occurred which brought to a close my career of proud assumption, and reduced me to a more natural level.

The celebrated 'sleeping scene,' where Juliet imbibes the potion prepared for her by the Friar, was about to be enacted, when the fair impersonator of the love-sick heroine suddenly discovered that she had not in her possession the customary stage-property essential to the situation. Walking to the side-scene with a look of consternation on her face, she exclaimed sotto voce, A phial with poison in it. Quick, hasten!' Away I scampered, forcing a passage through the heavy, tangled scenery, overturning in my headlong course the little musty