having met at the "World's Fair," with several old friends from Italy, their solicitations easily induced me to revisit a country in which I had passed some of the happiest days of early youth. Recent events also having invested the beautiful peninsula with more than ordinary interest, I was especially desirous to note the changes which time had wrought among a noble people, to whose genius mankind have been so deeply indebted for that civilizing process which has gone on redeeming the world from barbarism. Other lands, it is true, have their attractions, but there is no country in Europe that has more constantly occupied the attention of mankind in every age, than the classic soil of Italy; none, even in the present day, that possess so many varied and absorbing claims to the consideration of the traveller, linked as it is with some of the most remarkable events recorded in the history of the world; where every city, town, and village, nay, its very Alps and mountains, hills and valleys, seas and rivers, speak of the illustrious dead.

We will, therefore, at once cross the Channel, and commence our narrative in the land of the Gaul.

The first view of Boulogne, with its citadel and fortifications, its fine jetée, custom-house and spacious harbour, lined with hotels and coffeehouses, billiard-rooms and restaurants, decorated in all the attractive gaiety of a French town, presents to the traveller an agreeable contrast to the dull little sea-port of Folkestone.

Boulogne, however, does not improve on a more intimate acquaintance: with the exception of the port, and one or two of the principal thoroughfares, the streets are narrow and badly paved; and in so large and old a city, it is remarkable, we do not find a single public or private building deserving notice; and equally so, notwithstanding the number of English families. who have made it their home, and the still greater number attracted hither during the bathing season, it is in every respect a thoroughly French town. A proof that the Celtic Gauls, like our own Celtic Irish, do not easily amalga

having met at the "World's Fair," with several old friends from Italy, their solicitations easily induced me to revisit a country in which I had passed some of the happiest days of early youth. Recent events also having invested the beautiful peninsula with more than ordinary interest, I was especially desirous to note the changes which time had wrought among a noble people, to whose genius mankind have been so deeply indebted for that civilizing process which has gone on redeeming the world from barbarism. Other lands, it is true, have their attractions, but there is no country in Europe that has more constantly occupied the attention of mankind in every age, than the classic soil of Italy; none, even in the present day, that possess so many varied and absorbing claims to the consideration of the traveller, linked as it is with some of the most remarkable events recorded in the history of the world; where every city, town, and vil lage, nay, its very Alps and mountains, hills and valleys, seas and rivers, speak of the illustrious dead.

We will, therefore, at once cross the Channel, and commence our narrative in the land of the Gaul.

The first view of Boulogne, with its citadel and fortifications, its fine jetée, custom-house and spacious harbour, lined with hotels and coffeehouses, billiard-rooms and restaurants, decorated in all the attractive gaiety of a French town, presents to the traveller an agreeable contrast to the dull little sea-port of Folkestone.

Boulogne, however, does not improve on a more intimate acquaintance: with the exception of the port, and one or two of the principal thoroughfares, the streets are narrow and badly paved; and in so large and old a city, it is remarkable, we do not find a single public or private building deserving notice; and equally so, notwithstanding the number of English families who have made it their home, and the still greater number attracted hither during the bathing season, it is in every respect a thoroughly French town. A proof that the Celtic Gauls, like our own Celtic Irish, do not easily amalga

mate with any other race-above all, with the

Anglo-Saxon.

Perhaps this is more striking to the English traveller who arrives here for the first time, when he finds everything animate and inanimate, on which he rests his eye, so new and foreign, that he might fancy he had been transported by the wand of a magician to a hemisphere a thousand miles distant. Intermingled with a gay, animated multitude, who appear to have no other way of passing their time than in the dolce far niente, he sees priests, monks, friars and nuns of every order habited in their respective costumes, with gensdarmes, troops of the line, custom-house officers, coast-guards and police, all in uniform, and armed to the teeth, as if they momentarily expected an insurrection, or an invasion of their old enemies, the sea-wolves of perfide Albion. Even the peasants in their wooden shoes, the fish-women in their short red petticoats, white caps, and long gold ear-rings, assist in imparting to the picture an air of continental life, entirely different from