482

with a cup of warm wholesome gravy soup. Ah! my countrymen at Dover, could you do as much? Alas, no! you have no genius for soup; that first of the arts of political economy, cookery, is unknown to you. Perhaps Soyer may save you yet, barbarian that you are; minister of tough beef-steaks, and almost equally tough and smoky chops; bitter beer, and half-and-half; fit diet for stomachs of castiron; pheugh! You were once naked, and painted your skin with blue and yellow; now you have found out the way of covering your skin with comfortable clothes, and making the yellow a lining for your pockets: now, Britons, one cheer more; learn to cook; that is, if you value our doctor's approbation.

A HINT TO TRAVELLERS.

I have discovered that there is no better way of killing time, when you are hungry, than eating and drinking; once on my travels, as I shall perhaps tell in its place, this inoffensive occupation saved me from extreme ennui. And I may as well, now I am in the mind, put another observation on record here; namely, that in travelling it is advisable to eat frequently, not much at a time, but often, and to avoid alcohol; thus, soup, coffee, tea, cutlets, fruit, soda or seltzer water, should form the staple of our travelling diet. Travelling naturally induces a little heat and feverishness of system, which a cooling diet tends to allay, but which a heating diet might aggravate to an inconvenient degree.

BELGIAN CHARACTERISTICS.

The special characteristic of the Belgians appears to be the disposition to turn everything to use: their women and children, their dogs, their priests, their cows, their oxen; just as they utilise their trees. by selecting those that are tall and capable of serving as a barrier against the winds, without shading the soil or drawing much sustenance from its bosom, and, at the same time, by their lower branches, supply them with firewood; they harness their dogs to small carts and wheelbarrows, turn their women into the fields to pick weeds and bear burdens, and make their cows and oxen chew the end of the produce of their own labour. It is curious to see the old men, the boys, and the girls, leading a pair of oxen by their halters, or acting the part of a living tether to prevent their straying into the neigh

bouring crops. Then there were some singular specimens of priests of the Flemish breed-short, thick, woodenlooking fellows, with immense shovel hats, and white petticoats hanging below black; intended, as I thought, like their sister crinoline, to conceal an unsaintly embonpoint. I said that the Belgians worked their priests; I may be wrong, but I judged so from their dirty faces, and equally dirty hands and nails; but it may be that the only real work they do is to bear the sins of their fellow-men; certainly their backs are sufficiently broad.

It is a crying pity to see woman, whose place, according to us islanders, is her 'ain house at hame,' spoiling her complexion in the burning sun, ugly from birth, but hideous in old age, the joint result of tanning and shrivelling. I suppose there may be a moral in it; for just as the Chinese women are kept from gadding by the atrophy of their feet, so the Belgian women have their vanity of person kept in check by the disfigurement of their skin. And yet I fear that it is, after all, some principle of shabby economy; it is the husbandry of womana reckoning with the daughters of Eve, for being her daughters. I should like to follow these poor creatures to their homes, and sit with them at their meals. Ah! there methinks I should discover the secret of their ugliness; the secret of their wasting labour, poverty. They are ill fed and hard worked, and they become the mothers of a feeble and sickly race. How can a husbandman feed upon his friend, his companion, his fellow-labourer, ox, after toiling with him in tilling the land for a quarter-of-a-century? The riddle is quickly answered-hunger. But the ox is not for him; it is destined for the sausages of his luckier brother of the towns, the wealthier artisan.

At one of the stations, I just had time to pass in review a young army of raw recruits, who, packed in open carriages, were standing there, while their officers, in all the conceit of dirks and incipient moustaches, were puffing their cigars. They-that is, the recruits-reminded me of a regiment of out-patients at one of our hospitals; mere boys, the sons of the very women whose state I have just been deploring; thin, weak, bloodless, some with their faces tied up with toothache, others with sore throats, and others sadly in want of a pocket-handkerchief. This is the raw material of war; and yet these

youngsters, who to-day look as if their musket were too heavy for them, may, in a few years, by good food and good training, he turned into strong men and good soldiers. Lucky fellows to escape the liquid manure tank and the three-pronged hoe. By the way, excellent as liquid manure may be to the soil, I cannot think its diffusion through the breathing air conducive to health; certainly it is not the sweet breath of the freshly upturned earth that we read of as being the delight of our ancestors.

Reader, I fear you will think I am getting prosy; but fancy eight hours spent with no better companion than one's own thoughts, or perchance with company far less agreeable.

A DOCTOR'S MEDITATIONS.

In Belgium and Germany, the world rides in second-class railway carriages; none but Russian princes and English tradesmen take places in carriages of the first class; so that no wonder there should be a little jumble of classes: and, in good truth, the second-class carriages of the Continent are not only equal, but superior in decoration and comfort, to modern first-class carriages at home. The fares are likewise very moderate; a fact to be borne in mind, when we venture to grumble at having to pay for our luggage. The truth is, that the carpetbag of England has to pay for the halfhundredweight black box, its travelling companion; and we agree to this willingly, rather than submit to the obstruction and delay that must necessarily arise from weighing our baggage whenever we start on a journey. But I intended to remark, that at Malines I stumbled on a Belgian don, with his wife and daughter, who were travelling with a liveried servant. Now, as it would not have comported with the dignity of master and man that said servant should ride in the same carriage with his master and master's wife, the servant was put into another carriage of the same class, of which I was the occupant. I felt for the moment a little indignant; but choked down my wrath, and determined, in revenge, to make a penand-ink sketch of the fellow. First, he was ugly and greasy, as though his master kept him on half-allowance of soap; then such paws-oh! for a pair of ninepenny cotton whites, to hide those hideous fingers that handed his master's plate at dinner; then there was a decidedly vigo

rous attempt at tailors' finery; a drab turned up with black, black velvet breeches with gilt garters and drab gaiters; then he spread himself out in the last attitude of Belgian independence, one hand on the edge of the window, one on the arm of the carriage, as though he tried all he could to bleach those mahogany-coloured fins; then his feet were tossed up on the new carriage cushions; serve the directors right, why not put the pig in his pen? then he fidgeted; then looked out of the window; how I longed to take him, Achilles-like, by the heel, and make him swallow a mouthful of his native earth; he then unpacked his pockets of sundry green apples, upon which he began to feed with tremendous vigour. It's a great pity that his master, when he gave the orang-outang a livery, could not afford him proper food and a little soap; not that a little soap would ever have washed out the rich japan of dirt he carried on his fists. Good God! that must be the ninth green apple the fellow has bolted. I rubbed my hands with joy; it required no imaginative foresight to see the chap doubled up that night with the pangs of indigestion, every apple gathering its atoms together into a cricket-ball, or a ninepounder shot. And then, oh! if we would but send for a doctor; a blue pill and black draught in the morning would settle him quite; and no gentle Englishman like myself would be pestered with his presence again in a railway journey.

SWIMMING BATHS.

In the morning I put my friend Dr Cutler's good-nature to the test. I hurried him down from his toilet, while I picked myself a nosegay from the oleanders that formed a pretty avenue at his door; and then I mounted him on the seat of my little Americain, drawn by one of the strongest, most willing, and sure-footed, and best-conditioned little horses, a true Ardennois, that I had ever

seen.

I longed to bring him with me to England. 'Stop!' said the doctor, as we climbed a somewhat steep hill; for Spa being at the top of the valley, it is impossible to go any further in the same direction without an ascent; 'stop here, my good fellow, hold the pony's head, will you.' This was spoken in good Belgian French. And now,' said he, turning to me, I will show you a swimming bath we have just had constructed.' And

९

a superb swimming bath it was, open to the air, enclosed by a low parapet wall and hedge, and supplied by a running stream. We have found the want of a cold bath in the summer time,' said he; and we have endeavoured to supply it.' You have succeeded magnificently,' said I; and your visiters may not only lave their arid limbs, in the summer time, but become, if they choose, good swimmers. Now, it is remarkable,' I continued, turning towards him, and forgetting for the moment that he was an Englishman like myself it is remarkable,' said I, 'that in our country'-meaning yours and mine, dear reader-'we have no swimming baths; that is, none deserving the name; no schools of swimming; and this is the more extraordinary in a country which it self is little more than a ship surrounded by the sea on all sides. Perhaps our good mother thinks that we must be swimmers by birth; or, perhaps, that the art will come of itself the first time we happen to be dropped overboard. Be it as it may, I think we might swim the better for a little instruction; and I am half inclined to envy the French their schools of swimming, in which not only the men, but the women, are taught that useful art. An English lady told me that during the summer she had been practising swimming at a French watering-place, and that one of the lessons consisted in being thrown into the water, clothed in her usual dress.' 'Ah!' said the doctor, 'they do those things better in France.'

LEGAL SWINDLING.

Whether it is that the German parts with his coin more reluctantly than other people, whether he holds it in a tighter grip, or whether it is unusually rubbed, from a quantity of small money being carried together; or whether it has been a long time in use, not rolling on its edge, but sprawling on its face, it is quite true that the coinage is miserably defaced. I received one morning an Austrian piece of twenty-four kreutzers, very much rubbed, from my landlord, and in the course of an hour I tendered it at the post-office. 'Good for nothing,' said the postmaster, as he pushed away the piece with impatience. But I have just received it from my landlord,' said I.—'Oh ! it is only at the bureaux that it will be refused,' he replied. But why,' said I, 'does your government permit the circulation of a coinage which your offices, or bureaux,

as you call them, refuse?' He was puzzled, and looked me in the face, to see if I had the phiz of a gendarme in disguise, and then winked his eye, as much as to say, our governments are too selfish to trouble themselves about the people's wants and convenience: besides, the vileness of the coinage is a profitable tax upon strangers. 'You're right,' said I; 'I perceive you to be a man of letters, if not a man of words:' and I took off my hat, and gave him one of those graceful bows that are to be met with only in Germany. A few hours later, I tried my twenty-four kreutzer piece at the railway station: 'Nicht gut,' said the man of tickets; so, putting the piece in a corner of reserve of my pocket, I laid a scheme for its future that was entirely successful.

THE SPRINGS OF EMS.

The springs of Ems are twenty-one in number; they take their rise in a Grauwacke rock, situated behind the Curhaus; and although they most probably all originate in the same source, they choose to issue from different fissures of the rock, and therefore present certain differences of temperature and of proportion in their chemical constituents. Their difference of temperature amounts to as much as 38° of Fahrenheit, the coolest being 90°, and the hottest 128°; the difference in amount of carbonic acid gas is shown in the proportion of sixteen and twenty cubic inches, the extremes of their contents in the pint; the larger quantity being found in the cooler water, the smaller in the hot; and the difference of their dose of bicarbonate of soda is eightteen and twenty-one grains to the pint. The appearance of the water is clear and transparent; but its taste differs in correspondence with the differences of strength of the elementary constituents already noted. The hotter waters are saltish and alkaline, and communicate a flavour of weak beef-tea; while the cooler waters are less saline and alkaline to the taste, and more brisk and piquant, from containing a larger quantity of carbonic acid gas. Dr D'Ibell also notes another peculiarity, which admits of a ready explanation, but which to the unlearned approaches the marvellous; it is that these waters are cooler to the mouth and pa-* late than plain water of the same heat; a fact that every one may put to the test who will sip, alternately, soup and plain hot water of an exactly similar temperature.

The drinking springs of Ems are three in number; namely, the Kesselbrunnen, literally the kettle-spring, which gives issue to four thousand cubic feet of water daily of a temperature of 115° of Fahrenheit; the Fürstenbrunnen, or Prince's Spring, whose water has a temperature of 96°; and the Kranchen, or source of the tap, so named because it issues from a silver tap in a niche of the drinking-hall of the Curhaus-its temperature is 84°. The Kesselbrunnen rises in a marble reservoir in the Curhaus; and the Fürstenbrunnen issues into a basin at the distance of a few feet from the Krænchen. Besides these, a new spring has been recently discovered opposite the garden of the Curhaus, which is both hotter and more abundant in its supply than those before namel, having a temperature of 117° of Fahrenheit, and pouring forth every minute something like one hundred and seventyfive gallons. This latter source has been the means of affording an exhaustless supply of water to the baths. The temperature of the water for drinking ranges between 99° and 77° of Fahrenheit.

The water for the baths is collected into eleven great reservoirs, for the purpose of cooling; no plain water is mingled with it; and from the reservoirs it is distributed by means of pipes to the bathing cabinets, of which there are upwards of a hundred. In the bathing establishment is a vapour bath, a strong douche, and milder douches, applicable to several of the baths. And there is a natural ascending douche, of the proper temperature of the water, 88° of Fahrenheit, which is called, par excellence, the Bubenquelle, literally the Baby Spring, which is oftentimes as mischievous from mismanagement as beneficial when judiciously employed; and which Dr D'Ibell very properly suggests should never be used without the special prescription of the medical man. The Bubenquelle Fountain is balf-an-inch in diameter, and rises from the bottom of a basin, on turning a stop-cock, to the height of between two and three feet.

As to their uses, or curative results, the waters of Ems are celebrated for their beneficial effects in all cases in which there is a prevalence of acidity in the system; in thickening of the juices of the body, as, for example, of the bile; in thickenings of the solids, arising from morbid function or chronic inflammation;

in gall-stones, calculous disorders of the kidneys, gouty deposits, and rheumatic enlargements, and in chronic expectoration, depending on old bronchitis or catarrh. In cases of the latter kind, the relief to the mucous membrane is said to be immediate, and the sensation is spoken of as 'balsamic.' The Hygeia of Ems also holds out her hand to those of her own sex who need her assistance: she removes obstructions; softens and brings away tumours; and she invites them, under the guidance of her man of business, the doctor, to venture a trial of the Bubenquelle, when the possession of a doll to dress and undress is the first object of her mind and wishes.

SELTERS WATER.

Selters, or Nieder Selters, is situated on the Emsbach, the latter opening into the Lahn some miles above Fachingen. Its waters, like those of the latter place, are only used for exportation; but their celebrity is so great, and so deserved, that they find their way into every corner of the habitable earth. In Germany itself, they form one of its greatest luxuries; being used either with wine, with sugar, or alone, as a common drink. The water is clear, transparent, sparkling, and piquant, and leaves behind on the palate a slightly saline flavour. Its chemical composition is, thirty cubic inches of carbonic acid gas to the pint, with nine grains and threequarters of bicarbonate of soda, seventeen grains of muriate of soda, and one-tenth of a grain of carbonate of iron. Thus, it must be regarded as a muriated saline water, and not a carbonated alkaline water like that of Ems.

As a medicine, the water of Selters is useful in all cases of illness where a mildly alterative antacid, and at the same time solvent, remedy is required; as in dyspepsia, gout, rheumatism, acid secretions from the kidneys, and also in scrofulous and glandular affections. It has, besides, acquired esteem in chronic catarrh and bronchitis, and even in that stage of organic change in the lungs known as consumption. In the latter case, it is convenient and proper to dilute the selterwater with warm milk, or with asses' milk.

BATHING LUXURIES.

The country around Langen Schwalbach abounds in chalybeate springs, which are met with in all the neighbouring vil