savoury fillets of wild boar from the Pontine Marshes or the Maremma, served in a piquant sauce of barberries; followed by thrushes at Terracina or Mola di Gaeta, such as Samuel Rogers has immortalised. There were shrivelled grapes and figs from the orchards and vineyards; there were wool - stoppered flasks of Chianti, and cobwebbed bottles of Falernian. We smell at this moment the resin from the pine-woods, embalming the languid air, in the warmth of the noon-day sunshine; we see visions of silvery mountain-tops standing out in the soft moonlight; we hear the low murmur of the Mediterranean waves breaking along the shingly beach to the sighs of a rising night breeze. And the vanished vetturino is sadly suggestive of much else that has been swept away by the besom of improvement. It would be sad to expatiate on a subject which is inexhaustible. Where is the Paris we used to know so well, whence even the Tuileries have disappeared, leaving scarcely a sign behind them? The revolutionary Haussmann has found desolating rivals and imitators all over the Continent. There was no possibility of spoiling the great King Frederick's barrack-like city on the Spree, and at Munich the extremely eccentric King Louis had the sense to build his new town by

the side of the old one. But what have the new municipality been doing at Papal Rome, where the polishing has almost kept pace with the abolishing? Florence, at the cost of many of its most picturesque antiquities, became the temporary capital of the kingdom, only to be deserted; and Venice, though delivered from the foreigner's rule, is now the port of departure for the English P. & O., while its once silent canals and voiceless gondoliers are wakened up by the plying of steam-launches and the screams of the steam-whistle. From Rouen to Vienna, from Amsterdam to Trieste, there is nothing but promiscuous wreckage of the past, with the promotion of new "works of public utility." It should be gratifying, but nevertheless it is depressing. The vetturino has gone with much it used to represent, and it has given place to the cheap circular ticket which reflects the popularising spirit of the age. The circular-tripper sees a modernised Europe, in which all kinds of cosmopolitan conveniences are provided for him, and in which at every turn he may appreciate the monotonous adaptability of modern progress. He steams up the Rhine between a double row of brand-new villas; he finds a beer-house or a restaurant in climbing to each shattered keep; he scales the spurs of the Alps and the cone of

Vesuvius by the aid of ordinary or atmospheric or funicular railways. And though science and enterprise have already done so much for him, we may be sure that we are only at the beginning of the end, and that the crowning triumphs of the commonplace are yet to astound us.

A

CHAPTER IX.

SAILS, PADDLES, AND SCREWS.

GLANCE at the advertising columns of the 'Times' in 1836 should send a thrill of gratitude to the hearts of the globe-trotters of 1886. It is like sitting in a snug room over a "sea-coal fire," and listening to the blasts that are beating against the windows. Those who go down to the sea in our great steamers must face storms that send the billows surging abaft the funnels, and stand rockings upon the bosom of the mighty deep that make them curse their unkindly nurse. At all events, nowadays they know that, if they must cross the ocean, they could hardly be made more comfortable. Possibly people may have thought the same in 1836, and we can only admire the benignance of Providence which mercifully tempers the wind to weather-beaten lambs. In 1836 "swift sailings" of the best teak-built ships, of 400 and 500 tons, were advertised for Calcutta and

Bombay. In 1836 there is an announcement of the despatch of a copper-bottomed packet-brig of 142 tons register for Madeira, "with excellent accommodation for passengers." Imagine a consumptive invalid taking his passage now for the Islands of the Blest in a cockle-shell of 142 tons register! That sort of craft might be all very well for the hardy mariners who used to grope their way on exploring expeditions towards the Pole through the fogs and the ice-floes; but for a patient apprehensive of the rupture of blood-vessels, it was staking madly against the imminent chances of sudden death. In 1838 there is a glowing account in the Annual Register' of the launch of the British Queen. "This immense steamship is intended to carry passengers between London and New York. Her length exceeds that of any vessel in the British navy by 35 feet." As for the power, proportions, and capacity of that "immense" vessel, her length was 275 feet, she had engines of 500 horse power, and she carried 600 tons of coals, with 500 tons of cargo. Indeed, in those days, with the delays of long ocean-passages, we can scarcely be said to have spanned the abysses dividing us from distant countries and colonies. The wealthy West Indian planters seldom visited the old home more than once or twice in a prosperous lifetime; while civilians or soldiers scorch