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being explicitly a requirement in their construction. We managed, however, capitally. Mr. Pecker, by adroitly thrusting his head out of all the windows in turn, superinduced that impression of fulness, which rescued us from the contamination of too close an intercourse with some of the company-Sisters of Charity, Priests, and others, forming a segment of the motley train. But thus must the separateness of the true faith give place to the encroachments of Utilitarian expediency. It is a comfort to hear Mr. Pecker say, that the Reactionists must do away with railways, or they cannot keep their ground, still less advance, on the goingback principle! I petitioned to stay at Malines, to explore the traces of Maria, so sweetly immortalized in Sterne's Sentimental Journal. But my wish was rendered nugatory: Mrs. Pecker had heard of the concurrence of railway trains, there; and unable, by any legitimate process, to disentangle this in her mind from the impression of accidents, and consequent nervousness, I yielded the fond wish, though not without reluctancy. Were I a free agent, not one of Fiction's sad shrines should remain unvisited. A list of two hundred or more, culled from the animating works of James, is my constant companion, to be fulfilled as opportunity and the Peckers admit. A fanciful enthusiast, as of old, is your Diana! and innocent, at least, of any of such degrading superstitions as are her objects of worship.-Adieu! for I am summoned to council with regard to our preparations for crossing the frontier to-morrow. Recollecting our Antwerpian detention, and the vigilancy with which our luggage has been watched, suggesting that a tingling sound is not convenient, Mr. Pecker is attaching strings to the clappers of his bells; and we are all charged to deny their existence. For it is beneath Tinglebury principle, he says, to bribe any custom-house officer what

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The Editor is sorry to deprive Mr. Pecker of this one among his many original devices. But the expedient is in very general use among the English; and it has been often curious, though not very pleasant to the Editor's national pride, to observe the fluency with which his countrywomen, of a far less demonstrative order than Miss Rill, have declared "every place taken," to secure" themselves and party" from the entrance of fellow-passengers in the foreign railways. The English word-like English gold-was so good abroad, that for policy's sake, if from no higher motive, our tourists should think twice, ere they add the reputation of tricking to that of a somewhat inconsiderate exaction of their own peculiar wants. More of these "Travelling Morals," perhaps, in their own time and place.

soever. Am I not privileged, dearest friend, in these incessant reminders of the pure, unmistakeable duties, which are nothing if not practised. I must go to him at once. Good night. Your faithfully attached friend in

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DIANA RILL.

Mr. Pecker's plan respective of bills should not be forgottenthough too simple, he declares, to claim a place in pages which too partial friends may call into publicity. It is to dispute everything: aware as we are of the mandates in continental operation to counteract English liberty of commerce, by exorbitancy on the private scale. With a more efficient coadjutrix than Sophia, the success accruing would be decisive: the calembourg (idiomatic of "stratagem ") of every one professing inequality to understand our brother's accent, being too transparent to seduce into momentary credence and the unworthy farce of interpretation being requisitional-I have offered my services: but our brother comparing me to the Venice porcelain, which only contained odorous refinements, shivering when grossness was poured in, absolved me. Nor would it become," said he sportively, "the heiress of the party to interfere in the paltry details of lucre." His considerateness costs us dear, for alive to the continental usage of respective support in fraudulency, and well knowing, too, that the Socinian heresy imagine the Church a legitimate spoil in spite of *

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* We are satisfied that our attendant is bribed into acquiescence with the extortionary measures, to which-as the rain falls upon the blades of grass, just or unjust-we, too, must submit!-Another direful result of English liberalism! But bolts are making hot for many, now secure in their triumphancy! In every traveller's book Mr. Pecker records his weighty ideas at length. Sophia is enjoined to diffuse tracts in all the hotels; your Diana, for reasons above expressed, being for the present absolved from her old, fond service. Yet she has not been idle. A request made to our charming new friend, the Belgian officer, to superinduce her presentation to the Bishop of this City, is in tapis. Once admitted, the purple of prelacy shall not stifle my weak advocacy!-But zeal is also cautionary. Those who win, must assert their principles by yielding. Rimmon, my dear, is awarded as an example to all those who would gain the unbeliever. Here is a billet from the gallant and martial Belgian, inclosing a box at the theatre this, Sunday, evening-and his

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company. Mrs. Pecker says that she never partook of Thespian excitements on that day, at Tinglebury, and shall stay at homeand have supper in her own room. But, soaring above all narrowness, and employing the symbol of a "believing wife," the applicability of which strikes me as remote, though ingenious,"Who knows, says our brother, "of the utility which may present itself in so untried a sphere." "Let us foil," he added, emphatically, the followers of Ignatius Savonarola by their own subtle artillery." But as Wailford is not foreign parts, and there are those within its borders whose feet are swift to misconceive all that cometh out of Tinglebury, he requests that this may not be diffused. It might, under * be the means of sowing the whirlwind betwixt him and his friends of "the Fiery Furnace," and scandal, among brethren, is not to be sought. Yet I own to repugnancy; and but for ulterior views of extreme delicacy had not adhered to the proposition. Our military friend is distinctively handsome; more roseate, perhaps, than is befitting a hero, but taller than your Mr. Henry Blackadder. Remains he still the Argus volage of Wailford? My love to those sweet girls, his sisters.

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THE date of this, dearest Mrs. Rustler, would not surprise you, could you have threaded our steps unseen. I attempt no explanation of the interpolative chasm in our correspondence, save such as your own pregnant fancy can supply. To seal my pen, when addressing my Sarah, was never your Diana's double part-still less to express foreign usages, or depicture the scenes where

"Every step

Thrills with bright memories of the sceptred Past,"

as Bishop Heber's Fazio says in "The Fall of Kehama," while tenderer personalities are monopolizing every nerve, and vistas of a fond felicity engaging the enchanted view. Yet nothing is certain. The embryo of Time still retains your Diana's destinies incompleted. Her word has not passed the Rubicon, which maiden's foot thrills to cross. Mr. Pecker, however, now commands oracular preparations, which, like the veils of the Egyptian Anabis, will obscure little of the truth, from eyes, eagle-visioned as yours. The Blackadders, he thinks, ought to be prepared for

a shock. My reluctancy in that quarter, you will understand; but 1 hope the talented individual to whom it refers, will, ere this, have rivetted his fastidious (not mine ungenerously to say fickle) choice on some brighter being than your poor friend. It will break like a torpedo on the Podds. O yes! we anticipate. "She who crested it so high at Tinglebury to stoop to a Flemish foreigner!" "She, whose opinions were dearer to her than the quick of her bones, to join in nuptial bands with a Papist!" Witness I not the laugh? Hear I not the supercilious mockery ?-The Nibletts, who will shout for joy, to conceive me in the filaments of their net -I can parry them, too. Secure in feminine principle and Christian integrity, strong and stately as the adamantine cedar in the foundations of my felicity, I can put aside the Podds; and forgive -meet the Nibletts; and challenge her to assert which has chosen the best. A foolish creature, my dear, will have it that I promised him a promenade. Io! Well, indulgence was always inevitable to your Diana ;—and here is Mr. Pecker, on the other side, telling me the post must go. My eyes are in a whirl. Am I treading on cerulean air? Feel, kindest partner of my girlhood's fond experiments, for your fluttering

DIANA.

RAILROADS IN EGYPT.

THERE is no remark oftener repeated than that the affairs of this world are in a perpetual state of mutation. One of the most striking examples of its truth is the constant changes that take place in the relative importance of kingdoms and states. Neglect is now the fate of many nations that once filled the world with the fame of their achievements: and spots which have been comparatively forgotten acquire, from time to time, a sudden and unexpected prominence, blaze with unwonted light, become the theatres. of political intrigue, the arena to which is transferred that strife betwixt rival powers, which, whatever form it may assume, whether it wears the horrid garb of war, or dons the more decent apparel of peace, ever continues to rage, and is frequently most

*From a direction in Miss Rill's MS., the Editor presumes the above exclamation to be Italian. It is not, however, in Baretti.

violent, when, in the eyes of the superficial observer, it has ceased to exist.

Egypt is precisely in such a position. For several years it had been by many considered merely as a field for the labour of the antiquarian-a land of wonder, of pyramids and obelisks, of temples and propylæa-a region peopled, if we may so speak, with mummies, hieroglyphics, and crocodiles. The French campaign, the more brilliant than solid rule of Mohammed Ali, but above all, the establishment of what is called the Overland Route, have changed all this. Egypt does not now only appeal to the imagination and historical sympathies of men, its affairs are no longer foreign to us, they come home to our business and. bosoms; the whole English nation, directly or indirectly, is interested in every question which concerns it. There is scarcely a family perhaps in the United Kingdom some relation or friend of which is not compelled to use this once mysterious land as a common highway; the mythical gloom which formerly overhung it is dissolved; we look at it now in a much more vulgar light, and not only feel curiosity about its condition, but more than that, are absolutely compelled in some respects to take the initiative in matters which we might otherwise deem it advisable to leave for ever unmeddled with on our part. Before the Overland Route was regularly established, Egypt was visited for its own sake, in order to satisfy the requirements of a liberal curiosity; it is now the half-way house between England and India, one of those stepping-stones which enable steam, with its giant strides, to traverse the wide expanse of water that separates us from our possessions in Asia.

Various projects have been started for the purpose of improving this route; and to some of them we shall endeavour to direct the attention of our readers. But before doing so, let us premise a few words on the actual state of the transit. We are not among those who join in the outery against the present arrangements. There have been, doubtless, many just complaints made; but it cannot be concealed, that the cause of the outcry now raised against the whole establishment is the assumption of it by the Pasha. Whether this was a wise or proper act on his part is a question open to discussion, but into which we do not think it necessary at present to enter. This, however, we must say, that the violent and indiscriminate attacks that have been made, the exaggerations that have been indulged in, the distortion of facts as regards the transit