ourselves more frequently of the services of the two accomplished cicerones whom at starting we recommended to them. We can only plead that our own pilgrimage through these catacombs of literature was made independently, at a time when, though Ribbeck and Vahlen had cleared the way, the lights of æsthetic criticism had to be provided by every traveller for himself. This solitary experience has given us the means of appreciating the high qualifications of our two instructors possibly it may have enabled us, in some slight degree, to supplement their labours.

ART. V.-Wildbad und Seine Umgebungen. Stuttgart, 1860.

READER, did you ever break the middle fibre of the triceps muscle just above the knee? You are not likely to have done so, for it is a rare chance, and the force that would snap it would sooner break the thigh-bone itself, or split the kneepan. But we broke ours, and though it is a very lame story, we mean to tell you all about it, and how we tried to cure it. How it happened was this: we had been abroad in Greece, away from wife and child, and after roving among the Ionian Islands and in the Morea, found ourselves, on the 19th of December, on the Acropolis at Athens. Then and there came on us the love of home. We thundered along the dusty road from Athens to the Piræus, caught the French steamer, and turned our face west, bent on eating our Christmas dinner at home. There was not an hour too much for the feat; but the sea was smooth, the wind fair, the boat as swift as a French boat can be. We reached Marseilles on the Thursday morning, in time to catch the midday mail for Paris. From the Station de Lyon we tore on the early dawn of Christmas-day to the Station du Nord, caught the tidal train, crossed from Boulogne to Folkestone, and reached London at six P.M. This was pretty quick work, for it was late on the Saturday before that we left the Piraeus; we had stayed half a day at Messina on the voyage, and here we were home on the Friday at seven o'clock to dinner. These were our thoughts as we drove from London Bridge to the Broad Phylactery; but, so far as dinner was concerned, they were doomed to disappointment. We rushed up-stairs to see our babes and sucklings, and ran down again to dinner, which was there smoking on the board. Alas! of that dinner we never tasted one bit. As we came down, four steps at a time, we forgot to count them, as every one instinctively and unconsciously counts the steps of a well-known staircase; we hurled ourselves on a landing, thinking there were four more steps to come. There was a stunning baulk; something snapped in our thigh; we fell forward flat on our face, were picked up, and borne off to bed. At first we thought our thigh was broken. By the time the doctor came, torn reluctantly from his Christmas dinner, the limb was a huge swollen mass, without a sign of knee in it. The learned man shook his head, and pinched us tenderly. "No bone broken," he said, "but what else may be broken is hard to say." Then philosophizing, "How could you have done it? A very strange accident; I would not have believed it." Ice, lotion, leech; lotion, leech, ice; leech, ice, lotion; so ran the round of life from day to day. In a few days we got the swelling down

somewhat, and there appeared above the kneepan a sort of trough where the fibres were torn away. "Much better have broken the bone," was the wise man's remark; "it would have been the shortest in the end; three months on your back, six on crutches, and three more to get the strength again into the muscles of your leg. Just a year." “Well, but will this be a year?" "Yes, and perhaps two," was the reply from this Job's comforter. "You see, you will begin to get about, and then you will trip up and fall, and some more of the fibres will go. Besides, muscles never really unite; they fly away like an India-rubber band when it is snapped, and though something like a membrane forins, and fills up the gap, that muscle will never do a stroke of work again. What you have to do is to coax the others to take some of its work on themselves. But it takes a long time to coax a muscle into doing what Providence never meant it to do; and while you are coaxing it, you will have another accident, and all the cure will have to begin over again." Here was a cheerful family surgeon. Do you wonder that we soon paid him his fee, and got rid of him for that day? But he spoke the truth, though, young as we were in accidents, we did not believe him. "How many times did we repeat our accident?" Well, seven times in ten months! First, we just made a little false step as we were crawling up to bed. Though the leg only slipped back one step, something went "crick" again, and in half-an-hour the knee was nearly as swollen as before. That little step threw us back more than a month. But that was nothing; it was a mere baby accident to the next. This was in the month of March, when we stepped upon a bit of orange-peel at night in the street, and instinctively steadying ourselves on the lame leg, it shut up very like a telescope, and falling on it, we crushed it up utterly. "Was it any pain?" Only try it. The feeling is as if all the flesh were stripped off the bones from below the knee to half way up the thigh. When we see the lion munching the thigh-bone of a horse at the Zoological Gardens, we think of our own thigh-bone, only that, while he gnaws horse, we think of ourselves as a less noble animal. That was fall number two. It took two months to recover from that, with this difference, that besides leech, lotion, ice, iodine was asked to assist in the after cure, and scorched and withered our unhappy joint with his burning breath. Now came fall the third, for fall follows fall in this story as Amurath used to succeed Amurath in Turkish history. We were sitting over a fire-we are sorry, for the honour of this genial climate, to add it was in the month of June and stretching up to reach a book which lay on the mantel-shelf above our heads, we again rested ever so little on

this perfidious limb. Like Egypt, that bruised reed, the thankless joint seemed to shrivel up; down we fell, and one of our hands went into the fire. So there we were; one knee as though a savage beast were rending it with his greedy teeth, and one hand well thrust forward into the fire. Talk of Daniel in the lions' den, or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace! Here were we at once in the den and furnace. Now, having tried both at the same time, we say, without a spark of doubt, that we would sooner fall into the lions' jaws than into the flaming fire. Our first care, therefore, was to pluck our hand out of the fire, and put out our wrist-band, which had caught fire. After that we laid ourselves out at full length on our back on the rug, and-fainted. When we came to ourselves there we still lay. We could neither stir hand nor foot, and there we should have lain still, had not one of those curious creatures, the British housemaid, looked in, as she said afterwards, just to see why we were so quiet. The wretch was well frightened for her pains! Away she flew and told the rest that master had gone mad, and tried to put an end to his existence by climbing up the chimney. This she said, because in our pain we had besmirched our forehead and face with the hand which had been in the fire, and was black with coal. It took us some weeks to recover from this twofold woe, and then came the unkindest stroke of all. At the end of July there was a dramatic fête at the Crystal Palace, where all the old actors and actresses assemble, all the stale jokes are let off anew, and all that is idle and stupid in London goes down to see what is called the fun. Though certainly not idle, we were among the stupid on that occasion, as the end will show. But we had the excuse which all who do a silly thing either have or make,- we were led astray. Whether this excuse does not as often mean leading, as being led, is a question we do not deign to answer. We say we were led astray. Astray in supposing we could find any amusement in such a gathering of dullness and dowdiness. But our sin was speedily punished, and readily do we acknowledge the truth of Butler's statement, that if it were so ordained that every sin as soon as committed brought with it certain death, there would speedily be no sin an argument very like that used by those industrious Chinese, who gain their living by being substitutes for offenders sentenced to death. If every Chinaman embarked in this profession there would soon be few of them left. However that may be, our sin in being such a fool as to go to such a place was soon punished, and in a very fitting way. Vengeance overtook us in the skirts of a lady's crinoline. Awful woman, we fancy we see her now. Nearly six feet high, and

stout in proportion. We are sure she was that masculine creature whose husband recently appealed to Sir James Wilde, to protect him against her cruelty. She used to thrash him by day, and tie him to the bedpost by night. The henpecked wretch did not dare to call his life his own. Down she bore on us with our lame leg. She was clad in an apple-green dress, over which was thrown a skyblue shawl. On her head was a yellow bonnet, with cherry-coloured ribbons. In her grasp was a tricoloured parasol, with the Italian mixture. From this we infer that she had sympathized with Garibaldi, kissed his hand, and subscribed to the various things which have been proposed for him, none of which, strange to say, he will condescend to take. Well, down on us she bore. We were in a crowd, and between us and her were many human beings, who we vainly hoped would break the fury of her onslaught. Still she bore on, cleaving the waves of life as though they had been foam. We felt fascinated by the gorgeousness of her apparel, becalmed before her as a tiny smack just before it is run down by a three-decker. Escape was out of our power; on and on she came; frantically we moved on one side to let her pass. It was in vain, we were swept up by the rush of petticoats in her train, her iron cage caught our maimed knee, we were hurled to earth, and this monster in woman's garb passed by on her terrible way without a word of sympathy for the muscles she had torn asunder in her brutal strength. In a future state may she be a Flanders mare, and may we be the Fleming who has the driving of her! This is no doubt a very wicked wish, but it is strictly true, and in our opinion quite justifiable under the circumstances. So there we lay groaning till we were gathered up by our friends, and packed off to London to go to bed.

By the time we could get about again London was beginning to grow lazy. Tired of eating and tired of dancing; tired of Greenwich and tired of Richmond; tired of Denmark and the Duchies; especially tired of Prussia and Austria; tired of giving advice to foreign nations which they would not take; tired in short of everything. All that every one wished was to rush out of town. But where were we to go with a lame leg? To darling Scotland? to Skye perhaps, to row from Torrin round the point into Loch Scavaig to Camasunary, and then having seen the Coolins, to walk with plenty of food, but without a dirk, and if need be without a guide, across the hill down into the glen, and so along it to Sligachan. Alas! we had done that walk with ease more than once, but to do it with a lame leg was out of the question. No! no man with a lame leg should dare to insult Scotland by going to see her in his sufferings. She at least has the free use of her limbs as well as of her tongue, and bids