is the quietest creature that ever lived; and
at Carlisle used to be often covered with
children from the ears to the tail." The
north-country clergy were in Paley's time,
like Parson Adams, very poor, frequently
being farmers, sometimes being publicans,
and very often being sinners. "I know a
great many parishes," Paley once said, "to
which I could take you, and if the whole
population were to pass in review before you,
you would not be able to tell which was the
parson. I know him by certain signs that
I have learned by long practice: he has
usually a black silk handkerchief round his
neck, and he is always the greasiest man in
the parish except the butcher." Paley was
fond of good eating, and once when asked
what he would eat, replied, "Eat, madam?
—eat everything, from the top of the table
to the bottom." Another time he declared
he should eat of every course, but he stuck
at some irrelevant pork steaks. "I had
intended," he said, regretfully, "to have
proceeded regularly and systematically
through the ham and fowl, to the beef, but
those pork staakes staggered my system."

AMÉLIE-LES-BAINS.

ONE of the latest claimants to be especially
selected as a winter residence for invalids is a
village in the Oriental Pyrenees, now a small
town, called Amélie-les-Bains. Dr. Génieys,
the government medical inspector there,
recommends Pau for sanguine nervous patients,
predisposed to active fluxions; Mentone and
Villefranche (Villafranca, close to Nice), to
patients who require to breathe a warm and
saline atmosphere; Nice, Cannes, Hyères, and
Montpellier, to patients who are able to support
without danger, a sharp and tonic reaction;
Amélie-les-Bains to lymphatic and weakened
patients, who want to acquire tone without
excitement—an opinion which, if not over-intelligible
to the laity, is at least official.

Of the south of Europe an erroneous idea is
popularly entertained. The absence or brief
duration of frost and snow do not suffice to constitute
an earthly paradise. High, often cutting,
winds, are the plague of the south, as fogs and
drizzling rains are of the north. Where rain
does not fall in summer, for three, four, even
five, months together, intolerable dust is the
result. Some time in autumn there are very
heavy rains, which last a fortnight or three
weeks. In winter, though the sky be blue and
cloudless, and the midday sunshine warm and
bright, the mornings and evenings are cold and
treacherous. A particular danger against which
strangers are urgently warned, is the chill
which immediately follows the setting of the
sun, or his sudden eclipse behind a mountain.
It is an enormous mistake to suppose that in
the south of France it is always warm.

Too hopeful travellers should be apprised of
what they have to expect. Even enthusiastic
advocates of Amélie admit that, in winter, there
is always a fortnight that is hard to bear, in
consequence of fickle, sharp, or rainy weather.
This trying period occurs sometimes in January,
sometimes in February, sometimes in March,
and even in April; the only thing certain
about it is, that there is no escaping it. Otherwise,
the winter advantages offered are, a
drier atmosphere, clear of fogs and mists,
fifteen or twenty degrees of Fahrenheit warmer
than in the north. Also the possibility of
getting out several hours in the middle of the
day, five times a week, when invalids at home
would be obliged to keep indoors for weeks
together.

The spring is less agreeable than the winter,
being subject to winds which, here, are only
disagreeable; whereas elsewhere, as at Avignon
and throughout almost all Dauphiny and
Provence, they are marrow-piercing, insufferable,
irresistible. Remember, too, that not only is
firing dear, but, where English colonies have
not been for some tune established, fire-places
are scanty and ineffectual: the use of fire being
supposed to be to cook food, not to warm
apartments. There are real grounds for the
knowing advice to spend summer in a warm,
and winter in a cold climate; because in the
one you will find old-established precautions
against heat, and in the other appliances to
keep out cold.

Although snugly ensconced among the
hills, the summer's heat at Amélie is only
oppressive from eight in the morning until
noon. A sea-breeze then sets in, cooling the
whole valley of the Tech upward, from the
point where it falls into the Mediterranean,
which is only nineteen miles distant, as the crow
flies. By climbing the heights at the back of
the town, the Fort-les-Bains, or almost any
of the neighbouring mountains, you catch sight
of the sea in the far horizon. Until the reign
of Louis Philippe the place was known as Bains-
sur-Tech. Whether for precision, or out of
compliment to Louis Philippe's queen, it took,
and retains, the title of Amélie-les-Bains, or
simple Amélie for short.

But its great attraction and its increasing
prosperity have arisen from its being at once
a winter refuge and a Pyreneean thermal
station. It is the lowest of all those stations
in point of altitude, being no more than some
seven hundred feet above the level of the sea;
whereas its only rival for a winter treatment
by the waters, Le Vernet, stands at an elevation
of nearly two thousand, and amidst a
mass of mountains which must greatly lower
its average temperature, by attracting mists,
rains, and gusts of wind. Vernet-les-Bains is
therefore the summer resort in the Oriental
Pyrenees for invalids and for the multitude
of hard-workers who need rest and change,
while Amélie is their nook for hybernation.

Still, people can, and do, go to Le Vernet
in winter. A patriotic doctor, Lallemand of
Montpellier, cured Ibrahim Pacha there of a