mutton, and under ordinary circumstances would
be palatable, nay, sumptuous? Of what avail
are succulent cockaleekie and tender rumpsteaks
to him who is afflicted with inveterate nausea?
But the less said on these horrifying short sea
trips the better. The theme is inexhaustible,
and its bare mention reminds me of certain
abominations in the way of oil, garlic, and grated
cheese, in the boats of the Messageries Imperiales
plying between Marseilles and Genoa— but no
more.

After rain should come sunshine. Let me
evoke a few sunny memories of a steam-boat
dinner on smooth water which can be really and
thoroughly enjoyed. This is the deck of the
Gross Herzog von Schweinhundhausen, Rhine
steamer. It is just five o'clock, and we are
sitting down to dinner. The collation takes
place under a marquee extending from abaft the
funnel to the stern; and the man at the wheel,
visible through the opening of the tent, looks
like a fresh-water toastmaster. The sides, also,
have apertures, revealing, as we steam along, the
perpetually shifting panorama of the glorious
Rhine river. The only thing conspiring to damp
the felicity of the tourist in search of the
picturesque is the impossibility of having eyes at
the back of his head. For, while you are gloating
over the beauties of the right bank, the charming
features of the left have passed away. It is
all very well saying that you will make up for the
omission when you come back, but how do you
know that you will ever return? Some cunning
men have essayed to avert the deprivation by
sitting on a camp-stool amidships, and doing their
best, by an artful process of squinting, to take
in both banks simultaneously; but I should advise
you to run the risk of no such trifling with the
optic nerve, and, if you are too scrupulous to
commit your Murray's Guide-book well to memory,
and assume on your arrival in England that you
are perfectly well acquainted with everything
that is to be seen on either littoral of the historic
stream, the best thing you can do is to say
nothing whatever about it, and allow the Rhine
(which never did you any harm) to roll on in
peace.

Five years since, if my memory be not playing
the traitor, I was dining cheerfully, comfortably,
and copiously, on board the Gross Herzog von
Schweinhundhausen. Ye stewed eels, I have
nothing but what is good to say of you! Ye
speckled Rhine trout, ye lay not heavy in my
epigastric region! Others of the fresh-water fish
may have been slightly bony, remotely suggestive,
in their flavour, of some Erd Geist or spirit of
mud that hovered over them in their infancy;
but ah! what a glorious pair of capons graced
the board! What a delicious loin of veal (with
plum sauce) was handed round, dissected in a
manner quite foreign to our notions of culinary
anatomy. And the good, honest, innocent little
Rhine wines! The pale slender flasks that cheer
and do not inebriate, but whose contents if you
do really exceed—and there are artful
Marcobrunners which are not to be resisted—will in
their strong acidity leave you the next morning
without any skin on your lips. And, to sum up:
the dessert, the grapes, the peaches, the
nectarines, the apples, and pears! It was the
twenty-fourth of August; the weather was
superb, and I had not yet exhausted that stock of
cigars which every prudent traveller in Vaterland
should be careful to bring with him from
England. When dinner was over, I as carefully
sat to leeward of the gentlemen who were
indulging in tobacco, rolled or twisted; for the
other way nausea lies, and between complacent
digestion and the exquisite scenery, and the
strains of a brass band which didn't play too
noisily, and a popular novel—I think it was
Evelina, from Herr Tauchnitz's collection— I felt
myself from head to foot a lotos-eater, and wished
I could eat lotoses for ever.

"The Badischer Hof at Mayence: you will
stop there. It is at the Renown for Great British
Travellers," the man in the sky-blue trousers
observed. He had observed a great many things
before. Indeed, he had been talking to me all
day, and I had less listened to, than borne with
him, in a kind of dreamy listlessness. His bald
chat was as the babbling of a little brook which
you cannot be angry with, for it suggests coolness
and refreshment in the hot summer-time.
As this was, however, about the twentieth time
that the man in the sky-blue trousers had sung
the praises of the establishment at Mayence, in
whose interest I presumed him retained, I felt
bound to take some notice of it and him, and
said, mildly:

"Bother the Badischer Hof. I think I shall
go ashore at Coblentz."

He was not one whit disconcerted. " At
Coblentz, good. You will stop then at the Great
Black Horse. Your compatriot, the Duke of
Derbyshire, always stayed there."

"Confound the Duke of Derbyshire," I
murmured. " I've changed my mind, and shall land
at Eisenach."

"Aha! Yes. Good," the imperturbable man
in the sky-blue trousers resumed. " In that case
you will descend at the Two Emperors of Siam—
the well-known English aristocratic hotel. 'Tis
the only place between Biberich and Bonn where
you can get real Johannisburger, and Prince
Metternich comes there twice a year to see that
the stock has not deteriorated."

"Now look here," I broke in, quite good
humouredly, but firmly. " It's no use. I mean to
stop at the hotel—wherever I land—already fixed
upon in my mind. I know you very well. Your
name's Eselganz—Andreas Eselganz— and you're
one of the best hotel touts on the Rhine. But
you're wasting your time on me. There are no
other English travellers on board, so you'd better
have a cigar (which I will give you, if you please)
and a glass of Maitrank, or whatever you like,
and tell me a story."

"With a hundred thousand pleasures," the
man in the sky-blue trousers, who was as placable