mine, are out of the question now, unless you
smuggle them, which, as a man of honour,
you cannot. But it is simply a game of tit for
tat: both parties are punished alike. Two
great nations, England and France, each
maintain an army of douaniers, for the purpose
of cutting short one another's supplies. You
go without sugar and flannel; that is to say,
you have not half enough of either, and we, to
the same extent, go without cider and wine.
Excuse what I am saying—I mean no personal
offence but this double army of
douaniers does more permanent and widespread
mischief, than would a double army
of soldiers on the field of battle; because,
when the battle is over, and they have killed
and wounded on each side as many fellow-
creatures as they deem expedient, a peace may
follow for ten, twenty, or even thirty years,
during which men can make railways, discover
electric telegraphs, build ocean steamboats,
and found colonies. But, between the
two armies of douaniers the warfare is incessant;
there is no interval of truce in which
people can enjoy, even for a short-lived
season, the transitory comfort of cheap sugar,
and wine, and flannel, and cider. And if
you have a mind for a few camisoles like
mine, and wish your wife to go to mass next
summer in a smart English indienne robe, I
can see only one way in which it may be
managed."

"Ma foi! Monsieur, I wish you would tell
me."

"Listen, then, with all your ears. You
know that you have as much cider as you
can consume at home, and more. You know
that during Ihe long drought last spring, when
water was scarce and had to be fetched from
a long distance, people in this neighbourhood
made use of the weaker cider, or boisson,
instead of water, as being the cheaper fluid of
the two. You know that, in some years, there
are so many apples and so much apple-juice,
that you have not barrels sufficient to contain
it, and that cart-loads and cart-loads of fruit
are wasted, for want of vessels to put their
produce in. And, as you come from the south,
you know that in the wine provinces you
could grow wine enough to supply all England,
as well as all France, if you could only persuade
the English to come and fetch it at a
moderate price. Is not that the truth, Monsieur
le Douanier?"

"Monsieur I'Anglais, it is the true truth,"
he replied, nodding his head in confirmation
of every separate assertion which I made, as
it was uttered.

"Well, then; the only way for you to have
cheap flannel and sugar, and for us to have
cheap wine, is this: Ou the line of coast
between Dunkirk and Brest there is stationed,
I think, a tolerably large army of Customs-men.
You say that you are dull and cold for
half the year in this romantic spot, and I
have seen a good many of your comrades
during my travels hither, who look just as
dull and cold as you are. Suppose, then,
that your Government were to give you
something else to do by way of an amusing
change; suppose it were to put this whole
grand army of douaniers upon the retiring
list, and then were to set one half of them to
make more cider-barrels and wine-casks, and
the other half to plant more apple-trees and
vineyards. Suppose that my Government
were, in like manner, to discharge or pension
off every coast-guard between the Godwin
Sands and the Scilly Islands, and commission
one half of them to build more trading
vessels, and employ the other half to navigate
them, and to bring to France clothing
and garden tools, flannels, calicos, and pruning
knives, to pay for your cider and wine and
fruit, so that there should be nobody left on
either shore to stop the comforts of life from
being landed thereon; but that the very
men who now prevent a mutual exchange of
superfluities, should assist in handing them
across the water, what do you think of that
way of getting flannel waistcoats, not only
for yourself, but for your rheumatic father
and your tall, pale-faced girl, who are neither
of them a bit too warmly clad?"

"But the revenue, and the Minister of the
Interior, and the Minister of War, and the
beet-root sugar manufacturers, and the iron-
founders, and the spinners of rouenneries by
foreign machinery worked by foreign coals?"

"There are divers ways of raising a revenue,
besides starving, or at least pinching and
inconveniencing one another to do it. In
France, a dog-tax would bring you in a trifle,
as well as serve to check a serious nuisance.
But here comes one of your friends to take
his turn at your post. It may be sage not to
let him overhear us discussing this important
question. My motive for silence is not the
difficulty about the revenue, but the immense
changes which such a proposition would
seem to imply."

"The changes! " he exclaimed, with a
shrug of unrivalled expression. "It must be
a wonderful change to surprise anybody in
France. Au plaisir, Monsieur, I am going to
dinner; and, on the word of a Frenchman,
the secret you have just mentioned is as safe
in my keeping, as if you had not confided it
to a living soul."

BLACK-SKIN A-HEAD!

IF there be any man, woman, or child alive
who is not satiated with accounts of the
South Sea whale fishery, will he, she, or it,
be good enough to read what follows.

Thirty days out from Hobart Town, our
vessel floated under an unbroken arch of
pure blue sky, clear and translucent. On the
distant horizon rested the light trade-wind
clouds reflecting all the splendour of the
rising sun. The quiet dreamy beauty of the
scene was indescribable—so I am saved the
trouble of describing it. The helmsman felt