glasses and carrying on his shoulder a crimson
temple fluttering with flags, like a glorified
paviour's rammer without the handle, who
rings a little bell in all parts of the scene, and
cries his cooling drink Hola, Hola, Ho-o-o!
in a shrill cracked voice that somehow makes
itself heard, above all the chaffering and
vending hum. Early in the afternoon, the
whole course of the stream is dry. The praying
chairs are put back in the church, the
umbrellas are folded up, the unsold goods are
carried away, the stalls and stands disappear,
the square is swept, the hackney coaches
lounge there to be hired, and on all the
country roads (if you walk about as much as
we do) you will see the peasant women,
always neatly and comfortably dressed, riding
home, with the pleasantest saddle-furniture of
clean milk-pails, bright butter-kegs, and the
like on the jolliest little donkeys in the world.

We have another market in our French
watering-place—that is to say, a few wooden
hutches in the open street, down by the Port
—devoted to fish. Our fishing-boats are
famous everywhere; and our fishing people,
though they love lively colours and taste is
neutral (see Bilkins), are among the most
picturesque people we ever encountered. They
have not only a Quarter of their own in the
town itself, but they occupy whole villages
of their own on the neighbouring cliffs.
Their churches and chapels are their own;
consort with one another, they intermarry
among themselves, their customs are
their own, and their costume is their own
and never changes. As soon as one of their
boys can walk, he is provided with a long bright
red nightcap; and one of their men would
as soon think of going afloat without his
head, as without that indispensable appendage
to it. Then, they wear the noblest boots,
with the hugest tops flapping and bulging
over anyhow; above which, they encase
themselves in such wonderful overalls and
petticoat trousers, made to all appearance
of tarry old sails, so additionally stiffened
with pitch and salt, that the wearers have
a walk of their own, and go straddling
and swinging about, among the boats and
barrels and nets and rigging, a sight to
see. Then, their younger women, by dint
of going down to the sea barefoot, to fling
their baskets into the boats as they come in
with the tide, and bespeak the first fruits of
the haul with propitiatory promises to love
and marry that dear fisherman who shall fill
that basket like an Angel, have the finest
legs ever carved by Nature in the brightest
mahogany, and they walk like Juno. Their
eyes, too, are so lustrous that their long
gold ear-rings turn dull beside those brilliant
neighbours; and when they are dressed,
what with these beauties, and their fine fresh
faces, and their many petticoats—striped pet-
ticoats, red petticoats, blue petticoats, always
clean and smart, and never too long and their
home-made stockings, mulberry-coloured
blue, brown, purple, lilac—which the older
women, taking care of the Dutch-looking
children, sit in all sorts of places knitting,
knitting, knitting, from morning to night
—and what with their little saucy bright
blue jackets, knitted too, and fitting close to
tln-ir handsome figures; and what with the
natural grace with which they wear the
commonest cap, or fold the commonest
handkerchief round their luxuriant hair we say,
in a word and out of breath, that taking all
these premises into our consideration, it has
never been a matter of the least surprise to
us that we have never once met, in the
cornfields, on the dusty roads, by the breezy
windmills, on the plots of short sweet grass
overhanging the sea—anywhere—a young
fisherman and fisherwoman of our French,
watering-place together, but the arm of that
fisherman has invariably been, as a matter of
course and without any absurd attempt to
disguise so plain a necessity, round the neck
or waist of that fisherwoman. And we have
had no doubt whatever, standing looking
at their uphill streets, house rising above
house, and terrace above terrace, and bright
garments here and there lying sunning on
rough stone parapets, that the pleasant mist
on all such objects, caused by their being
seen through the brown nets hung across on
poles to dry, is, in the eyes of every true
young fisherman, a mist of love and beauty,
setting off the goddess of his heart.

Moreover, it is to be observed that these
are an industrious people, and a domestic
people, and an honest people. And though
we are aware that at the bidding of Bilkins
it is our duty to fall down and worship the
Neapolitans, we make bold very much to
prefer the fishing people of our French watering-
place—especially since our last visit to Naples
within these twelvemonths, when we found
only four conditions of men remaining in the
whole city: to wit, lazzaroni, priests, spies,
and soldiers, and all of them beggars; the
paternal government having banished all its
subjects except the rascals.

But we can never henceforth separate our
French watering-place from our own landlord
of two summers, M. Loyal Devasseur, citizen
and town-councillor. Permit us to have the
pleasure of presenting M. Loyal Devasseur.

His own family name is simply Loyal; but,
as he is married, and as in that part of France
a husband always adds to his own name the
family name ot his wife, he writes himself
Loyal Devasseur. He owns a compact little
estate of some twenty or thirty acres on a lofty
hill-side, and on it he has built two country
houses which he lets furnished. They are by
many degrees the best houses that are so let
near our French watering-place; we have had
the honour of living in both, and can testify. The
entrance-hall of the first we inhabited, was
ornamented with a plan of the estate,
representing it as about twice the size of Ireland;
insomuch that when we were yet new to the