one would have been delighted had he plucked up courage and shown our compatriot to the door. But nothing is easier (and more enjoyable) than to point out how other people ought to conduct their affairs, and no doubt, were we Swiss innkeepers, needing to make a year's profit out of three months, we also would have taken rampant Englishmen by guile, as bulls are lassoed with ropes. Your heart would be adamant if you did not pardon the poor little device when our national voice is again raised in the dining-room ordering away a plate on account of an invisible smut, complaining of the wine because of a bit of cork, comparing the beef with the home roasts, and enlarging on a dozen defects in bedroom service to sympathetic spirits right and left, and, for that matter, as far as the voice can reach. In England that voice will give it to be understood that it could not be heard amid the chatter of noisy foreigners “gabbling away goodness knows what,” but as a matter of fact no combination of German, French, and Italian could resist the penetrating, domineering, unflinching accent. When that host bows the voice into an omnibus next morning with great politeness, then one has an illustration of the spread of the Christian spirit enough to reinforce the heart in the hours of blackest pessimism. 

I

 Would a foreigner believe that the owner of this terrible voice is really one of the best? He is the soul of honour, and would cut off his hand rather than do a mean deed; his servants adore him, though he gives them what he calls a round of the guns once a week; and the last thing he did before leaving home was to visit an old gamekeeper who taught him to shoot the year he went to Harrow. When a good man preaches the charity sermon, this unsympathetic Englishman is quite helpless, and invariably doubles the sum set aside in his waistcoat pocket. Upon the bench he is merciless on poachers and tramps; in private he is the chosen prey of all kinds of beggars. In fact, he is in one way just what he specially detests—a sham—being the most overbearing, prejudiced, bigoted, the most modest, simple-minded, kind-hearted of men; and, in spite of that unchastened voice, a gentleman from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Certainly he ordereth over much, but he will take care that every servant has a reward before he leaves—going back from the omnibus to tip “that fellow with the green apron” who did some trifle for him last night—and if the landlord had only had the discernment to have described that accident to him, the driver's widow would have been richer by fifty francs. 

 The blame of our foreign manners is partly 

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