glowing paragraphs the popular
demonstrations in his honour, I am bound to assert that he was received
with very modified tokens of delight. There was not even a repetition of
the triumphal arch of last year; those funereal black and white flags,
whose sole aspect is enough to repress any exuberance of rejoicing,
were certainly flapping against the hotel windows and the official
flagstaffs, but little else testified to the joy of the Hombourgers at
beholding their Sovereign. They manage these things better in France.
Any French _prefet_ would give the German authorities a few useful hints
concerning the cheap and speedy manufacture of loyal enthusiasm. The
foreigners, however, seem determined to atone amply for any lack of
proper feeling on the part of the townspeople. They crowd round his
Majesty as soon as he appears in the rooms or gardens, and mob the
poor old gentleman with a vigour which taxes all the energies of his
aides-de-camp to save their Royal master from death by suffocation. Need
I add that our old friend the irrepressible "'Arry" is ever foremost in
these gentlemanlike demonstrations?

'Of course the town swarms with well-known English faces; indeed, the
Peers and M.P.s here at present would form a very respectable party in
the two Houses. We are especially well off for dukes; the _Fremdenliste_
notifies the presence of no fewer than five of those exalted personages.
A far less respectable class of London society is also, I am sorry
to say, strongly represented: I allude to those gentlemen of the
light-fingered persuasion whom the outer world rudely designate
as pickpockets. This morning two gorgeously arrayed members of the
fraternity were marched down to the station by the police, each being
decorated with a pair of bright steel handcuffs; seventeen of them were
arrested last week in Frankfort at one fell swoop, and at the tables
the row of lookers-on who always surround the players consists in
about equal proportions of these gentry and their natural enemies--the
detectives. Their booty since the beginning of the season must be
reckoned by thousands. Mustapha Fazyl Pasha had his pocket picked of
a purse containing L600, and a Russian lady was lately robbed of a
splendid diamond brooch valued at 75,000 francs.(79)

(79) Pall Mall Gazette, Aug. 1869.

But the days of the Kursaal are numbered, and the glories or infamies of
Hombourg are doomed.

'The fiat has gone forth. In five years(80) from th