bring back--not the less so, that they are duty free. Yet,
after all, 'joy's recollection is no longer joy'; and I doubt if the
retrospect of your wanderings be a repayment for their fatigues.

'Would he have us stay at home, Pa?' lisps out, in pouting accents of
impatience, some fair damsel, whose ringlets alone would make a furore
at Paris.

Nothing of the kind, my dear. Travel by all means. There's nothing will
improve your French accent like a winter abroad; and as to your carriage
and air, it is all-essential you should be pressed in the waltz by some
dark-moustached Hungarian or tight-laced Austrian. Your German will fall
all the more trippingly off your tongue that you have studied it in
the land of beer and beetroot; while, as a safeguard against those
distressing sensations of which shame and modesty are the parents,
the air of the Rhine is sovereign, and its watering-places an unerring
remedy. All I bargain for is, to be of the party. Let there be a corner
in a portmanteau, or an imperial, a carriage-pocket, or a courier's sack
for me, and I'm content. If 'John' be your guide, let Arthur be your
mentor. He'll tell you of the roads; I, of the travellers.

To him belong pictures and statues, churches, chateaux, and curiosities;
_my_ province is the people--the living actors of the scene, the
characters who walk the stage in prominent parts, and without some
knowledge of whom your ramble would lose its interest. Occasionally, it
is true, they may not be the best of company. Que voulez-vous? 'If ever
you travel, you mustn't feel queer,' as Mathews said or sung--I forget
which. I shall only do my endeavour to deal more with faults than vices,
more with foibles than failings. The eccentricities of my fellow-men
are more my game than their crimes; and therefore do not fear that in
my company I shall teach you bad habits, nor introduce you to low
acquaintances; and above all, no disparagement--and it is with that
thought I set out--no disparagement of me that I take you over a
much-travelled track. If it be so, there's the more reason you should
know the company whom you are in the habit of visiting frequently; and
secondly, if you accompany me here, I promise you better hereafter;
and lastly, one of the pleasantest books that ever was written was
the _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_. Come, then, is it agreed--are we
fellow-travellers? You might do worse than take me. I'll neither eat you
up, like your English footmen