re
never tired of repeating, that it works for the persecution of helpless
timid travellers and the protection of brazen and ingenious criminals.
(JOSEPH MAZZINI entered Italy a few months ago in the petticoats and
"front" of an old woman, the policemen taking off their hats and paying
compliments, while a poor English consumptive parson in search of health
was marched off between two chasseurs as if he had been a pickpocket.)
We complain reasonably enough that we travel everywhere scattering our
livres sterling, making the fortunes of innkeepers, creating watering
places, supporting entire branches of commerce, fostering capital
cities, everywhere cheated, pitied, and laughed at, and yet foreign
governments have not the sense to encourage such lucrative and harmless
visitors, but do everything they can to prohibit our free locomotion.
They are great asses, are they not? Call them all the names you like,
and now believe, if you can, that an English establishment abroad is
worse than them all. Our ambassador, as I understand from a diplomatic
friend, receives a very tolerable income from his country by way of
wages and compensation for exile, and yet cannot afford to keep a man in
his office capable of communicating with the multitude of Britons who do
not speak French.

We recollect a certain circular issued from the foreign office at
Washington, which invited the United States' consuls and ambassadors to
employ native Americans and none others in their offices. And quite
right. It is bad enough to have to deal with foreigners about our
passports where it is absolutely necessary, but when we go to our own
Embassy we hope to meet with, if not the _personnel_ at least the
language and plain good sense of the Anglo-Saxon. We _might_ expect to
meet also there a disposition to smooth instead of aggravating the
nuisances of the passport system, and, behold, we find an official with
all the French bureaucratic humbug, and without a knowledge of our
tongue. How such a monstrous absurdity could have arisen passes one's
understanding. Good heavens! why every hotel, every _cafe_, every shop,
nay every superior police office, contains one or more persons who speak
English, and the English Embassy is the only establishment without one.
Why don't some of those young swells come down from their room and do
the passport business? Do they think it "low?" But hear HENRY BOMBAZINE.

"You know MRS. TOODLEHAM, my Aunt, is given to reading