LAND.

(_A slight liberty taken with the "Bride of Abydos"._)

[Illustration]

Know ye the Inn where the laurel and myrtle
Well emblem the green who are done 'neath its sign?
Where they serve you on plate which is mock as their turtle,
Now fleecing the tourist, now maddening the _Times_?
Know ye the shams of that ill-managed house,
Where the host ever bows, and the bills ever chouse;
Where the "wax-lights" that don't half illumine your room
Give a muttonish rather than waxy perfume;
Where, although you don't see half a waiter all day,
For "attendance" as much as a lawyer's you pay,
And find even then there's an extra for "Boots:"
Nor the porters in asking for liquids are mutes;
Where your "bottle of Sherry" (Cape, under disguise,)
Scarce equals the vinegar-cruet in size,
And analysation completely defies;
Where the sofas are soft as yourself if you dine
At eight shillings a head--perchance even nine,
With the heaviest price for the lightest of wine?--
'Tis the English Hotel: and 'tis twenty to one
That, where'er you may enter it, brown you'll be done.
For more than e'en _Punch_ in a volume could tell,
Are the shams they serve there, and the victims they sell.

* * * * *

OUR TOURIST IN PARIS.--No. 10

If there is a point upon which an Englishman can dwell with pride, it is
the high character of the English press. He will never be more impressed
with this than when he turns over the French journals and examines the
matter of which they are made up. A little foreign politics, Paris
scandal, theatrical criticism, and a chapter of a vile novel. Fancy
taking up the _Times_ and finding, instead of three solid leading
articles, a portion of _Jack Sheppard_, or _The Mysteries of the Court
of St. James_, the debates cut down to an analysis, and no home or
foreign correspondence! The change would hardly be made agreeable to him
by the fact that the milk-and-water or poisonous contributions that did
appear were guaranteed by the name of the author of each, and that its
only polemics were waxed by some individual SMITH _eo nomine_, against
some individual BROWN of another paper. Yet this prosecution against
libel is recommended by a public person (I was nearly saying a
statesman), who is "by way of being" a patriot, but wants to have a
monopoly of influence and vituperation in his own hands. However, it is
happily not of the least consequence wha