nced. The galleries were crowded with students and
respectable operatives and _bourgeois_, with their wives and children.
Every face was bathed in the purple light of the departing sun, and
many eyes lifted up in silent meditation.

I was aroused from the reverie into which the contemplation of this
glorious sight had thrown me, by hearing a female voice exclaim, "How
beautiful is Nature--how magnificent!" I turned, and saw two ladies,
evidently mother and daughter, of sufficiently pleasing appearance. It
was from the elder that the exclamation had come, which brought me
back from my dream to this nether world. Conquering the shyness which
appears to be the Englishman's birthright, I made some remark on the
beauties of sunset. Like the earth, we revolved round the sun; but,
unlike that planet, we quickly diverged into other orbits. I dimly
remember that we talked of Angola cats, Dresden china, Turkish
chibouques, maccaroni, and Lord Byron, with whose poems this lady
seemed sufficiently familiar. I improved the occasion, as the right
thing to do, when talking with ladies about Byron, to find fault with
his impiety, his blasphemous scepticism, his cutting sarcasm, and the
unhappy frivolity which defaces the works of the man, who, with all
his faults, was undoubtedly the greatest poet the nineteenth century
has yet produced.

A pleasant walk along the quays brought me back to my hotel, in the
courtyard of which establishment I found an admiring circle of idlers
surrounding my English groom, who had just arrived with my dog Nero;
or rather Nero, who seemed by far the most popular character of the
two, had just arrived with him; and both appeared to know about as
much French one as the other, and to make themselves equally
understood or misunderstood. That evening, my friend and travelling
companion, B---- and I dined at Dotesio's, in the Rue Castiglione,
where we had an excellent dinner, washed down by more excellent wine.
The next day found us at Marseilles, at the Hotel D'Orient, concerning
which hostelry I have merely to place on record the fact, that B----
was mulcted in the sum of five francs for the matutinal cold tub in
which it was his custom to indulge.

The steamer which was to convey us to Algeria was well fitted up in
every way. We were the only Englishmen on board. The fore part of the
deck was crowded with Zouaves and French soldiers of various
denominations, with whom Nero soon made himself perfectly at ho