various nations the French towns seem to have taken a large amount of what I may call colouring from their neighbours. In the case of Germany, this was, of course, confusion of race. The Strasburgher used before he was absorbed into Germany to profess his ignorance of German if you addressed him in that language, and two minutes afterwards would let you hear him speak to his assistant in the very tongue he repudiated. On the Italian borders, too, what is called France is geographically and ethnographically Italy. Belgium and France are so nearly identical, that it requires more power of perception than I possess to tell the difference. Dunkerque is, however, far more Flemish than Ostend, while Boulogne is almost as cockney as Margate. I have sometimes wished that the Boulogne shopkeeper, in place of the superfluous announcement of " English spoken," would put up a notice, Ici on parle Français. Quite the same is it on the borderland between France and Spain; Perpignan and Bayonne are more Spanish than such places as San Sebastian on the other side of the frontier. In Bayonne more of the signs and advertisements appear to be in Spanish than in French, and there is scarcely one of the inhabitants who is not acquainted with both languages. As many of the Spanish visitors with whom the streets swarm know no French, the former language is the more common in the streets. The appearance of the houses with their carefully guarded balconies is also decidedly Iberian.

M

R. PROCTOR stated in his paper on the transit of Mercury, (Gentleman's Magazine for May last, p. 570) that there is as yet no recorded case in the history of astronomy of three planets being visible at the same time on a space so small as that covered by the moon's disc. A correspondent points out that in Chambers's "Handbook of Astronomy," Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury are said to have been in the same field of the telescope on March 17, 1725. My correspondent thinks that the same field of the telescope would represent a smaller portion of the sky than would be covered by the moon's disc. This, however, was certainly not the case. The four planets can only have been brought into the same telescopic field of view by using a telescope of very large field-from a rough computation, it appears that the field must have been two or three degrees in diameter. I do not recollect any description of what was observed on March 17, 1725; but it is quite certain the four planets were not so close as my correspondent supposes.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

MAGAZINE.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S

NOVEMBER 1878.

AN OLD MEERSCHAUM.

BY D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.

THE

CHAPTER I.

HE market-place at Trieste lay in a blaze of colour under the June sunlight. The scent of fruits and flowers was heavy on the air. A faint-hearted breeze which scarcely dared to blow came up from the harbour now and again, and made the heat just bearable. Mr. William Holmes Barndale, of Barndale in the county of Surrey, and King's Bench Walk, Temple, sat in shadow in front of a restaurant with his legs comfortably thrust forth and his hat tilted over his eyes. He pulled his tawny beard lazily with one hand, and with the other caressed a great tumbler of iced beer. He was beautifully happy in his perfect idleness, and a sense was upon him of the eternal fitness of things in general. In the absolute serenity of his beatitude he fell asleep, with one hand still lazily clutching his beard, and the other still lingering lovingly near the great tumbler. This was surely not surprising, and on the face of things it would not have seemed that there was any reason for blushing at him. Yet a young lady, unmistakably English and undeniably pretty, gave a great start, beholding him, and blushed celestial rosy red. She was passing along the shady side of the square with papa and mamma, and the start and the blush came in with some hurried commonplace in answer to a commonplace. These things, papa and mamma note 1 not-good, easy, rosy, wholesome people, who had no great trouble in keeping their heads clear of fancies, and were chiefly engaged just then with devices for keeping cool.

Two minutes later, or thereabouts, came that way a young gentleman of whom the pretty young lady did seem a refined and feminine copy, save and except that the young lady was dearly and daintily demure, whilst from this youth impudence and mischier shone forth as light radiates from a lantern. He, pausing before the sleeping Barndale, blushed not, but poked him in the ribs with the end of his walking-stick, and regarded him with an eye of waggish joy, as who should say that to poke a sleeping man in the ribs was a stroke of comic genius whereof the world had never beheld the like. He sat on his stick, cocked Mr. Barndale's hat on one side, and awaited that gentleman's waking. Mr. Barndale, languidly stretching himself, arose, adjusted his hat, took a great drink of iced beer, and, being thereby in some degree primed for conversation, spoke.

"That you, Jimmy?" said Mr. Barndale.

"Billy, my boy," said the awakener, "how are you?"

"Thought you were in Oude, or somewhere," said Mr. Barndale. "Been back six months," the other answered.

"Anybody with you here?"

"Yes," said the awakener, "the Mum, the Pater, and the Kid."

Mr. Barndale did not look like the sort of man to be vastly shocked at these terms of irreverence, yet it is a fact that his brown and bearded cheeks flushed like any schoolgirl's.

"Stopping at the Hotel de la Ville," said the awakener, "and adoing of the Grand Tower, my pippin. I'm playing cicerone. Come up and have a smoke and a jaw."

"All right," said Mr. Barndale languidly. Nobody, to look at him now, would have guessed how fast his heart beat, and how every nerve in his body fluttered. "I'm at the same place. When did you come?"

"Three hours ago. We're going on to Constantinople. Boat starts at six."

too.

"Ah!" said Barndale placidly. "I'm going on to Constantinople

"Now that's what I call jolly," said the other. "You're going to-night of course ?"

"Of course. Nothing to stay here for."

At the door of the hotel stood Barndale's servant, a sober-looking Scotchman dressed in dark tweed.

"Come with me, Bob," said Barndale as he passed him.

you in the coffee-room in five minutes, Jimmy."

"See

In his own room Barndale sat down upon the bedside and addressed his servant.