incompetence. I have known an American who could be loud, and jolly, and frolicsome, and yet carry himself like a gentleman through it all; but I have never known a young American who could do so.

Englishmen of the class in question are boys for a more protracted period of their life, and remain longer in a state of hobbledehoyhood, than the youths probably of any other nation. They are nurtured on the cold side of the wall, and come slowly to maturity; but the fruit, which is only half ripe at the end of summer, is the fruit that we keep for our winter use. I do not know that much has been lost in life by him who, having been a boy at twenty, is still a young man at forty. But even in England we are changing all this now-a-days, and by a liberal use of the hot-water pipes of competition are in a way to force our fruit into the market as early as any other people. Let us hope that what we gain in time may not be lost in flavour.

But we have not yet advanced so far as to put down the bands of United Englishmen who travel for fun. Who does not know the look of the band, and cannot at a glance swear to their vocation? The smallest number of such a party is three, and it does not often exceed five. They are dressed very much alike. The hat, whatever be its exact shape, is chosen with the purpose of setting all propriety instantly at defiance. No other description can be given of it. To say that it is a slouch hat, or a felt hat, or a Tom-and-Jerry hat, conveys no idea of the hat in question. The most discreet Low Church parson may wear a slouch hat, and may look in it as discreet and as Low Church as he does in his economically preserved chimney-pot at home. But the United English tourist batters his hat, and twists it, and sits on it, and rumples and crumples it, till it is manifestly and undeniably indicative of its owner. And having so completed its manufacture he obtrudes it upon the world with a remarkable ingenuity. In a picture gallery he will put it on the head of a bust of Apollo; in a church he will lay it down on the railing of the altar, or he will carry it on high on the top of his stick, so that all men may see it and know its owner by the sign. Sitting in public places he will chuck it up and catch it, and at German beer-gardens he will spread it carefully in the middle of the little table intended for the glasses. He never keeps it on his head when he should take it off,—because he is a gentleman; but he rarely keeps it on his head when that is the proper place for it,—because he is a United Englishman who travels for fun. He wears a suit of grey clothes, the coat being a shooting coat, and the trousers, if he be loud in his vocation, being exchanged for knickerbockers. And it is remarkable that the suit in which you will see him will always strike you as that which he had procured for last year's tour, and that he is economically wearing it to shreds on the present occasion. But this is not so. The clothes were new when he left London; but he has been assiduous with his rumpling and crumpling here as he has been with his hat, and at the expiration of his first week out he is able to boast to himself that he has, at any rate, got rid of the gloss. He wears flannel shirts, and in warm weather goes about without a cravat. He carries in his portmanteau a dress-coat, waistcoat, and trousers, which are of no use to him, as who would think of asking such a man to dinner? But, as he abhors the extra package which a decent hat would make needful, he is to be seen in Paris, Vienna, or Florence with that easily-recognized covering for his head which I have above described. He has a bludgeon usually in his hand, and often a pipe in his mouth. He knows nothing of gloves, but is very particular as to the breadth and strength of his shoes. He often looks to be very dirty; but his morning tub is a religious ceremony, and, besides that, he bathes whenever he comes across a spot which, from its peculiar difficulties, is more than ordinarily inappropriate for the exercise.

These tourists for fun are known well by all that large class of men who are engaged in supplying the wants of summer travellers. No one ever doubts their solvency; no innkeeper ever refuses them admittance; no station-master or captain of a steamboat ever takes them for other than they are. They are not suspected, but known; and therefore a certain tether is allowed to them which is not to be exceeded. They are looked after good-humouredly, and are so restrained that they shall not be made to feel the restraint if the feeling can be spared them. "Three mad Englishmen! They're all right. I've got my eye on them. They won't do any harm?" That seems to be the ordinary language which is held about them by those to whom falls the duty of watching them and supplying their wants. The waiters were very good-natured to them, patting them, as it were on the back, and treating them much as though they were children. But it is understood that they must have wherewithal to eat and to drink well, and that their bells must be answered if any quiet is to be preserved in the houses. Sometimes there will be a row, and the English pride will flare up and conceive itself to have been insulted. The United Englishman who travels for fun has a great idea of his country's power, and resents violently any uncourteous interference with his vagaries. But it is so generally known that the "mad Englishman" is all right, and that he won't do any real harm if an eye be kept on him, that such rows seldom end disastrously.

These united tourists often quarrel among themselves, but their quarrels do not come to much. Green tells White that Brown is the most ill-tempered, evil-minded, cross-grained brute that was ever born, that he thought so before and that now he knows it; that he was a fool to come abroad with such a beast, and that he was absolutely, finally, and irrevocably resolved that never, under any circumstances, will he speak to the man again. The party will be broken up, but he cannot help that. There will be difficulty about the division of money, but he cannot help that. Yes; it is true that he is fond of Brown's sister, but neither can he help that. It has always been his wonder that such a sister should have such a brother. Only for Mary Brown he never would have come abroad with this pig of a fellow. The quarrel while it rages is very hot, and Brown tells White that Green is the greatest ass under the sun. Nevertheless the quarrel is made up before breakfast on the following morning, and the three men go on together without much remembrance of the language which they had used.

I have said that most of us would like to see our sons go out on such parties, and I think that we should be right in sending them. The United Englishmen who travel for fun rarely get into much evil. They do not get drunk, nor do they gamble at the public tables. And undoubtedly they learn much, though it seems that they are always averse to learn anything. How education is accomplished or of what it consists, who yet has been able to explain to us? That by far the greater portion of our education is involuntary all men will probably admit. We learn to speak, to walk, to express our emotions, and to control such expression; to be grave and gay, and to understand the necessity of alternating between the two, by copying others unconsciously. We exercise a thousand arts which we do not know how we acquired, and the more we see of the world the more do we learn of such arts,—even though we are not aware of the process. That our friends Brown, Green, and White might have learned more than they did learn on that tour of theirs,