right opposite, a horse-trough where you may give yourself the ducking you deserve.

Inside the tavern, where I sought the beer, I met a financier, a shrewd fellow of a gross habit of body and a dry wit. He is accountant to a firm of book-makers, and can hold his own with the tongue; he married into the family of a late eminent prizefighter, and, with the connection, seems to have acquired the talent of holding his own with the fist. I like Wat much, and have obtained various scraps of desultory information from him which are useful.

Imprimis, that a penny ticket on a river-steamer on a Sunday constitutes a man as bonâ fide a traveller as Henry M. Stanley, and endows him with the privilege of getting liquid comfort within prohibited hours.

Item, that the cigars on the outside of a bundle, and therefore indented with the tape, are generally the best.

Item, that if there is hide or pelt on a carcase before a butcher's stall, you may take for granted it is a British carcase. Foreign meat has to be skinned to avoid the risk of importation of cattle-disease.

And, ultimately, that if you are about to drown yourself in the Thames, and are anxious to avert identification, the best spot to throw yourself off is in the neighbourhood of a ship at moorings, as then you are likely to be drawn under her and kept in the chains for months.

Some readers who are unaware that there were no gentlemen with coat-armour in the College of Apostles, may object that in presenting them to Wat I am introducing them to low society; but I can assure them that I have seen a very respectable Duke hail-fellow-well-met with a jockey, and my friend Wat has a far fuller education than the primest of jockeys. He is apt and accurate in quotations from English literature; and if you venture to make Greeks "meet" Greeks in his presence, or talk of fresh "fields" and pastures new, or attribute the tempering of the wind to the shorn lamb to Holy Writ, he will lay you ten to one in sovereigns you are wrong, and win your money. He is also a champion orthographist, and will back himself to spell English words against any man in the British Empire for £500, bar words technical.

"Ah," he said, "my noble! is it true you are going on a lecturing-tour next winter?"

"If God but spare me health and lung-power I am," was my reply.

"And wherefore, may I ask? Can you not do better at the desk?"

"The desk is monotonous; besides, I yearn for change, and I may be able to freshen up my ideas, and set down some notes in my tables. 'Twill improve intellectual and physical health."

"It will, of course," agreed Wat. "For instance, it will be perfectly delightful journeying to Inverness, say, in the depth of December."

"As it so happens, I am booked for Inverness on a date in that month."

Wat stared at me. "Do you know," he said, "'tis a far cry to Loch Awe, and Inverness is at the other side of Loch Awe? Thither and back from where we stand is eleven hundred and ninety miles."

I was surprised; I had not entered into these details; but I held my peace.

"Have you got many engagements?"

"Yes; the first was from Dollar, which I accept as a good omen; and, curiously enough, 'tis not in the United States."

"No," said Wat; "'tis between Edinburgh and Stirling. What fee do they tender you there?"

I told him.

"Ahem!" he continued, fondling his chin as he spoke. "If you don't cumber yourself with luggage—a courier-bag will do—and if you bus it to King's Cross, and stop at a temperance hotel in 'Auld Reekie,' and give servants no tips, and condescend to all invitations, with a wise economy, I take it, you won't drop more than five-and-twenty shillings on that transaction."

"How! What do you mean? You surely are not serious?"

"Why, the railway return fare to Edinburgh alone is five-pun-nine-and-six; and that will burn a hole in your fee."

"Perhaps," I ventured, not to look foolish, "I may have means of getting to Edinburgh for nothing."

"Ah!" said Wat, with a sigh and a sorrowful sententiousness, "if you think you can try on that, well and good; but I'm getting so precious fat that I can no longer hide myself under a seat!"

The barman, who had overheard the dialogue, here burst into an ill-bred fit of laughter. That attendant had some appreciation of humour; but Wat did the correct thing, nevertheless, in rebuking him for his untimely hilarity. The barman should have waited until he had retired to his own room.

This lecturing, as I explained to the financier, is rather a hazardous experiment after a man has passed his fortieth year. It is like learning to act—even more arduous than that, for you have no prompter, and must be qualified to think upon your legs. Interruptions must not check the flow of your eloquence; indifference must not chill your enthusiasm. You must be suave, alert, sonorous, and roll forth a discourse got off by rote as if it were the offspring of the moment's inspiration. The combustion of thought must appear to be a spontaneous combustion. Once your tale is set a-going, there must be no pause, no hesitancy; the electric current must be maintained to strong and constant power, or your audience sinks into a freezing dulness of courteous attention, which wishes, but fears, to yawn.

"Yes," said Wat, "the steam must be kept up. But if a Derby dog strays on the course—I mean if a bullock blunders on the track, what then?"

"That is the difficulty. It is vexatious if a man dozes off and endeavours to balance himself on the tip of his nose on the floor, when you are in the high ecstasy of a rhetorical period."

"I know," said Wat. "When you are what you call piling up the agony."

"Or when a deaf dowager is seized with a fancy to sternutate as you are waxing pathetic."

"Sternutate. That's a good word," remarked Wat admiringly. "I swear I could spell that. By-the-bye, how are you getting on with that book on Spain?"

Ecce iterum Crispinus.

"Good-afternoon I am just on my way home to write it."

* * * * *

The title I shall leave to the finish. Something catching is sure to suggest itself. The dedication I pencilled off months ago. Let that stand.

The subject, I think, is good. Spain is comparatively unknown. John Bull on his travels will not open to it. The British tourist in the Peninsula too often carries with him his native sense of superiority and his constitutional tendency to spleen. He turns up his nose at what he cannot, or will not, understand. If the beef is tough, he does not consider that it ought to be, most of the animals from whose ribs it came having done honest work as beasts of burden before they were driven to the slaughter-house. If the Val de Peñas is rasping to his palate, he ignores that the taste for wine, as for olives and Dublin stout and Glenlivat, is acquired. If the tobacco is coarse and weedy, he forgets that it is cheap, and that he can roll his cigarette and smoke it between the courses. But why does he not console himself for the absent by what is present—the ripe golden sun, the luscious fruits, the picturesque costumes, the high-bred dignity of the humblest beggar, the weird Æolian melody of sudden trills of song, the flashing eyes, mantilla-shaded, which speak romances in three volumes in every glance? The truth is, your Briton abroad, I mean the average one—not men like Mr. Gladstone in Sicily, or Captain Burton everywhere, Queen's Messengers and Special Correspondents, travelling Fellows of Oxford and pilgrims of art—your Briton of the tourist type is less inclined to adapt himself to another sphere than to try and assimilate that other to his own.

This tourist goes to Spain; he hurries from end to end of the Peninsula, his guide-book in his hand and his opera-glass across his shoulder; he pays a flying visit to the Escurial, and