distance or the need for shelter be felt.

How or under what influences the unprotected female commences her tour, who can tell? It will usually be found, if inquiry be made as to her family, that she has a brother, or a father, or a mother; that she need not be an unprotected female tourist, had she not elected that line as the best for her pleasure or her profit. She is seldom very young;—but neither is she very old. The lady whose age would admit of her travelling alone without remark rarely chooses to do so; and when she does, she is not the lady whom we all know as the unprotected female. The unprotected female must be pretty, or must at least possess feminine graces which stand in lieu of prettiness, and which can put forward a just and admitted claim for personal admiration. She is not rich, and travels generally with economy; but she is rarely brought to a shift for money, and her economies conceal themselves gracefully and successfully. She learns the value of every franc, of every thaler, of every zwansiger as she progresses, and gets more change out of her sovereigns than any Englishman will do. She allows herself but few self-indulgences, and controls her appetites. She can enjoy a good dinner as well as her brother could do; but she can go without her dinner with a courageous persistence of which her brother knows nothing. She never pays through the nose in order that people indifferent to her may think her great or generous, though she pays always sufficient to escape unsatisfactory noises and to prevent unpleasant demands. Her dress is quiet and yet attractive; her clothes fit her well; and if, as one is prone to suspect, they are in great part the work of her own hand, she must be an industrious woman, able to go to her needle at night after the heat and dust of the day are over. Her gloves are never worn at the finger-ends; her hat is never shapeless, nor are her ribbons ever soiled; the folds of her not too redundant drapery are never misarranged, confused, or angular. She never indulges in bright colours, and is always the same, and always neat; and they who know her best believe that if she were called out of her room by fire in the middle of the night, she would come forth calm, in becoming apparel, and ready to take an active part in the emergency without any infringement on feminine propriety. She is never forward, nor is she ever bashful. A bashful woman could not play her game, and a forward woman immediately encounters sorrow when she attempts to play it. She can decline all overtures of acquaintanceship without giving offence, and she can glide into intimacies without any apparent effort. She can speak French with fluency and with much more than average accuracy, and probably knows something of German and Italian. Without such accomplishments as these let no woman undertake the part of an unprotected female tourist. She can converse on almost any subject; and, if called on to do so, can converse without any subject. As she becomes experienced in her vocation she learns and remembers all the routes of travelling. She is acquainted with and can explain all galleries, cathedrals, and palaces. She knows the genealogies of the reigning kings, and hardly loses herself among German dukes. She understands politics, and has her opinion about the Emperor, the King of Prussia, and the Pope. And she can live with people who know much more than herself, or much less, without betraying the difference between herself and them. She can be gay with the gay, and enjoy that; or dull with the dull, and seem to enjoy that. What man as he travels learns so much, works so hard, uses so much mental power, takes so much trouble in all things, as she does? She is never impatient, never exacting, never cross, never conquered, never triumphant, never humble, never boastful, never ill, never in want of assistance. If she fall into difficulties she escapes from them without a complaint. If she be ill-used she bears it without a murmur; if disappointed,—as must so often be the case with her,—she endures her cross and begins again with admirable assiduity. Yet she is only an unprotected female, and they who meet her on her travels are too apt to declare that she is an old soldier.

Unprotected female tourists, such as I have described, are not very numerous; but there are enough of them to form a class by themselves. From year to year, as we make our autumn excursions, we see perhaps one of them, and perhaps a second. We meet the same lady two or three times, making with her a pleasant acquaintance, and then passing on. The farther we go afield the more likely we are to encounter her. She is always to be met with on the Nile; she is quite at home at Constantinople; she goes frequently to Spain; you will probably find her in Central America; but her head-quarters are perhaps at Jerusalem. She prefers the saddle to any other mode of travelling, and can sit on horseback for any number of hours without flinching. For myself, I have always liked the company of the unprotected female, and have generally felt something like the disruption of a tender friendship when circumstances have torn me from her.

But why is she what she is? As to the people that one ordinarily meets when travelling, no one stops to inquire why they are what they are. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson have come together, naturally enough; and, naturally enough, there are three or four Miss Thompsons. And when young Mr. Thompson turns up alone, no one thinks very much about him. But one is driven to think why Miss Thompson is there at Cairo all by herself. You go to the Pyramids with her, and you find her to be very pleasant. She sits upon her donkey as though she had been born sitting on a donkey; and through dust and heat and fleas and Arabs she makes herself agreeable as though nothing were amiss with her. You find yourself talking to her of your mother, your sister, or your friend,—but not of your wife or sweetheart. But of herself, excepting as regards her life at Cairo, she says nothing to you. You ask yourself many questions about her.

Why is she alone? and how is it possible that a girl whose dress fits her so nicely should not have "a nearer one and dearer one yet than all other?"

But you may take it for granted that she has not; or if she has, that he is no better than he should be;—that his nature is such as to have driven her to think solitude better than his company. Love of independence has probably made the unprotected female tourist what she is;—that and the early acquired knowledge that such independence in a woman requires very special training. She has probably said to herself that she would rise above the weakness of her sex,—driven, perhaps, to that resolve by some special grief which, as a woman, she has incurred. She is something of a Bohemian, but a Bohemian with a regret that Bohemianism should be necessary to her. She will not be hindered by her petticoats from seeing what men see, and from enjoying that which Nature seems to bring within a man's reach so easily, but which is so difficult to a woman. That there might be something more blessed than that independence she is ready enough to admit to herself. Where is the woman that does not admit it? But she will not admit that a woman should live for that hope alone; and therefore she is riding with you