ere.

Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of
British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To
watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you
would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in
London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not
so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on
Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted
six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they
are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations,
exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts,
with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to
Astley's. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they
unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The
"_morgue Britannique_," so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear
to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies,
spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of
their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters.
They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their
journals the vulgar tirades of a hired _commissionaire_; they eat food
they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The
courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in
England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness,
libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window
of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table d'hote_, and
truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life.
Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling
insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their
country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some
moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the
entertainment of his friends.

Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You have
cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become
enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master--that your
son may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself
may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to
amuse, without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy
pict