immediately the head of his own table, he took
the responsibility of the party's merriment, and made the good humor
flow like the wine. I know not how it was, but ere the meal was over
I found myself joining in one of his choruses; Frau Kranich forgot
her asceticism and exhumed all her youthful air of gayety; James
Athanasius Grandstone promised the host to set his wines running in
every State of America. But the prettiest moment was when the two
brides rose and touched glasses, mutually and to the health of the
company, apropos of a little wedding-song which Fortnoye had composed
and was trolling at the head our willing chorus.

[ILLUSTRATION: HOMEWARD BOUND.]

CONCLUSION.

I have arrived at Marly, and, with the ssistance of much sarcasm from
Hohenfels, am getting on with considerable spirit at my Progressive
Geography. When man's Hope ceases temporarily to take a merely Human
aspect, may it not suffer a fresh avatar and begin in a new and
Geographical form its beneficent career? The Dark Ladye has sunk
beneath my horizon, but speculations over the Atlantean and Lunar
Mountains are still succulent and vivifying.

[ILLUSTRATION: CHARLES AND JOSEPHINE.]

I fled, lashed by a hundred despairs and by many symptoms of headache
and dyspepsia, from the wedding-feast at Brussels. Charles and the
baron of Hohenfels accompanied me. It was a night-train. The spectacle
of so much wedded happiness was too much for me, too much for
Hohenfels. The effect was, contrarily, rather stimulating to Charles,
who has made a match with Josephine, and with her assistance is
now listening, the tear of sensibility in his eye, to Mendelssohn's
"Wedding March" as executed by the village organ!

We passed Valenciennes, Somain, Donai, Arras, Amiens, Clermont, Criel,
Pontoise--the last points of merely bodily travel that I shall ever
make: here-after my itineracy shall be entirely theoretical. We took
a carriage at Pontoise, and traversed the woods of Saint-Germain. As I
neared home I bowed right and left to amicable and smiling neighbors,
who waved me good-day from their doors. So did my Newfoundland,
who broke his chain and leaped upon my shoulders, flourishing his
tail--overjoyed to salute the returning Ulysses.

[ILLUSTRATION: ARGUS AND ULYSSES.]

In the British Museum, among the Elgin Marbles, Phidias has carved
a pile of heaped-up marble waves, and out of them rise the arms of
Hyperion--the most beautiful arms in the world. Hom