events which stir the fluctuating passions of society ashore. Our captain was an example of the superstition and prejudice that sometimes eat into the mind of a man who swings to and fro in this dreary track of existence. Here he had been for ten years passing from Southampton to Havre, and back again from Havre to Southampton, the better moiety of his land experiences being snatched up at Havre; thrown into constant intercourse, such as it was, with the natives of both countries, and exercising a kind of social mediation in their mutual interchanges of pleasure and profit. Yet this little parched, obdurate man hated the French with a most comical malignity. Every day that he crossed over to Havre his hatred increased, and he never came within sight of the coast without falling into a furious passion. Throughout the voyage he was gloomy and taciturn, like one who was brooding over a wrong; but the moment the French shore became visible a demoniac activity seemed to seize upon him, and, flushed with an access of national fury, he gave vent to his patriotism in volleys of oaths. The most amusing part in the strange freaks which now took place upon deck was acted by the stewardess, whom he had completely infected with the same fierce antipathy, and who, glorying in his monomania, followed him about like a chorus, exasperating his frenzy, and explaining to the passengers what a true Englishman he was, to hate the French so thoroughly after so long an intercourse with them!

In the midst of the objurgations of the captain and the stewardess, and in spite of them, the steamer quietly rounded the point of land, and dropped into the basin of Havre.

The first objects that attract the eye on approaching the pier, are the mountains of bales of cotton that are piled up, Alp above Alp, on the quay. There is nothing else to be seen. They blot out the houses and the shipping. The tower of Francis I., which looks down upon the city, seems to have been erected for no other purpose than to keep watch and ward over this grand article of merchandize. But as you advance towards the docks, and begin to understand the place, the peculiarity becomes intelligible. Havre is all cotton, except so much of it as is taken up with oil. Cotton and oil are the staple goods of Havre. The town might be admirably represented by a huge wick of cotton twist floating in a reservoir of oil.

Hastening dizzily from the steamer, a new land-interest springs up in the busy thoughts of the tourist, from his desire to secure the best hotel. This is a point of considerable perplexity at Havre. There is certainly no town of equal importance so ill-provided with accommodation. The best hotels are the Hotel l'Amirauté and the Hotel de l'Europe. There are some English hotels, particularly Wheeler's, the London Hotel, and an American house, called the United States Hotel, but they are as abominable as flurry and filth can render them. Even the best can be tolerated only because there are no better. It is difficult to comprehend why a town carrying on so extensive a trade should be so wretchedly furnished with hotels. But, perhaps, the very trade of the place supplies the reason. People stop at these houses for a night, and are gone the next day-passing through Havre into the interior, or on their route home, and full of impatience both ways. Nobody ever thinks of remaining an hour in Havre, unless detained there by business. The hotel-keepers are well aware of the nature of their tenure, and do not think it worth

while to incur much expenditure in the way of embellishments for birds of passage. Their houses are mere thoroughfares, and finery in their chambers would soon be trampled out. Sufficient and substantial accommodation is all that is looked for or needed; and such was the pressure for room when we applied at l'Amirauté, that the landlady was busily occupied in preparing beds on chairs and sofas for travellers who had arrived late. We had some reason to congratulate ourselves, therefore, in having been able to appropriate three airy apartments, the only objection to which was, that they were perched up three stories high. Perhaps, after all, that was not so serious an objection on the odoriferous quay of Havre.

Our initial experience at this hotel was not very favourable to the repose so essential after a turbulent passage. Immediately upon leaving the packet, with one's head still swimming, and stomach jaded and aching, to come upon a déjeûner in the salle à manger, and witness the lusty operations of a vigorous, land-travelled, and vociferous French party over their breakfast is enough to bring back the seamalady. This was our luck, for our apartments not being yet ready for our reception, we were compelled to breakfast in the public room. There, at a table, sat a party of four great Frenchwomen, and a little boy, exulting in florid plaid dresses, with flashing eyes and peachy cheeks, tinging the rich saffron back-ground with gushes of ruddy health-there they sat at breakfast, eating, drinking, laughing, and screaming, altogether with indescribable volubility. It was a striking sight upon first landing from England-staid, decorous, conventional England-to come suddenly upon such a party in a public room, four ladies, without a gentleman, ordering the waiters with a loud confidence that defied criticism, and feasting away at the top of their animal spirits. Of course that was only the first image which involuntarily forced itself upon us, to be displaced by a moment's reflection; since the universality of such usages may be accepted as evidence of a more advanced stage of civilization than exists in England in reference to the conduct of women-little as we are disposed to exchange our retreating manners for this boisterous fearlessness. But after settling that point with our conscience we have still to reconcile ourselves to the breakfast. Tea and coffee, and pain à discrétion would be well enough, with a dozen or so of eggs. But in addition to these light matters, our French party revelled over a banquet of soup, a variety of roasts and ragoûts, and sundry bottles of wine, the whole concluding with an ample dessert of fruit. Regarding this formidable array of dishes as a regular French breakfast, there was nothing at all remarkable in it; but it had a disastrous effect upon our nerves as we caught slanting glimpses of the riotous feeders while we dawdled over our cup of tea.

Havre has a terrible air of business. You feel this at once. The moment you land you are coiled up in ropes and casks and trucks and porters and cranes and the bustle of the Custom House. The life of Havre is on its quays and its docks. There is no relief or escape from the din and clatter. If you attempt to get into the streets, it is still the same thing. The Custom House and the port pursue you wherever you move. The docks stretch up into the centre of the whole, to the residences, and even to the country houses

of the merchants, whose affairs are thus brought literally to their very doors. This eternal presence of the machinery of business thrust into the windows of domestic life cannot make a trade, but what wonderful facilities it offers to a trade in progress, or already made.

There never was anything so preposterous as to build fortified walls round such a town, which is not only a sea-port of great traffic, but the greatest sea-port-the Liverpool of France. The error has been gradually rectifying itself, as might have been expected, practical necessity rebuking the short-sightedness of old theories. As the population increased, and encamped in the open country, carrying out the town beyond its prescribed limits, the walls have been taken down, and the enclosure enlarged. But the new walls are as great an impediment as the old, and have been again in the same manner out-grown by the population. Here then is a great commercial city, with its heart shut in by a waste circumjacent ring, while its members are cast sprawling outside. To build a wall round a place of business, whose gates are jealously closed and sentinelled at a certain hour every night, and to say to commerce, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther," might have answered the purpose in an age when storehouses were little better than depots for stolen goods; but in this age, when we are loosening the fetters of industry, and cultivating freedom of intercourse over the civilized world, such a restriction is not only absurd but must ultimately prove to be impracticable. These fortifications and the mercantile spirit they enclose are antagonist principles, and cannot subsist together. The government of France might as well issue an edict to stop all the clocks and watches in the kingdom at a particular moment every day for the purpose of regulating the sun, as build fortifications to restrain the free action of industry. All such hindrances must vanish as knowledge makes head against ignorance, and discovers to us surer safe-guards than bastions and dykes. The pass-port system is a similar contradiction to the spirit of the age, and cannot, even as a source of revenue, continue to co-exist with railroads and steampackets.

When the fortifications of Havre were originally constructed, it is only historical justice to admit that it never entered into the imperial contemplation that the town should acquire commercial importance. The place was then a mere naked coast, sprinkled over with a few fishermen's huts. The whole trade of the spot consisted of the spoils of the sea, which were carried to the great lords up the Seine, who exercised a right of seignory over all the fish that was caught in this neighbourhood. Francis I. built the fortifications as a protection against the English. Sundry changes have taken place in the size and plan of the town since that time; yet, notwithstanding all the attempts which have been made to adapt it to the wants of the people, it is as inconvenient for the purposes of business as

ever.

And to this circumstance of continual alterations, of taking down and building up, and seeking within such circumscribed bounds to accommodate the demands of an increasing trade, is to be ascribed the marked discordance that strikes us at the first view of the town between fact and tradition. The streets, the quays, the docks, the pier present the flattest and most prosaic aspect of present

and urgent utility. Yet three centuries have elapsed since the city was founded. There is not a vestige of antiquity visible in Havre. Modern necessity has dug up its history. Francis I. intended it for a fortress-town to be called after himself Françoisville; it afterwards became a sea-port under the name of Notre Dame de Grace; and finally, casting off even that scrap of tradition, it grew into a great cotton-mart, with the more appropriate title of Havre-de-Grace.

The Babel of languages which tortures your ears on the quays of Havre betray in a moment the motley gatherings that are drawn to the place from all parts of the globe. It is from this point most of the German emigrants take their departure for the new world, and crowds of them are constantly to be found dancing and drinking in the vessels alongside, or wandering about amongst the numerous slop-shops that subsist by the frauds they commit upon these unfortunate outcasts. The German character does not improve under this aspect of emigration; for although the German makes an excellent settler, when he is fairly established in his location, his progress to it is frequently marked by extreme folly and recklessness, partly attributable to his poignant sorrow at leaving his fatherland, and partly to his simplicity and ignorance of mankind.

In a town so utterly given up to the crush of business in its actual manual details, society cannot be expected to discover any graceful or attractive features. In its most intimate intercourse it exhibits restraints and short-comings. There are, in fact, no classes here to make up a society, with the contrasts and collisions requisite to impart colour and vivacity to its reunions. There is but one class in Havre the merchants; and living as they do in the thick atmosphere of pitch and oakum, and oil and cotton, absorbed from morning till night in freights and cargoes, the drawing-room is little else than the counting-house with the desks locked up, and the ledgers and inkstands merely put out of sight. The clerks appear deferentially on these occasions, but can hardly be said to "assist" at them. As it is in all limited communities, a certain ambiguous barrier divides the principals from the deputies, so that the young men are kept at a well-understood distance, and the ladies are denied the meagre satisfaction of enjoying the "bald chat" of the only persons in the town who in point of age and expectations might be supposed to interest their attention. A soirée in Havre is the dullest of all possible assemblies; the gentlemen collecting themselves into mercantile committees in one part of the room, while the ladies, according to a recent authority, sit at a table and make believe to be working at a piece of embroidery. Yet as flowers contrive to grow into beauty in the most ungenial places, the ladies of Havre are distinguished for their charms, and deserve a happier fate. One ought always to say such things conscientiously and gratefully.

The out-door life is as dreary as the in-door. There is an attempt at a fine street, with flaunting shops in it; but the lively saunterer, dressed like a rainbow, humming a gay air, and twirling his cane is nowhere to be seen. Ladies are equally scarce on the promenade. The bien gantée, bien coiffée, bien chaussée has no existence in Havre. Everybody is occupied, and ill-dressed, and hurrying on about his affairs. A stranger who takes refuge at a table d'hôte finds himself in the same sort of company, and gets a villanous dinner into the bargain. The cafés are worse. Do not be deceived by the blaze of

lights, reflected in handsome mirrors, and shining down upon rows of little marble tables; the moment you enter you are choked with the fumes of cigars, the heavy aroma of ponch, and a compound stench distilled from an ingenious combination of all the offensive essences of a close, densely-packed sea-port town. The luxury of repose is out of the question here. The people have no leisure; they cannot snatch an interval of ten minutes out of the four-and-twenty hours to cultivate a solitary grace or refinement to embellish or relieve their lives. There is not a single reading room in the town. And they seem to have as little zest for social as for intellectual pleasures; always excepting the lower orders, in whom everywhere resides the eager desire to escape from toil, and indulge in festivity, when they can. A curious proof of the indifference of the Havraise to the enjoyments which in all other parts of the country are essential to the existence of Frenchmen, is supplied by the fate of a speculation undertaken outside the barrier, and just beyond the tower of Francis I., on the margin of the sea. This is a building of considerable magnitude, called Frascati, comprising the attractions of an hotel and a lodging house, and furnished with baths, and all the other agrémens of a suburban retreat. The establishment is built of wood, painted a fiery red, picked out with white, presenting a preposterously garish façade to the sea. The building cost the proprietor an enormous sum, and ruined him. It was sold for less than a third of the cost. The fact is a practical commentary on all such matters in Havre. The notion of creating a fashion, or getting the stamp of fashion upon any experiment addressed to the taste of the people, is a delusion. Mere luxury, or style, is a superfluity for which nobody would pay a centime. Such a state of society existing in a country where invention is racked for the supply of fantastic luxuries, and where every-day life is more like a masque than a reality, may reasonably be regarded with surprise. The French character is marvellously flattened in Havre.

There are absolutely no amusements in the place, no resources even for idlers beyond the restaurant, and the eternal game of dominoes. The lazy delight which the mercurial Frenchman takes in that same game of dominoes, over which he sits for hours with such ludicrous gravity, is a great paradox in a small way.

Madlle. Rachel stopped in Havre for a few days, and was invited to appear at the theatre, but indignantly refused. She is said to regard the Havraise with contempt, and, considering the eminence in her art from which she looks down upon them, there is reason to apprehend that she does them no great injustice. The entertainments at the theatre usually consist of mongrel dramas, vaudevilles, and flimsy operas. Tragedy and comedy are quite out of the way of the audiences, chiefly composed of sea-faring people, sailors, brokers, and clerks from the counting-houses. The theatrical taste of the town is something rather worse than low and uneducated. A gentleman who had resided here for a short time, and who wished to show some little attention to the younger members of a family at whose house he visited, took a box at the theatre, and invited his friends. Of course he was entirely ignorant of the nature of the entertainments. As the play advanced, it soon became evident that it was impossible for the ladies to remain. The plot developed the love of a father for his own daughter. There was no mistake or