who says-"I do not much care under what government I live, so that it is even a moderately good one; but I am unable to understand how my affairs can be arranged and my house set in order by three elderly gentlemen who have never even been to see it, and perhaps hardly know how to spell the very name of Bucarest. I also rather object," he adds, reasonably, "to my affairs being discussed at Vienna, where the voice of Russia, now terribly hostile to me, will be sure to have undue weight."

The truth is, however, the Wallachians are unknown. Their country offers little of interest for the virtuoso and the mere tourist. They have no representative either in London or Paris, where their fate is being really decided. Perhaps it would be much the same if they had; for one of their best men tells a charming story on this head. He went to Paris for the purpose of laying the real state of affairs in Wallachia before M. Guizot, then the secretary for foreign affairs of the citizen king. After some difficulty, he obtained an audience with the minister. M. Guizot talked to him without interruption for just forty minutes, setting forth his own ideas, and then dismissed the Wallachian statesman without hearing a word he had to say.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The joyous city. Difference between two historians. Author's apology for not entering into it with sufficient acrimony. The snow makes a respectable burgess with a blue nose. A waking-up pipe. Inglorious death of “a jolly fellow." Nature follows the example of the late Sir W. Raleigh. A new subject of polite conversation. The author's mistaken idea of a late administration. The sky goes into half-mourning. A refuge for destitute visitors. Clubs where a lord may meet a poet with impunity. The author supplies valuable instruction for calls and conversation.

M. KOGALNITCHAN and Mr. Wilkinson, the two best writers about Wallachia differ respecting the origin of the name of Bucarest. According to the former it should be spelt Bucuresci, and means the joyous city; the latter says simply,

K

that it was built on the site of a village which once belonged to an individual named Bukor.

I am not prepared to enter into this dispute with that vivacious acrimony becoming a man of letters, treating a subject on which few people can set him right, but personally I confess, I incline rather to the opinion of M. Kogalnitchan, for the capital of Wallachia is, I verily believe, the liveliest place under the sun.

For my part, I think cold and gaiety go together. Hungary, Poland, Russia, Sweden, all the northern countries indeed, are as merry as can be on every possible occasion, while the warmer climates seem to have nothing more amusing than standing about in balconies, and looking out of window.

I came home from a ball some time among the small hours, and now though it is but eight o'clock in the morning, the look-out from my bedroom is quite strange to me. I do not appear to have been introduced to it in fact, and eye it with the suspicious wonderment of a child before a dissolving view.

My neighbour over the way, whom I remember very well, yesterday morning, a dirty hulking fellow with mud boots. up to his hips, has become quite a respectable burgess in appearance. His nose is blue, his cheeks are red, he is clean and brisk as may be. His wife, the slatternly down-at-heel female whom I perfectly recollect floundering disconsolate about her premises any time since I came down here ten days ago, seems positively braced up, and hardened into a buxom body enough.

Ah! it is the snow! I understand it all after I have rubbed my eyes, and smoked a waking-up pipe. During the five or six hours I have been asleep, the ornamental upholsterers and decorators of nature have been at work so stealthily that they have quite taken me by surprise, and there lies their dazzling handiwork four inches thick on my window-sill.

Well, I am agreeable; we shall have some sledging in a day or two, and after all I shall witness one of the merriest national pastimes here.

The snow is indeed the most welcome of visitors. Yester

day the mud lay a foot deep in the streets, and it was quite a nice matter to sit in a carriage without digging your elbow every now and then into the ribs of any gentleman rash enough to act on the belief that there would be a vacant seat beside you. In point of fact, the vacant seat was altogether a delusion and a snare. The largest carriage was not large enough for the smallest individual; in the course of less than five minutes he infallibly went bumping over every part and portion of it. He knocked his elbow in the most uncompromising way against the apron-hooks or the window-sills, according to the nature of the conveyance. I had personally to deal with apron-hooks, and very exasperating they were, especially when they got hold of my funny-bone, and gave it a tug more than ordinarily severe, as we tumbled through a rut deeper than usual.

some

Also I heard a story on the faith of an Austrian officer awfully arrayed, that a party of soldiers sent on service or other to a village, not an hour's ride from Bucarest, actually got bogged in the mud, and were obliged to be drawn out by oxen and ropes. I heard likewise, upon credible authority, of a drunken man, who fell down and was smothered, and died in the mud before he could be rescued. In a word, there is no end to the stories I have heard about the mud, and I am very glad to see that the clerk of the weather has taken example by the late Sir Walter Raleigh, and thrown down a very elegant white cloak to shield the steps of the queens of Bucarest from its profanation.

There is another advantage about the snow, which I am sure will be appreciated by every lady and gentleman in good society, it will supply the readiest and most lively topic of conversation for many days. The talk about the mud was nothing to it. It will cut out the mud as completely as Mr. Blank cut out his colleagues (in every sense of those words) of that wonderful Dash administration, which astounded mankind a year or two back.

Besides, the mud was such a dreary affair. It required a robust and energetic cheerfulness of constitution to get the smallest hilarity out of it. If you tried the most modest of jokes on the hateful subject, the ladies cast down their eyes on the pretty dresses fresh from Paris (as most things are