I eat for lunch-a handkerchief A green goose-lost at Charing-cross; And we both roll'd in-lobster-sauce. The Princess Olive-mushroom ketchup- Poor Miss-red-herring-we must give her So Fanny Flirt is going to marry— A nice Welsh-rabbit-muffins-mummery- Crimp'd cod-crim-con-Crim Tartars-flummery. A RIDE IN A CUCKOO. "Why, what a rascal art thou, then, to praise him so for running! A horseback, ye Cuckoo; but afoot he will not budge a foot!" SHAKSPEARE. SIGHT-SEEING in hot weather is rather an awful enterprise: going over palaces is the most objectionable form of this painful pleasure; and the Château of Versailles, from its immense extent and total want of furniture, is perhaps the most wearisome of all these edifices to wade through. Others look like habitations to a certain extent, they let us into the arcana of royalty's domestic life, and so possess some interest, as well as dignity of association; but here all is bare and empty however fatigued the visitant may be, there is not a single chair to relieve him; nothing has been renewed, but the ponderous overpowering gilding, which glisters to the eye like all the gilt gingerbread of all the Bartholomew Fairs; and when the servant in his gorgeous livery has shouted-" Salon de Mars!-Salon de Venus!-or Salon d'Apollon!" you have nothing to do but to walk on, until you have completed the round of the palace and the mythology. With the exception of some large pictures in the anteroom, principally of Paul Veronese, you encounter nothing in the way of art worth a moment's attention: there are none, indeed, but some flaring, glaring, theatrical daubs of the modern French school, and the paintings by Le Brun and others, with which the ceilings are every where profusely bedizened. In spite of the "os sublime" given to man, that he might contemplate the heavens, it may be doubted whether he was ever meant to strain his eyes perpendicularly upwards to stare at a coloured ceiling; and such is my antipathy to this exercise of the art, that I seriously doubt whether I should have saved Sir James Thornhill's life while employed upon the dome of St. Paul's, had I seen him upon the extreme edge of the scaffolding, and possessed the presence of mind recorded of his friend, who induced him to run forward by smearing his principal figure with a brush. One knows not which is in the most unnatural posture, the man below, half dislocating his neck to look up, or the sprawling fore-shortened goddess above, threatening to break hers by tumbling down; the former becoming red in the face, (or black, if he have a tight neckcloth,) in the hopeless attempt at reducing all the fine colours spread above him to something like an intelligible representation, while they most perversely continue to bewilder his vision with the semblance of a Turkey carpet. This misapplication of his time, and the muscles of his neck, seemed more painful to the writer, as he would have been well content to devote some more hours to the gardens, baths, and bosquets. However, he submitted to his fate without a murmur; and, having completed his task, and reduced his chin, though with some difficulty, to its proper position, he prepared to return to Paris. Public stages, admirably conducted, depart from and return to Versailles every half hour; but for the sake of variety, and in the hope of seeing something of life among the lower orders, he betook himself to the corner of the Place d'Armes, where there is a stand of small carriages resembling cabriolets, and known by the names of Cuckoos, Pataches, petites voitures, and other designations which we hold it not quite decorous to commit to paper, though even belles and élégantes in France hear and name them without any offence to their unfastidious organs. As I approached the rendezvous of these humble vehicles, a tall gaunt-looking figure, with huge whiskers, a rabbit-skin cap upon his head, and a whip in his hand, pouncing upon me, inquired whether I was for Paris; and, on my answering in the affirmative, exclaimed-" À la bonne heure à la bonne heure! montez, monsieur, montez !" at the same time opening the front of his sorry carriage. Dearly bought experience had taught me to do nothing without inquiring the price, which I accordingly did; when he started back, ejaculating with a well-acted air of offended dignity-"Comment, monsieur!-vous avez à faire avec un honnête homme, un bon enfant-allez nous ne surfaisons jamais, nous autres; nous ne marchandons pas; avec des bourgeois, oui; mais avec des gens comme il faut, et surtout avec des Anglais, jamais.-Monsieur me donnera ce qu'il trouvera bon !" Knowing perfectly well that all this furious honesty would end in my being abominably cheated, unless there were some positive stipulation, I insisted on a price being named ; and as his “Ouidame! monsieur, vous me donnerez une petite pièce de trente sous," was only double the fare, I agreed to give it upon condition he would start immediately. To this he cheerfully assented, put on his horse's bridle in a mighty bustle, cracked his whip unceasingly for three minutes, and bawled, "Paris, Paris, Paris!" for as many more; but as no travellers came forward to benefit by this intimation of his departure, he began to give me the history of his horse, "un fameux cheval Anglais, nommé Rosbif," (which I rather suspect was an extempore appellation intended to recommend him to my favour), and assured me that he belonged once to a trumpeter "du régiment Scosh Gré." As often as I pressed his departure, he recurred to this subject by way of appeasing me; and as he patted his beast, and again called him Rosbif, he added—“ Il est bon, ce cheval là; il ne demande qu'à courir:" a compliment which my compatriot really did not deserve, inasmuch as he very often demanded to walk; to say nothing of sundry solicitations for kneeling or standing still. It was not until after I had put my foot upon the step to get out, that the proprietor of Rosbif was at length induced to get up, and make vigorous demonstrations of departure; telling me, in his barbarous French, "J'avons été 'ja deux fois à Paris, mais c'est égal: j'allons aller si j'avions tout notre monde, ça seroit mieux, mais j'aurons quelqu'un en route. Aie, donc, Rosbif-chuck!"-with which unintelligible ejaculation we started. An old woman who wished to be taken to Paris en lapin, (a name given to those who sit beside the driver,) hailed us in the avenue; but as she would only give nine sous, while the inexorable cocher demanded ten, the treaty, after a world of vociferation and gesticulation, was finally broken off, and we again proceeded. My companion now took out the stump of a pipe, which he had contrived to keep alight in his waistcoat pocket, and very unceremoniously began smoking,—a process, however, which occasioned little interruption in his volubility. In the course of his conversation about French politeness, French valour, and French generosity, (for all the virtues are French, though he admitted the English horses to be good,) I found he had been in the army, and had lost two fingers from his right hand at the battle of Talavera. If his account were to be credited, the standard-bearer of an |