the song of Roland at the “Old Piazza Coffee-house.”  And now where is the “Old Piazza Coffee-house?” Where is Thebes? where is Troy? where is the Colossus of Rhodes?  Ah, Rolando, Rolando! thou wert a gallant captain, a cheery, a handsome, a merry.  At me thou never presentedst pistol.  Thou badest the bumper of Burgundy fill, fill for me, giving those who preferred it champagne.  Caelum non animum, &c.  Do you think he has reformed now that he has crossed the sea, and changed the air?  I have my own opinion.  Howbeit, Rolando, thou wert a most kind and hospitable bandit.  And I love not to think of thee with a chain at thy shin.

Do you know how all these memories of unfortunate men have come upon me?  When they came to frighten me this morning by speaking of my robbed pears, my perforated garden wall, I was reading an article in the Saturday Review about Rupilius.  I have sat near that young man at a public dinner, and beheld him in a gilded uniform.  But yesterday he lived in splendor, had long hair, a flowing beard, a jewel at his neck, and a smart surtout.  So attired, he stood but yesterday in court; and to-day he sits over a bowl of prison cocoa, with a shaved head, and in a felon’s jerkin.

That beard and head shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant’s coat exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort it must be to have the business brought to an end!  Champagne was the honorable gentleman’s drink in the House of Commons dining-room, as I am informed.  What uncommonly dry champagne that must have been!  When we saw him outwardly happy, how miserable he must have been! when we thought him prosperous, how dismally poor!  When the great Mr. Harker, at the public dinners, called out—­“Gentlemen, charge your glasses, and please silence for the Honorable Member for Lambeth!” how that Honorable Member must have writhed inwardly!  One day, when there was a talk of a gentleman’s honor being questioned, Rupilius said, “If any man doubted mine, I would knock him down.”  But that speech was in the way of business.  The Spartan boy, who stole the fox, smiled while the beast was gnawing him under his cloak:  I promise you Rupilius had some sharp fangs gnashing under his.  We have sat at the same feast, I say:  we have paid our contribution to the same charity.  Ah! when I ask this day for my daily bread, I pray not to be led into temptation, and to be delivered from evil.

DESSEIN’S.

I arrived by the night-mail packet from Dover.  The passage had been rough, and the usual consequences had ensued.  I was disinclined to travel farther that night on my road to Paris, and knew the Calais hotel of old as one of the cleanest, one of the dearest, one of the most comfortable hotels on the continent of Europe.  There is no town more French than Calais.  That charming old “Hotel Dessein,” with its court, its gardens, its lordly kitchen, its