of a great military nation. No weak concern for other people's comfort mars the simple straightforwardness of his plans, nor interferes with their prompt and masterly execution. Amid the confusion and misery of French and Italian railway stations, he plays a conqueror's part, commanding the services of the porters, and marching off triumphantly with his innumerable pieces of hand luggage, while his fellow tourists clamour helplessly for aid. "The Germans are a rude, unmannered race, but active and expert where their personal advantages are concerned," wrote the observant Froissart many years ago. He could say neither more nor less were he travelling over the Continent to-day.
Granted that the scurrying crowds who infest Italy every spring, and Switzerland every summer, are seldom "children of light;" that their motives in coming are, for the most part, unintelligible, and their behaviour the reverse of urbane;—even then there seems to be no real cause for the demoralization that follows in their wake, for the sudden and bitter change that comes over a land when once the stranger
