Wet-weather in the country is, however, a still greater infliction upon the sensitive nerves.  There is no club-house, coffee-room, billiard-room, or theatre, to slip into; and if caught in a shower you must content yourself with the arcades of Nature, beneath which you enjoy the unwished-for luxury of a shower bath.  Poor Nature is drenched and drowned; perhaps never better described than by that inveterate bard of Cockaigne, Captain Morris: 

  Oh! it settles the stomach when nothing is seen
  But an ass on a common, or goose on a green.

We were once overtaken by such weather in a pedestrian tour through the Isle of Wight, when just then about to leave Niton for a geological excursion to the Needles.  Reader, if you remember, the Sandrock Hotel is one of the most rural establishments in the island.  Think of our being shut up there for six hours, with a thin duodecimo guide of less than 100 pages, which some mischievous fellow had made incomplete.  How often did we read and re-read every line, and trace every road in the little map.  At length we set off on our return to Newport.  The rain partially ceased, and we were attracted out of the road to Luttrell’s Tower, whence we were compelled to seek shelter in a miserable public-house in a village about three miles distant.  No spare bed, a wretched smoky fire; and hard beer, and poor cheese, called Isle of Wight rock, were all the accommodation our host could provide.  His parlour was just painted; but half-a-dozen sectarian books and an ill-toned flute amused us for an hour; then we again started, in harder rain than ever, for Newport.  Compelled to halt twice, we saw some deplorable scenes of cottage misery, almost enough to put us out of conceit of rusticity, till after crossing a bleak, dreary heath, we espied the distant light of Newport.  Never had we beheld gas light with such ecstasy, not even on the first lighting of St. James’s Park.  It was the eve of the Cowes’ regatta, and the town was full; but our luggage was there, and we were secure.  A delicious supper at the Bugle, and liberal outpourings of Newport ale, at length put us in good humour with our misfortunes; but on the following morning we hastened on to Ryde, and thus passed by steam to Portsmouth; having resolved to defer our geological expedition to that day twelve months.  Perhaps we may again touch on this little journey.  We have done for the present, lest our number should interrupt the enjoyment of any of the thousand pedestrians who are at this moment tracking

  The slow ascending hill, the lofty wood
  That mantles o’er its brow.

or coasting the castled shores and romantic cliffs of Vectis, or the Isle of Wight.

PHILO.

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MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS

DUELS IN FRANCE.