“You have been asleep, Jane,” said Reginald.

“And have had such dreadful dreams.  Oh, Reginald!  I have had such visions of horrid things and people.  I shall never be romantic again about chivalry.  Such coarseness!—­such slavery!—­such ignorance!  Ah, how happy we ought to be that we are born in a civilized time, with no Mr Peepers for father confessors, nor fighting with firebrands for amusement!”

“You have been reading Hallam’s Middle Ages—­a present from your uncle Samson—­till you have become a right-down Utilitarian.  Come, let us ring for tea; and to-morrow we must start for Yorkshire!  The Quarter-sessions are coming on.”

* * * * *

DUMAS IN HIS CURRICLE.

We left M. Dumas at Marseilles:  we find him again at Naples.  Three volumes are the result of his visit to the last named city—­volumes in which he manages to put a little of every thing, and a good deal of some things.  Antiquarian, historian, virtuoso, novelist, he touches upon all subjects, flying from one to the other with a lightness and a facility of transition peculiarly his own, and peculiarly agreeable.  English travellers and Italian composers, St Januarius and the opera, Masaniello and the gettatura, Pompeii, princes, police spies, Vesuvius, all have their turn—­M.  Dumas, with his usual tact, merely glancing at those subjects which are known and written about by every tourist, but giving himself full scope when he gets off the beaten track.  His book is literally crammed with tales and anecdotes, to such a degree indeed, and most of them so good, that our principal difficulty in commencing a notice of it, is to know where to pick and choose our extracts; l’embarras des richesses, in short.  The best way will probably be to begin at the beginning, and go as far as our limits allow us, referring our readers to the original for the many good things that want of space will compel us to exclude.

M. Dumas calls his book the Corricolo, and devotes a short and characteristic preface to an explanation of the title.  This explanation we must give in his own words.  It is so highly graphic, that, after reading it, we fancied we had seen a picture of what it describes.

“A corricolo is a sort of tilbury or gig, originally intended to hold one person, and be drawn by one horse.  At Naples they harness two horses to it; and it conveys twelve or fifteen individuals, not at a walk nor at a trot, but at full gallop, and this, notwithstanding that only one of the horses does any work.  The shaft horse draws, but the other, which is harnessed abreast of him, and called the bilancino, prances and curvets about, animates his companion, but does nothing else.