I have always been at a loss to discover why certain classes of English travellers, who make their appearance in Paris during the excursion season, persist in regarding the capital of France, or, as the Parisian has it, “the centre of civilization,” as a Margate without the sea.  I wonder what was floating in the head of Mr. Cockayne, when he bought a flat cloth grey cap, and ordered a plaid sporting-suit from his tailor’s, and in this disguise proceeded to “do” Paris.  In London Mr. Cockayne was in the habit of dressing like any other respectable elderly gentleman.  He was going to the capital of a great nation, where people’s thoughts are not unfrequently given to the cares of the toilette; where, in short, gentlemen are every bit as severe in their dress as they are in Pall Mall, or in a banking-house in Lombard Street.  Now Mr. Cockayne would as soon have thought of wearing that plaid shooting-suit and that grey flat cap down Cheapside or Cornhill, as he would have attempted to play at leap-frog in the underwriters’ room at Lloyd’s.  He had a notion, however, that he had done the “correct thing” for foreign parts, and that he had made himself look as much a traveller as Livingstone or Burton.  Some strange dreams in the matter of dress had possessed the mind of Mrs. Cockayne, and her daughters also.  They were in varieties of drab coloured dresses and cloaks; and the mother and the three daughters, deeming bonnets, we suppose, to be eccentric head-gears in Paris, wore dark brown hats all of one pattern, all ornamented with voluminous blue veils, and all ready to Dantan’s hand.  The young ladies had, moreover, velvet strings, that hung down from under their hats behind, almost to their heels.  It was thus arrayed that the party took up their quarters at the Grand Hotel, and opened their Continental experiences.  I have already accompanied Mrs. Cockayne, Sophonisba, and Theodosia, on their first stroll along the Boulevards, and peeped into a few shops with them.  Mr. Cockayne was in the noble courtyard of the Hotel, waiting to receive them on their return, with Carrie sitting close by him, intently reading a voluminous catalogue of the Louvre, on which, according to Mrs. Cockayne, her liege lord had “wasted five francs.”  Mr. Cockayne was all smiles.  Mrs. Cockayne and her two elder daughters were exhausted, and threw themselves into seats, and vowed that Paris was the most tiring place on the face of the earth.

[Illustration:  BEAUTY & THE B——. Normally a severe Excursionist.]

“My dear,” said Mr. Cockayne, addressing his wife, “people find Paris fatiguing because they walk about the streets all day, and give themselves no rest.  If we did the same thing at Clapham——­”

“There, that will do, Cockayne,” the lady sharply answered.  “I’m sure I’m a great deal too tired to hear speeches.  Order me some iced water.  You talk about French politeness, Cockayne.  I think I never saw people stare so much in the whole coarse of my life.  And some boys in blue pinafores actually laughed in our very faces.  I know what I should have done to them, had I been their mother.  What was it they said, Sophy, my dear?”