The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-07-24 00:00:00

,EMENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

were crossing in the wretched sailing-packet that
took four hours—and sometimes twenty-four—to cross
from Dover to Calais ; was not Beatrice " put out "
and Benedick driven distracted by custom-house vexa-
tions—to say nothing of what he went through as a
.consequence of not knowing "the language" and,
supposing their destination was Paris, in what state of
mind were they when they reached that capital after
Jolting for three days on a paved highway, and endea-
vouring—vainly—to reconcile the British stomach to
a diet of (imaginary) frogs and the smallest and
sourest of potables ? On the other hand just look at
us:! Almost before we know where we are, we find
ourselves at Folkestone ; we dine and sleep at the
Pavilion in the most comfortable way possible, in case
the tidal boat has left, but if it has not, we step at
once on board, Mr. Faulkner, in his polite way, wish-
ing us a pleasant voyage, which is realised ; we have a
capital dinner at the Hotel des Bains at Boulogne ;
are "impossible d'etre mieux" while we stay there ;
and six hours on the rail suffices to land us at the
embareadere in the Place Roubaix, where we jump
into a nice little coupe and are driven to the Hotel
Windsor in the Rue de Rivoli, delighted with all the
world and each other !

This last category was precisely that of Lord and
Lady Acton. From Paris, after a brief but delightful
sojourn, they shaped their route for Germany, the
land of dreamy indecision, where " expectancy " is the
substitute for action. But lovers, luckily, have
nothing to do with politics, and when you have recon-
ciled yourself to " Kalbsbraten," " Butterbrod,"
" Kartoffeln," pipes, stoves, and short bedsteads, and
can believe that snorting is more agreeable than level
speaking, you may get on—as Lord and Lady Acton
did--well enough in Germany. The Rhin-gau is,
moreover, a pleasant land to look upon ; the Oden-
wald—as the old ballad says—" is fair to see ;" and
the Berg-strasse, crowned by " woody Melibocus "
and gleaming with golden vineyards, has charms for
even more prosaic folks than brides and bridegrooms.
Quaint old cities are there, too, to lure the wanderer's
footsteps with treasures of medieval art and rare
handiwork, all of which—singular enough—can be
bought for money—even when the owner is not a Jew ;
when he is, it only makes the difference to the pur-
chaser of being let in for a larger sum. This, for
example, was the case with Lady Acton. She was
passionately fond of pictures, music, and old china, and
passing along the Schloss Gass in Dresden, one morn-
ing, on her way to the " grune Gewolbe "—that
royal jeweller's shop which it costs you six shillings to
see—her ear was caught by the sound of a violin,
played upon, certainly, by no despicable artist. As she
turned her head she saw that the performer was a very
respectable looking old gentlemen, a patriarch of Israel,
who with no object in view but his own pleasure, was
standing in the doorway of a shop, and indulging in
the celebrated Professor-Herr-Musikal-Doctor-Kapell-
Meister-Screechenheim's last cantata, and smiling all
the while---as London hair-dressers say---" quite
affable." He played so well that Lady Acton stopped
to listen, and when he had finished, she complimented
him on his performance ; the next moment see found
herself riveted before a cabinet of rare old porcelain of
which the old gentlemen was the proprietor ; another
tune, and she paid him the price he asked for it,
fiddled out of her money, and what ladies of fashion
call " utterly ruined." In this manner, after many
devarications, in the course of which Lady Acton
picked up objets enough to freight an argosy---in-
deed, the goods were all duly shipped to England with
as much regularity as if the sellers were used to it,---
the travellers found themselves at Frankfort-on-the-
Maine, as much at home in the Hotel de Russie on
the Zeil, as if we were the best friends in the world
with the amiable Czar whose dominions are repre-
sented in the free city by that caravanserai.
Lord Acton was of an easy-going disposition, and
seldom troubled himself much about those petty ne-
cessities which millionnaires, very often, look so un-
commonly sharp after. Although not given to cal-.
culate his expenses too nicely, he thought himself
wonderfully clever when he took five sovereigns out of
his desk after breakfast, and said he supposed that
would do for the day. Lady Acton, who never carried
money, being quite content to order things to be sent
home, supposed also that it would, and so they walked
to the Eigenbahn, where, with a loose florin which he
happened to have about him, Lord Acton bought a

couple of tickets for Bonames, and was provident
enough to take the small change to pay for the omni-
bus from the station to the town. These details may
seem trivial to people who, in the language of the
turf, are in the habit of " frisking a fiver" without
giving the subject a thought; but, beside the admira-
tion which I cannot repress when I light upon a pru-
dent nobleman, I have a particulak reason for men-
tioning Lord Acton's extreme precaution, which
shortly will appear.
A twelvemonth before his marriage Lord Acton had
been in the position of a younger son, with only a
subaltern's rank in the army, and having served
abroad since he was eighteen, the usages of continen-
tal life—as they are displayed at Homburg—were as
new to him as to his bride. They were both de-
lighted with all they saw, and though a day in Ger-
many is, generally speaking, longer than in most
other places, they found an exception in favour of that
which they passed in the gardens and halls of the
Casino. Be as ethereal-minded as you may—wstheti-
cal is, perhaps, the better word—you cannot forego
the necessity of dining : to tell the truth, most people
prefer a good dinner to its opposite, and fortunately it
is the fashion now-a-days to say so.' We live so much
less at home than we used to do—the grand stands at
Epsom and Ascot, the public rooms at Blackheath
and Greenwich, the buffets on railways and the coun-
ters at Crystal Palaces tell such tales about appetite
—that it is no longer worth a young lady's while to
vow that she never eats anything : we—fathers, hus-
bands, brothers, lovers—who pay, know better. In
Germany, moreover, example goes so far; that although
no Englishwoman, if she fasted for a month before-
hand, could by any possibility play such a knife and
fork as the Princess von Schlammerbauch, or the
Ministerinn von Schweizer, or any other gormandising
German female, with or without a prefix, she may do
her devoir very respectably when she sits down to a
table d'hdte as they serve in the Kurhaus at Hom-
burg. Lord and Lady Acton were not, therefore, too
fastidious to starve in the midst of plenty, and as it is
the custom with the English gentlemen always to
order the most expensive wines on the carte—in the
delusive expectation that they will prove the best—
the cost of the dinner would have made a very satis-
factory addition to the daily revenue of the potentate
in whose dominions it was discussed. But they are
infinitely too polite at the Kurhaus to present the bill
immediately the debt is incurred : you can't run away
without paying—there are far too many eyes on you
—and, besides, you have cigars, and coffee, and so
forth, to add to the score before you leave, so the
pleasure of paying is reserved till that moment.
At' all the German baths where public gambling is
allowed, play to a certain extent goes on throughout
the day, with only slight intermissions ; but the
amusement is, for the most part, a tame and languid
affair, until evening sets in : then, indeed, it is stirring
enough. Let a stranger watch the fluctuations of the
game for ten minutes, and, in spite of himself, he be-
comes interested, and if he has any money in his pocket
the chances are he will make more or less of it before
he leaves the spot.
Lord Acton was like the rest of us ; he had no fixed
idea about winning or losing when he threw down a
sovereign on the table ; he cared nothing about the
result when the croupier raked it into the banker's
heap, nor did he seem particularly elated when, after
repeating his raise, the coin returned to his possession.
But he was amused by the process—and so was Lady
Acton, who stood beside him, and who, after two or
three alternations, woman like, gave her advice, which,
man like (in the bridegroom state of being), he fol-
lowed ; and having at one time won about twenty
pounds, found himself at the end of a quarter of an
hour with a waistcoat pocket entirely empty.
" Have you any money about you, Constance ?" he
asked his wife.

" Not a sou, dear," was the lady's reply.
" That's unlucky," returned her husband.
Perhaps it was, but not for the reason which he
would have assigned at that moment, had he stated it,
his notion being that if he could have put down on
" the other colour " he should have made himself all
right again. He looked round the table to see if by
chance there was any one he knew from whom- he
could have borrowed what he wanted, but the people
there were all strangers to him, so he gave his arm to
Lady Acton, and, turning away, walked into another
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