soldiers are swarming in and out. They exercise,
and perform sundry labours. They crowd
the beach in search of stones. All the way
from Boulogne they trace a grey thread, which
on closer inspection proves to be a road. They
extract the weatherbeaten piles from the choked-up
port, and with them construct a solid bridge.
The wilderness is opened, the solitude broken
up. There are comers and goers, visitors, traffickers.
There are curious lookers-on, fine promenaders,
carriage company in dainty dresses. It is
a whirl, a turmoil, a hubbub, a throng. There is
noise in the morning, noise all day, and noise
at night; drums and trumpets, and words of
command, and shooting-practice, and Dutch
concerts by pupils of bands. There is eating
and drinking, laughing and love-making, home-sickness,
camp-sickness, and accidental death.

One day, however, the little corporal's nephew
rides in state over the bridge which I knew as
a plank; and, taking his place on a grassy knoll,
sees defile before him company after company
and regiment after regiment, with bands playing
and colours flying, and vivandières accompanying,
and crowds following. They go to
take part in the Crimean war. They are gone.
Another of our views has dissolved. The downs
resume their former quiet, the shore its ancient
loneliness.

It is noon of July 19, 1866. The grey thread
which the soldiers of the camp have drawn
across the naked downs, is beaded with dots
which slide down its slopes like strings of
comets followed by tails of dust. As they approach
the hill on which I recline, each dark
dot, increasing in size, is visibly fastened to an
animal or animals of about the bigness and
colour of fleas. They come still nearer; they
creep up the hill; they follow each other more
and more closely, forming at last a single line
fringed with a continuous nimbus of dust. They
are at hand; they are here. And lo! they are
the crowd of carriages come from Boulogne to
witness to-day's and to-morrow's races. Their
course is ever marked by a stream of dust like
the train of smoke which a meteor ploughs in the
air. But dust is the spice of a racing-day road,
without which it would lose half its piquancy.

Of these carriages the great majority are
open one-horse or two-horse four-wheels. Not
that a sufficiency of two-wheels is wanting.
There are dog-carts, sociables, butchers' and
bakers' rattletraps, with jingling bells on the
horses' collars, business vehicles converted into
pleasure-chaises, pony-carts and donkey ditto.
Also there is an omnibus or two, and a waggonnette
which, on the race-ground, announces
itself as the betting-office. Norris and Dreaves,
of Fleet-street, Londres, pay any sum of money
immediately after every course, on presentation
of the card. Betting here, however, is quite a
mild epidemic.

All these carriages had been preceded by a
commissariat for the sustenance and refreshment
of holiday-makers;—drays consisting of
a couple of poles supported on a pair of wheels,
at the further end of which, balancing the driver,
cocked-hatted policemen in snow-white trousers
do not disdain to ride; nondescript vehicles
laden with fruit, although drink-vendors are
manifestly in the ascendant. For here follows
an English venture filled with a cargo of sandwiches
and Cheshire cheese, to excuse the absorption
of small beer (very), bitter ale, and
Rawlings's soda water (double) — whatever its
duplicity may mean — prepared expressly for
the Prince of Wales, and sold at the Boulogne
races, on this occasion only, by kind permission
of his royal highness.

Accompanying, skirting, and following the
procession, are pedestrians more mixed in their
quality than the grander visitors who roll on
wheels. French women toiling under "hottes"
or back-baskets containing tons of cherries,
currants, and gooseberries; foot soldiers all in
blue-bottle uniform, free of joke and fleet of
limb; sellers of cakes, male and female; bons
bourgeois with their wives and children; single
ladies and single gentlemen; lads and lasses by
twos, by threes, and by dozens; English youths
in loose-going groups; French schoolboys in
file, attended by ushers; workpeople in blouses
blue or white, with their dames carrying nose-bags
and provision-baskets; tourists with
purses en bandoulière, containing untold sums
of silver and copper; shoeless boys carrying
their shoes in their hands, to be put on shiny
by-and-by; hobnailed navvies playing truant
from their toil; curés in their clerical dress
taking their Thursday's recreation; father and
son, mother and daughter, father and daughter,
mother and son. Amongst the pedestrians, too,
we must reckon the dogs, whether snub-nosed,
bob-tailed, crook-legged, or crop-eared. The
white-woolled loulou, the square built pointer,
the graceful retriever, the lop-eared hound, trot
along alike intent on business, with determination
in their faces to make a day of it.

Then there is a proportion of people on
horseback, first of whom are the superb gendarmes.
English Amazons, with their attendant
papas; masters of equitation, with promising
pupils; horse-dealers, with showy animals for
sale; young gentlemen, unattached, with veils
and without; natty little boys, on their clever
ponies; help to make up the goodly show.

The carriage entrance to the course is flanked
respectively by the French tricolor and the
Union Jack. The symbol of patriotism is thus
associated with the token of courtesy to a
neighbour. Boulogne enjoys the advantage of
using two distinct and separate grounds for her
races. To-day's, the more distant and more
airy, lies on a lofty plateau commanding the
sea; to-morrow's, for the steeple-chase, is
sheltered in the verdant valley of Wimereux.
Here, the north side of the course, appropriated
to carriages, is open, at a franc per head, to
pedestrian beholders also. But damsels likewise,
who have toilettes to show, descend from
their vehicular eminence, and walk about,
thus combining the correlative virtues of benevolence
and hospitality. The south side (admission
gratis) is more crowded; while its grassy