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out a fraud as a hunting-dog does game. Thus, a few years ago two huge blocks of Swiss granite passed the barriers unquestioned. Some keen-witted detective immediately asked himself why and for what purpose had those great masses of stone been brought from such a distance. He prowled about them for a little while, observed a curious depression in one end of the largest block, and ended by discovering that both were hollow and were packed full of contraband goods.

The custom-house authorities have formed a museum of the most curious of the objects that have been captured whilst passing the barriers, and that were constructed for the purposes of fraud. The list is an interesting one, and reflects great credit upon the ingenuity of the smugglers, if not upon their honesty. False busts worn by make-believe wet-nurses, false abdomens, hats with double crowns, hollow horse-collars, footstools lined with tin, carriage-seats concealing tin boxes, etc., etc., abound. There, too, may be seen a pile of pieces of linen fastened together with a cord, each of which is simply a box of zinc covered with linen. This trick was really ingenious, and was detected in a very odd way. The wagon that conveyed this merchandise into Paris was marked on the side "Toiles et Nouveautés," and the letters struck the custom-house agents as being a great deal too large and conspicuous. Hence arose suspicion and a thorough examination.

The museum also preserves among its curiosities an ordinary-looking cab, which is a hollow structure made of painted tin. There, too, are to be seen piles of common plates, as innocent-looking as it is possible for crockery to be. The first half dozen plates are all right: the rest are perforated and conceal a tube of tin. It will be seen that all these contrivances are directed toward the smuggling of one article—namely, spirits.

The product of the octroi averages about sixty francs per annum for every inhabitant of Paris. It is an indirect income-tax which is exacted from every dweller in the city. Unfortunately, its operations weigh heavily only on the very poorest classes. The banker of the Faubourg St. Honoré or the noble of the Faubourg St. Germain troubles himself very little about the extra price that he is thus forced to pay for his salmon or his chambertin. But among the very poor, those whose daily expenditure is counted not by sous, but by centimes, this tax is very severely felt. It is argued, however, that the poor man profits even more by the product of this tax than does the rich one, the hospitals, for instance, being chiefly maintained by its means.

There is an old regimental tradition, which meets the Eastern traveller at times in Egyptian hotels and Indian mess-rooms, that an English interpreter in the Turkish service, being present at a conference between his pasha and a Russian general, was just commending the two as "admirable specimens of their respective races," when suddenly General Kormiloff and Selim Pasha, after staring at each other for a moment, broke out simultaneously, "Eh, Donald Campbell, are ye here?"—"Gude keep us, Sandy Robertson! can this be you?"

This is merely a grotesque version of an actual and very significant fact—viz. that both the Russian and his hereditary enemy have achieved many of their greatest triumphs under the command of foreigners. The prominence of the latter in the military history of both nations is of considerable antiquity. As early as 1397, Sultan Bajazet formed the Christian captives of Nikopolis into the formidable brigade whose title of Yengi Scheri ("new soldiers") gave rise to the terrible name of Janissary; while several of the earlier czars in like manner surrounded themselves with a foreign body-guard. Coming down to later times, we find the Tartar Skuratoff acting as the right-hand man of Ivan the Terrible (1531–84). In the ensuing century the Russian centre at Smolensk was commanded by the terrible Sir Thomas Dalziel of Binns, afterward the fiercest persecutor of the Scottish Covenanters. Peter the Great's best officer was Gen-