and partitioned in the same way, by means of coloured curtains of cotton cloth. This constitutes the penetralia, and is sacred to the bello sexo and the babies. The more luxurious ladies bring down their neatly-curtained beds, and make no mean show of elegance in the interior arrangements of their impromptu dwellings. Outside, and something after the fashion of their permanent residences, is a kind of broad and open shed, which bears a very distant relation to the corridor. Here hammocks are swung, the families dine, the ladies receive visitors, and the men sleep.... The establishments here described pertain only to the wealthier visitors, the representatives of the upper classes. There is every intermediate variety, down to those of the mozo and his wife, who spread their blankets at the foot of a tree, and weave a little bower of branches above theman affair of ten or a dozen minutes. And there are yet others who disdain even this exertion, and nestle in the dry sand.'
This kind of gipsying expedition to the sea in summer would hardly suit the form of European, or at least British civilisation; but we do not see why, in the one continent more than in the other, one's country lodgings should be required to resemble a town-house. In the Clyde, which we have mentioned as a resort for summer loiterers, there is one exceptional placethe island of Arran. Here the Marquis of Douglas has determined, with much good taste, that his property shall not be vulgarised by the new style of country lodgings, and so far from feuing the ground, he will not permit even a pier to be built for the accommodation of visitors. The village, accordingly, is simply a line of thatched cottages, which, in the fine season, are filled to overflowing. A few houses of more pretension stand on the other side of the bay; but, in general, no one sets his foot in Brodick who has not made up his mind to rough it pretty much in the fashion of the last generation. Sometimes, on the occasion of a holiday in Glasgow, which is six hours' steaming distant, the village is flooded with a moving population that can neither find house-room on the island nor means of quitting it the same day. Then comes a scene of something more than Mexican roughness. Shawls, cloaks, plaids, are the only substitute for tents, and a bush or a tree the only shelter from the summer wind. Such wandering companies are rarely short of provisions, for they have a wholesome dread of Highland hunger; and hearty is the feast and loud the merriment, as they sit thus, houseless and homeless outcasts of the Clyde. The night comes on, neither dark nor unpleasantly cold, and the trooping stars assemble in the heavens, and look down on the slumbrous waters, as bright and new as they were seen of old from the hill-tops of Chaldea. Higher swell the hearts of the spectators for a time, till, yielding to the influence of the hour, lower and lower sink their pulses of emotion, like the tide of the lately panting deep. Their voices fall; their words are few and whispered, then heard no more; the lights of the village disappear one by one; the last door is heard to shut; there is silence on the earth.
We never heard of anybody being the worse of this adventure, although it is a kind of roughing we would not positively recommend to Miss Laura Matilda, or any of her fair sisters. We would give them a thatched roof over their heads, a weather-tight room for their slumbers, and a substantial wall between them and the couple of cows that yield their warm milk in the morning. We would afford them a homely sitting-room, with no temptation to keep them within doors for a single moment, except during their brief and humble meals. We would plant their tabernacle in some lonely place on a hillside, or on the shores of a romantic loch, an hour's smart walk from any society they are accustomed to at home. We would have them make acquaintances of the said two cows; of both the dogs, even the surly one, which cannot for some time understand who or what they are, or what business they have there; of the hens, that present them with newly-laid eggs to breakfast; of the five or six sheep, to whom they are evidently objects of curiosity and admiration; of that sociable goat, which accompanies the sheep to the hill like one of themselves; and more especially of the little boy, who is proud of being called the herd; and of the cotter and his old mother, and his wife and two young daughters. We would insist upon their feeling a kindly interest in these new friends, one and all; on their taking leave of them individually when coming away; and on their carrying home with them an impression which would sometimes, in the crowded street, or the hot room, well suddenly up in their hearts like a fresh stream, or pass across
their cheeks like a breath of mountain air.
Depend upon it, we lose much humanising feeling, much true refinement, much of the poetry of life, in parting with the roughness of our Summer Lodgings.