Qualities transmitted through many generations, natural selection always tending in the same direction—of strength and dexterity—have, in course of time, endowed this [p003] international people with special characteristics. With regard to the superior instincts, they possess a taste for adventure, wonderful facility in acquiring languages, in assimilating every variety of civilization, and a strange amalgamation of qualities, which would seem incompatible with each other—Italian pliancy, Anglo-Saxon coolness, German tenacity. I do not quote the influence of French characteristics in the fabrication of these free citizens of the world: the soil of France is so dear to her children that, even if they tempt the glory and perils of an acrobat’s life, they rarely leave their native land. According to statistics, Frenchmen form a proportion of but five per cent, in the tribe of _banquistes_ who travel round the world. But these mountebanks are not so numerous as one might imagine; in all there are only a few thousands. But earth contains no guests more free than these men, whom the poet Theodore de Banville greets as the “brothers of the birds, the inhabitants of the ideal city of Aristophanes.” Lords of their own will and time, they obey no laws except the terms of their voluntary engagements. They fly from war, pestilence, and ruin. When the heavens darken, they strap up their trunks, go on board a steamer and journey to other countries where gaiety and gold are to be found. The sole disturbance in these careless lives is the question of engagements. The skill with which they have averted the difficulties, which their preference for a nomad life might have produced in their business, is a very remarkable example of that practical sense which constant travelling develops in the least cultivated individual. Dispersed throughout the four quarters of the world, the [p004] _banquistes_ have placed themselves in perpetual communication with, first, managers and _impresarii_, and then with their comrades, by means of a certain number of agencies and newspapers belonging to their corporation. [Illustration: THE ERA] The eldest of these publications is _The Era_, published in London in English. _The Era_, now edited by Edward Ledger, was started in 1837. It is a kind of guide-book, consisting of twenty-four pages, each containing six columns, in the usual shape of an English newspaper; the price is sixpence a copy. In the title the royal escutcheon, supported by the lion and the unicorn, separates the two words _The_ and _Era_. [p005] Half the newspaper is filled with addresses of this kind— Miss FLORENCE WEST. Address: 10 Elm Tree Road, N.W. Miss MINNIE BELL. Disengaged. Crystal Palace. All these addresses are arranged in alphabetical order. A proprietor can at once discover where the “novelty” with whom he proposes to communicate is temporarily staying.