MRS HAZELDEAN to Miss Jemima.--"Is that the note you were to write for me?" MISS JEMIMA.--"Yes, I supposed you did not care about seeing it, so I have sealed it, and given it to George." MRS HAZELDEAN.--"But Frank will pass close by the Casino on his way to the Leslies'. It may be more civil if he leaves the note himself." MISS JEMIMA hesitatingly.--"Do you think so?" MRS HAZELDEAN.--"Yes, certainly. Frank--Frank--as you pass by the Casino, call on Mr Riccabocca, give this note, and say we shall be heartily glad if he will come." Frank nods. "Stop a bit," cried the Squire. "If Rickeybockey's at home, 'tis ten to one if he don't ask you to take a glass of wine! If he does, mind, 'tis worse than asking you to take a turn on the rack. Faugh! you remember, Harry?--I thought it was all up with me." "Yes," cried Mrs Hazeldean, "for heaven's sake, not a drop! Wine indeed!" "Don't talk of it," cried the Squire, making a wry face. "I'll take care, sir!" said Frank, laughing as he disappeared within the stable, followed by Miss Jemima, who now coaxingly makes it up with him, and does not leave off her admonitions to be extremely polite to the poor foreign gentleman, till Frank gets his foot into the stirrup; and the pony, who knows whom he has got to deal with, gives a preparatory plunge or two, and then darts out of the yard. MILITARY LIFE IN NORTH AFRICA.[16] In days of national antipathy, now happily bygone, it was a vulgar English prejudice that Frenchmen were great only as cooks and dancing-masters. In popular belief, the fiddle and the frying-pan were their insignia, pirouettes and fricassees their highest achievements. Peace and steam have exploded these exaggerated notions in the minds even of the least intelligent. They would be inexcusable in the days of cheap excursions to Paris and electric telegraphs beneath the billows of the Channel. Moreover, Englishmen have learned to rival what they once contemned; native talent has been encouraged; Britain glories in cooks who will lower their culinary flag to no foreign kickshaw-compounder that ever stirred a sauce or frothed a _soufflé_; and in professors of the choregraphic who would scorn to be excelled by any Gaul that ever carried a kit. A higher standard has been fixed for the capacity of Frenchmen. Rivalled in cookery and capers, their claims are admitted to first-rate excellence in two nobler sciences--the military, namely, and the dramatic. Sometimes they unite the two. Witness Napoleon, the greatest warrior and most consummate actor France can boast. Certainly Frenchmen show nowhere to such advantage as on the stage or in the field, by the light of the foot-lamps or through the smoke of the bivouac. So strongly, indeed, are they imbued with the military and dramatic essences, that these are continually perceptible when they are engaged in pursuits of a most opposite character. The conscription and national-guard system give to the whole