Travelling on the Continent in old days was attended with many discomforts, which to the present generation would appear almost inconceivably irksome. In the first place, there was the passport nuisance, whilst the Customs regulations were infinitely more complicated and tedious than is at present the case. I remember that, in 1844, I nearly involved an old lady we knew—Miss Astley—in very serious trouble through innocently begging her to take a sealed packet to my sister, then staying at Mayence. In my little parcel were, amongst other things, four pairs of Tyrolean gloves, then much in fashion, and these nearly caused the arrest of this poor lady on the Belgian frontier, where the officials threatened the most frightful penalties, amongst them a fine of £50, for attempting to smuggle a lesser number of pairs of gloves through the Customs than the Belgian law allowed—the regulation being that nothing under a dozen pairs could be carried by travellers without liability to a very severe penalty. The postal arrangements abroad in old days were also totally inadequate. As a child at Munich, in 1837, I recollect that our opportunities of communicating with friends in England were extremely limited, for we were practically dependent, so far as sending letters was concerned, upon our Minister or upon stray travellers passing through the city. Unfortunately for our correspondence, the English Minister had very little to communicate to the Foreign Office at home, and only sent a bag of dispatches about once a month, whilst the arrival of an English visitor was, in those days, quite an event in the old Bavarian city. Many of the habits and customs of the people of Munich were very strange and uncomfortable. The great families, for instance, entertained a strong dislike to having servants to board and sleep in their houses, and the consequence of this was that ladies, on returning from some grand party or other in a gorgeous carriage with two footmen behind, dressed in rich liveries and hats loaded with plumes and feathers, used to descend from their chariots, light their solitary night-lamps from the flambeaux of their departing footmen, and then sadly creep up to bed amidst the dreary and dismal solitude of a dark and deserted mansion.