Towards three o'clock in the afternoon, indeed, almost daily, M. de Blowitz has an amiable habit. He walks down with members of his family, and the guests who are staying with him, to the pretty bathing-cabins, in front of which stretches an improvised awning, and, picturesque in his colored flannels, he sits himself down with a cigar to watch the bathers. He, the most distinguished of European critics, is here and now the object of many curious and admiring observations. He holds here a little court on the shingle beach. Brightly dressed women gather to him from every point of the compass; while he who has his emissaries in every quarter of the world, and whose subtle influence is felt at each episode of the European movement, gives himself up with pardonable indulgence--under the ample umbrella--to the pretty trifles of glib women's charm and chatter. Before he has enjoyed enough, and obedient to one of those harmless devices in which well-taught men of the world often indulge, he retires from this charmed and, as I can affirm, charming circle, and climbs to the great villa on the cliff. There are letters to be written and telegrams to be sent to Paris, and perhaps an article meditated during the afternoon. [Illustration: M. DE BLOWITZ IN HIS STUDY.] The doors of the _Lampottes_ are wide open upon the great veranda, and the winds of the channel enter there, warmed from blowing over the upland grass. The life within is the ideally tranquil existence of an English country gentleman. Where did this cosmopolite, who really has no English roots, learn the system? For the hospitality of England can scarcely be translated with full flavor into any other idiom. The _schloss_ of Germany or of the Tyrol, the _chateau_ of France, have never, within my experience of lazy summers, afforded just the same delightful background as the country house of England. Yet to the _Lampottes_ the peculiar air has somehow been conjured. All the country round about this house is Norman, and therefore English--that is, dense, rich, familiar--so that the English illusion is complete. But no reader of M. de Blowitz's correspondence in the "Times" would ever have thought of placing the author in these surroundings. The _raconteur_ of the reminiscences in "Harper's Magazine" must appeal to the American reader as a sort of bustling incarnation of the ubiquitous telegraph, unwearied, and knowing not even in his dreams the first soothing tremor of the sound of the word "rest." On the contrary, M. de Blowitz rests frequently and smiles quietly. Large himself, he likes large air, large rooms, large landscapes, large and general ideas. And what contributes to all this more than rest, which gives time to think? It is a generous and natural temper, and that is why the great doors from the veranda are open to the channel winds.