the tipsy Slovak confronted us, choosing a knife from the choice collection that decorated his belt. These are the incidents we recall with the old shiver of fear. But our terror was nothing to that we inspired. The "darkey" fainted before us; to the Armenian we were the atrocity; the Italian retreated to his fastness; we routed the armies of France and of Germany; the Briton invoked the Bobby; and the horse of all nations filed at our coming. And there were, besides, the every-day happenings, as full or empty of romance as we made them-really crowded, for we were the pioneers of cycle touring in most of the countries of Europe. This, we can say without conceit, is a fact, not a boast.

Throughout the length of Italy, thirteen years ago, we took the first tandem tricycle ever seen there. Were we not acclaimed and escorted in a triumphal procession, like Cimabue, through Florence? and in Rome, like Paul, hailed to the Capitol? Ovations were tendered to us in every Tuscan town, in every Umbrian monastery. We did not ride to advertise our machine or to make a sensation. Yet we did make the sensation; we did advertise cycling more than anybody has since. True, it became a bore in the end not to be able to enter a town without the danger of popular excitement wrecking our tandem; not to eat a meal without finding ourselves a spectacle for the awestruck crowd. But still there was a pride in knowing that we were the first to cycle over the Ponte Vecchio and through the Porta del Popolo, to wheel down the lovely valley of the Arno, up to high Siena, and-in company with the monksalong the terraces of Monte Oliveto. Of course, other cyclers have ridden over the same roads in the intervening years; indeed, hundreds have asked us for our route. But ours was the task of preparing the way.

A year later the experience was repeated in France. Who again shall know the delightful misery of arriving in a French town, uncertain whether one is to be refused admission to the

only inn, or put in a bedroom with six other people, or treated by the city fathers as a distinguished stranger within their gates? Popular as France now is as a touring ground—and rightly if unfortunately so, for it possesses the best highways in the world-we can look back to the time when no one toured there but ourselves, and to whole departments where our wheels were the first on the perfect roads. Today, France, superficially, has become Anglicized, athleticized, despite Drumont. But the change is only superficial. The Frenchman is still a Frenchman; his roads are still the best; his inn still preserves its character and-equally important-its charges, for if a room is sometimes set apart for the superior person, as his chops and his steaks and his prices and his customs follow him into it, the rest of the company is happily spared his presence, the rest of the inn escapes his innovations. Go a little off the beaten track-the track sacrificed to Cook and to Lunn-and France is still entirely French, as it always will be so long as there are Frenchmen in it. The Englishman and the American have invaded the country, but, much as they scorch up and down its roads, they know next to nothing of its character and its beauty. For both are blind, and see in it but a land of foreigners who are not as they are for which, God be praised!

If they only knew, the character is worth their study, the beauty of inexhaustible variety. Even the casual wheel tripper, were he to hear of it, could not fail to be impressed by the Forest of Fontainebleau, where the cycler may ride, without wilting his collar or soiling her spats, for days, over constantly varying and ever more beautiful roads. Nor, despite the blight that a fashionable popularity brings with it, has the charm vanished from Provence. Mr. Ruskin, when expending his best bad language upon cycles, really because they had succeeded "papa's" carriage, forgot, as we hope we shall never forget, that others may see the Jura and the sudden splendor of his beloved view from the Col de la

Faucille as he did, even though they travel in another fashion-that, though they climb on an unsightly wheel, though they have not his eloquence, they may feel the wonder of that land spread out below, with its moving or pausing waters, its sapphire lake and narcissus meads, its mountains and mountain snow melting into the sky; "all that living plain, burning with human gladness, studded with white towns, a milky way of star-dwellings cast across its sunlit blue."

For from the cycle is possible that deliberate survey of countries through which the journey lies, not to be enjoyed, as Mr. Ruskin rightly thinks, from the window of the railway carriage. And for the cycler, again, as for the traveller by diligence or coach-"in the olden days of travelling, now to return no more"-there is something better to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than the new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girders reserved for the tourist by train. Even Venice, the town Mr. Ruskin believes ruined in its approach beyond all others, has not altered in this respect for the cycler, who, also, if he but have imagination enough, may find "muddy Brenta, vulgar villa, dusty causeway, sandy beach," rich in rapture, and the black knot of gondolas in the canal at Mestre more beautiful than a sunset full of clouds all scarlet and gold; may wonder at the strange rising of Venetian walls and towers out of the midst, seemingly, of the deep sea. And, if a railway bridge does cross the lagoon, the hurrying train, since he is not in it, may add new beauty to southern waters as it did to the northern Thames in the eyes of Turner, quick to discern the harmony that is wrought of rain, steam, and speed.

But, indeed, the cycler is far more free to make an outdoor picture than the man cooped up, wedged in the overcrowded seats of the diligence, or else at the mercy of the driver of his own carriage, and the unreliable horses that must be got in due time to the next

stage on the route. The cycler need think of no one but himself; he is the perfection of selfishness-the real Ruskin on tour. He can loaf by the wayside whenever he chooses, until he has all the loveliness of the land by heart. And the delight of looking back to those long, lazy halts-the hours spent on the banks of little canals among the windmills of Holland; on the green of the remote Hungarian village, while the peasants danced the wild fantastic Czardas in the twilight; or escaping the midday heat on the Loire's poplared banks, and under the fragrant pines of the Cevennes. And as he rides on there is absolutely nothing to shut out the prospect; no fellow-passengers to dispute it with him, no carriage top to obscure it, no silly driver to intrude inane remarks. The landscape is all his alone; and his, too, the marvel of the moment when, at a turn in the road, with a dip in the hill, an opening in the wood, he sees for the first time the farfamed city towards which he travels; for the first time, the snow-laden heights that fill him with hope of the Alps; for the first time, the towers of the great cathedral that has always been the goal of pilgrim and tourist. For whom now does the dome of St. Peter's float, a misty shadow on the horizon above the swells of the Campagna, but the cycler? For whom does the mighty pile of Windsor rise with such pomp and splendor amid the groves and glades of the Great Park, or the chance village lie so peacefully and invitingly at the foot of the long hill he descends at sundown? The fever of speed may be upon him, he may be in the humor when it makes small difference where he goes so long as he is going; and yet, though he may not care at the time, all the while he will be storing up impressions of the scenes through which he rushes. Afterwards, and often, he will see them all again, more vivid in memory than in fact. Of a sudden the little nameless town will come between him and his book, or the purple shadows of he knows not what mountain-side blot out the 'busses of

the Strand, while the wail of the wind down the valley for him drowns the mighty roar of London. What if he does not recollect where it was, what if he cannot tell you its name, can show you no sketch, no photograph of the place he seems to know so well? For the serious one, the photographer, a definite record-the fact-may be necessary, but not for him. The remembered picture is beautiful, and its beauty suffices. But then we are about the only cyclers.

And what if the tourist does not arrive at the hoped-for town in the evening? What if he gets beyond it? There is usually an inn at hand, even in England. And if there is not, what more delicious than the ride through the night? Or, if he is too tired, what more convenient than the near hedge or tree, or at least the gutter, where, wrapping his mackintosh about him, and pillowing his head upon his knapsack, he can sleep an hour or two, as we have? Shocking? Yes, and so is cycling.

But, as we began by saying, most people who cycle are not cyclers. The proportion will always be small, for it is not everybody who is something of a tramp by nature, as one must be before one can take to the roads on foot or with a cycle; the many, ready at fashion's bidding to go for a morning spin in the park, or even to brave the traffic of the London streets, would think the journey awheel set too narrow a limit to comfort and elegance. The toilet outfit to be slung from the handle-bars or within the frame disdains all luxuries, and a few days in the open air, exposed to sun and rain and wind, leaves traveller and machine weather stained and beaten. In Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne cycling is a pretty game, as shepherding was in the gardens of Versailles. They only cycle in earnest who journey forth in quest of adventures by the roadside, like Borrow in his tinker's cart, like Stevenson with his donkey. When you consider how few besides those two men have been the tramps in our century's literature, you will begin to understand that

it is a question of temperament, and that the cyclers who tour must ever remain in the minority. Of course, they are somewhat more numerous now than of old; the way for the tourist is easier than it was for us, though, or rather because, it cannot bring back the pleasures of the pioneer, the delights of the discoverer. But as in alpine climbing, though you are not the first to make the ascent or to cross the col, the exploit has not lost all zest, so in cycling, the journey need be no less adventurous than in the old days, except, perhaps, in your own conceit.

To tour is always a joy, but the degree of joyousness depends upon the routes you follow; and we are willing, out of our large experience, to say which are the most perfect. The cycler can take his wheel to Spain if he would see nature, loveliness and barbarity, such as elsewhere amazed and enchanted the ingenuous British youth from Denmark Hill. Let him follow the diligence road and the mule track through the Sierras of the south, if he wants, or if he can; there, even at this late day, he may find himself unexpectedly a pioneer. It is but a year ago that we came to a whole district in Andalusia where a bicycle had never been seen and where the old sensations were revived. However, unless one is prepared to travel for twenty or thirty miles without coming to an inn, or a whole day with nothing to eat; unless one's pleasure is great in the mere thought that here passed the conquering Moor, Columbus, Ferdinand and Isabella-that here the history of two worlds was made-one would be wise to leave one's machine at home. Unless one is prepared for the amusing vicissitudes in the Spanish country inn, which has not altogether lost its Quixotic character, one had better keep out of it. And besides, the roads are almost as bad as in Cornwall and Devonshire, though the inhabitants are much more civilized. Nevertheless, for people who do not mind hard work and long climbs, who can appreciate savage wildness and grand scenery, the ride,

to Granada, and from Granada to Mal aga, is to be recommended about Easter time; but the ability to ride, a knowledge of Spanish, and a reliable machine are indispensable. Nor do we advise any one to go who is not prepared to rough it from the British point of view, or rather to conform to Spanish customs.

The land which, for us, supplied most sensation with least discomfort was the Near East. But, somehow, we cau scarcely imagine the cycler of the present day in Transylvania and Roumania and Dalmatia. What would the neat young lady in white, with her handlebars put on by mistake upside down, unbending-we were going to say, as the British bayonet, but perhaps the simile does not hold-do when she had to ford a stream over her shoe-tops; race with the fiery, drunken Slovak; dispute the road with the bull, not of Bashan but of Bukovina? True, young ladies have penetrated into these regions, but never, before our time, on bicycles; and their coming on the wheel now would fall almost as flat as that of the next gipsyloving princess. But if the chance for sensation has gone from Transylvania, the beauty and comfort are still at the service of the cycler. True, there are hills five and ten miles long; but the roads are excellent, though with the building of more railways-and in the wildest parts we met the engineer busy surveying their excellence is doomed to grow less. The inns are clean, the meat and drink extremely good. There are gipsy fiddles everywhere. The country is all mountain and valley, vineyard and chestnut grove. Little old fortified towns stand on hilltops or dot the wide plains. The people wear the most wonderful clothes, and in October you may see the white-clad peasant dancing out the wine the Promised Land for the cycler, you would think.

If your pocket-book allows, or fate, or the desire to see the country compels you to remain in England, there are parts where you can ride with great satisfaction and at great expense. Nothing could be more beautiful than the Midlands, lovelier than the counties that surround London. But westward-go

ward than Chester, avoiding Manchester-that is, unless you mean to go still farther north, into Scotland, which, at times, will repay your enterprise. The south-west is largely to be avoided -Cornwall and Devon have the worst roads in civilized Europe; in fact, the roads and the inns explain that the country is not and never has been civilized. In the inns you are often treated as an intruder, and sometimes cheated in a fashion that would bring a blush to the cheek of a Swiss landlord; for the emptiness of the larder, the bill makes up in lavishness. There is hardly anything to eat save cream, but for that and salt bacon and ancient eggs you are asked to pay as much as for a good dinner at the Café Royal. The innkeepers are mainly boors. As for the roads, they go straight to the top of all the hills, as uncompromisingly as the roads of Bohemia, then drop down the other side, and are unridable in both directions. When not climbing precipitately they lie buried at the bottom of a ditch. They are shadeless and uninteresting, rarely approaching the seacoast, or passing near anything that is worth looking at. And yet we know Englishmen who are profoundly impressed with the belief that they are the best in England, and therefore in the world. The roads, inns, and innkeepers of Scotland are in every way better. But the fact that the average Briton spends his holiday on the Continent when he can, proves, not only that he wants to get there, but also that he is driven from his own country by the short-sightedness of the people who keep its inns and look after its roads.

We do not exaggerate. Even where, as in Holland and Austria-Hungary, the florin or gulden is the unit that takes the place of the shilling here, the franc in France, and where the scale of expense should rise in proportion, your cycling will cost you about half as much as in England. And the absurdity is that abroad you get more for less money: your daily fare is not reduced to "a chop or a steak, sir," an ancient cheese rind is not supposed to satisfy a hungry man at midday, nor is bacon the one and only definition of breakfast. The innkeeper

has some ideas on the subject of dinner, and, more astounding, does not think because fate forces you to economy, that therefore you must not dine, but must accept in all humility the "meat tea." In a wine country an element of gaiety, of lightness, is added. The bottle of the thinnest vin ordinaire is more decorative on a dinner table than the English cruet. Englishmen have to come to France to dine, we were once assured by a Frenchman fresh from the English provincial hotel and London boarding-house. This, however, is not the only reason that drives them there in hordes. They go to save money; they really hate the · dinners. But whatever the inducement, the cycler, let us repeat, could decide upon no more enchanting country. Certainly, nowhere is there such variety in scenery-now bare and sad and impressive as on the northern downs, now flat and monotonous as in the plains about Orléans, and again and oftener "incomparable for its romance and harmony;" and nowhere are there such good roads, nowhere hotels so cheerful and hospitable. But to penetrate no farther than Normandy and Brittany, which always have been more or less Cockney since the time of William the Conqueror, is to see little of the best French roads and hardly anything of genuine French customs. For these the cycler must travel farther afield. Hardly anything west of Paris and north of St. Malo possesses genuine character any longer. But all the east and the Midi are full of it. The district from Paris to Marseilles, or rather from Fontainebleau, is unrivalled. Luckily it is so far away that for the average cycler it is inaccessible, and we can recommend it with a clear conscience. Touraine is a beautiful country, but the riding there is. by no means the best, and the heat in summer is atrocious.

Belgium, save in the exploited Ardennes, can boast few roads worth wheeling over. Almost all are paved, and you must leave them for the side paths, where, however, you are not, as at home, pursued by policemen and fines. Holland is not half so often cycled through as it should be. It is amusing to be able to traverse a whole country from end to end in a day, and

scarcely to be out of one important town before you are in the next. But you must ride better than most Englishmen, or else there will be danger of finding yourself every few minutes at the bottom o▲ a canal, many of the roads being but towpaths and dykes-good, but exciting for the cycler.

Germany, especially in the Rhine Valley, is much overrated. German roads, as a rule, are worse than the English: they are usually in bad repair, and vile in wet weather; but they improve vastly in the Hartz, the Black Forest, and here and there in other parts. The great pleasure of cycling in Germany to many, and probably the great drawback to a few, is the convenient frequency of the beer-houses. But then, anywhere on the Continent, the tired, thirsty tourist is sure to be supplied with the favorite national drink, which is invariably refreshing; and, what is more, he can drink it amid pleasant surroundings, at leisure, and under no necessity to swallow it abruptly and be off at once, while the after effects are not demoralizing. What have we in England to equal a grosses of Pilsner, icy cold, or the helados of Spain, or a real ice of Italy, or the sirop of France? Possibly shandygaff, certainly lemon squash, if iced, would be as good. But then in England, that is, in the country it is a criminal offence to have anything cold. This is an all-important subject, since the cycling tourist is forever thirsty. Hitherto he has been warned to go with his thirst unquenched, but now a kind French doctor has discovered that the more liquid the cycler absorbs the better, and a new chapter will have to be written on cycling thirst and how to satisfy it. In Austria, except over the Semmering Pass, on the highway from Amstätter to Vienna, and a few roads about Innsbrück, you will be happier without a machine. The roads are mostly abominable, though Austrians are splendid riders and go everywhere. The Dolomites and the Tyrol will please you all the more if you are not attempting to ride; this, not because of the height of the mountains and the hilliness of the way, but simply because of the same bad engineering and road making from which England suffers so grievously;