The Dobson Family. 601 



doubt of being able to accomplish in a very few weeks ; so he asked his 

 countryman what was the best book to begin with, who recommended 

 him Kant and some half-dozen of his commentators, together with 

 a whole host of dictionaries, vocabularies, and grammars ; and all 

 other books generally used to mystify the student of a foreign lan- 

 guage. All these, however, poor Mr. Dobson resolved to get before 

 he left Brussels (which he was to do on the following day) for 

 Cologne, or Coin, as Mr. Dobson and the Germans call it. At last 

 dinner was over: all things must have an end, even a table d'H6te 

 dinner at the Belle Vue, which is, except a French diligence and 

 country quarters, the most tedious, dull, and apparently interminable 

 affair that we at least or any of our ten thousand friends have had the 

 good fortune to fall in with: even this however was ended, and Mrs. 

 Dobson rose to go, and apparently for the same purpose rose her 

 two fair daughters; when, lamentable to relate, the dress which had 

 been so hastily put together burst, and that too with a considerable 

 explosion, and some half-dozen not over-clean pocket-handkerchiefs, 

 which, in order to improve upon nature, had been stowed away in 

 different parts, fell to the ground, and their discomfited owner rushed 

 from the room. Julianna followed, but Mrs. Dobson quietly walked 

 up to the half-dozen suspicious-looking articles that lay upon the 

 floor, picked them up, and, holding them dangling from her hand, 

 walked to the door, opened it, and then, turning round to the com- 

 pany, made them a low curtesy and disappeared. Mrs. Dobson has 

 made her curtesy to the company, and so we shall with the reader's 

 permission make him or her our very best bow, promising that we 

 shall, should it please her or him, renew our acquaintance by again 

 taking up our amiable and unfortunate travellers at Cologne, where 

 they and their trunks and bandboxes safely arrived. 

 - Now see them mounted once again, or rather dismounted, at the 

 Rheinberg at Cologne, where they have arrived in the carriage 

 which the reader may recollect Mr. Dobson bought at Brussels, and 

 which resembled in no small degree that greatest of nuisances to all 

 passengers on horseback and on foot, a London Omnibus, which 

 name we presume it has assumed because it drives indiscriminately 

 over all his majesty's subjects. They have got safely out, which was 

 no such easy matter as our readers might suppose if they have never 

 seen the complicated machine that yonder quizzical fellow, the Brus- 

 sels coachmaker, calls a travelling carriage. However, they are 

 out, and having enjoyed the indispensable English luxury of first 

 eating a hearty dinner, and then heartily abusing every article of 

 whichTit was composed, Mr. Dobson set out to get the before-men- 

 tioned" vehicle shipped on board the steamer in which they were to 

 proceed up the Rhine early the following morning. This task was 

 wilh considerable difficulty effected, though not until the carriage had 

 been nearly precipitated into the " glassy stream,'* and Mr. Dobson, 

 who insisted on directing the whole proceeding, of which he knew 

 about as much as he did of flying, for which latter occupation nature 

 could never have intended him, had actually met with a very sound 

 ducking, Fortunately, there was help at hand, so he was soon fished 

 out, with no other accident than a thorough wetting, and a fit o-f 



