ns to visit America in September. She is
here ranked very high in her profession, and profoundly esteemed and
respected in private life. I have heard her but once, having had but two
evenings' leisure for public entertainments since I came here. There is
but one Jenny Lind, but Miss Hayes need not shrink from a comparison with
any other singer. She is very highly commended by the best Musical critics
of London. I cannot doubt that America will ratify their judgment.

We have had tolerably fair, pleasant weather for some time until the
last two days, when clouds, chilly winds and occasional rain have
returned. The "oldest inhabitant" don't remember just such weather at
this season--as he probably observed last June. I shall gladly leave it
for dryer air and brighter skies.

XIV.

LONDON TO PARIS.

PARIS, Monday, June 9, 1851.

I left London Bridge at 11 1/2 on Saturday for this City, via South-Eastern
Railway to Dover, Steamboat to Calais and Railroad again to Paris. This
is the dearest and quickest route between the two capitals, and its
advertisements promised for $13 1/2 to take us "Through in Eleven Hours,"
which was a lie, as is quite usual with such promises. We came on quite
rapidly to Dover--a very mean, old town--but there lost about an hour in
the transfer of our baggage to the steamboat, which was one of those
long, black, narrow scow contrivances, about equal to a buttonwood
"dug-out," which England appears to delight in. They would not be
tolerated as ferry-boats on any of our Western rivers, yet they are made
to answer for the conveyance of Mails and Passengers across an arm of
the sea on the most important route in Europe. In this wretched concern,
which was too insignificant to be slow, we went cobbling and wriggling
across the Channel (27 miles) in something less than two hours, often
one gunwale nearly under water and the other ten or twelve feet above
it, with no room under deck for half our passengers, and the spray
frequently dashing over those above it, three fourths of the whole
number deadly sick (this individual of course included), when with a
decent boat the passage might be regularly made, in spite of such a
smartish breeze as we encountered, in comparative comfort. Perhaps we
felt glad enough on reaching the shore to pay for this needless misery,
and I readily believe that an hour or two of sea-sickness may be harshly
wholesome, yet I do think that a good boat on such a rout