health, though the season has been cold and wet, and disagreeable.
There was a fine prospect of a plentiful harvest in this neighbourhood.
I used to have great pleasure in driving between the fields of wheat,
oats, and barley; but the crop has been entirely ruined by the rain,
and nothing is now to be seen on the ground but the tarnished straw,
and the rotten spoils of the husbandman's labour. The ground scarce
affords subsistence to a few flocks of meagre sheep, that crop the
stubble, and the intervening grass; each flock under the protection of
its shepherd, with his crook and dogs, who lies every night in the
midst of the fold, in a little thatched travelling lodge, mounted on a
wheel-carriage. Here he passes the night, in order to defend his flock
from the wolves, which are sometimes, especially in winter, very bold
and desperate.

Two days ago we made an excursion with Mrs. B-- and Capt. L-- to the
village of Samers, on the Paris road, about three leagues from
Boulogne. Here is a venerable abbey of Benedictines, well endowed, with
large agreeable gardens prettily laid out. The monks are well lodged,
and well entertained. Tho' restricted from flesh meals by the rules of
their order, they are allowed to eat wild duck and teal, as a species
of fish; and when they long for a good bouillon, or a partridge, or
pullet, they have nothing to do but to say they are out of order. In
that case the appetite of the patient is indulged in his own apartment.
Their church is elegantly contrived, but kept in a very dirty
condition. The greatest curiosity I saw in this place was an English
boy, about eight or nine years old, whom his father had sent hither to
learn the French language. In less than eight weeks, he was become
captain of the boys of the place, spoke French perfectly well, and had
almost forgot his mother tongue. But to return to the people of
Boulogne.

The burghers here, as in other places, consist of merchants,
shop-keepers, and artisans. Some of the merchants have got fortunes, by
fitting out privateers during the war. A great many single ships were
taken from the English, notwithstanding the good look-out of our
cruisers, who were so alert, that the privateers from this coast were
often taken in four hours after they sailed from the French harbour;
and there is hardly a captain of an armateur in Boulogne, who has not
been prisoner in England five or six times in the course of the war.
They were fitted out at a ve