icers are very
watchful, and make a great number of seizures: nevertheless, the
smugglers find their account in continuing this contraband commerce;
and are said to indemnify themselves, if they save one cargo out of
three. After all, the best way to prevent smuggling, is to lower the
duties upon the commodities which are thus introduced. I have been
told, that the revenue upon tea has encreased ever since the duty upon
it was diminished. By the bye, the tea smuggled on the coast of Sussex
is most execrable stuff. While I stayed at Hastings, for the
conveniency of bathing, I must have changed my breakfast, if I had not
luckily brought tea with me from London: yet we have as good tea at
Boulogne for nine livres a pound, as that which sells at fourteen
shillings at London.

The bourgeois of this place seem to live at their ease, probably in
consequence of their trade with the English. Their houses consist of
the ground-floor, one story above, and garrets. In those which are well
furnished, you see pier-glasses and marble slabs; but the chairs are
either paultry things, made with straw bottoms, which cost about a
shilling a-piece, or old-fashioned, high-backed seats of needle-work,
stuffed, very clumsy and incommodious. The tables are square fir
boards, that stand on edge in a corner, except when they are used, and
then they are set upon cross legs that open and shut occasionally. The
king of France dines off a board of this kind. Here is plenty of
table-linen however. The poorest tradesman in Boulogne has a napkin on
every cover, and silver forks with four prongs, which are used with the
right hand, there being very little occasion for knives; for the meat
is boiled or roasted to rags. The French beds are so high, that
sometimes one is obliged to mount them by the help of steps; and this
is also the case in Flanders. They very seldom use feather-beds; but
they lie upon a paillasse, or bag of straw, over which are laid two,
and sometimes three mattrasses. Their testers are high and
old-fashioned, and their curtains generally of thin bays, red, or
green, laced with taudry yellow, in imitation of gold. In some houses,
however, one meets with furniture of stamped linen; but there is no
such thing as a carpet to be seen, and the floors are in a very dirty
condition. They have not even the implements of cleanliness in this
country. Every chamber is furnished with an armoire, or clothes-press,
and a chest of drawers, of very cl