lais, where the women in long white camblet
clokes, soldiers with whiskers, girls in neat slippers, and short
petticoats contrived to show them, who wait upon you at the
inn;--postillions with greasy night-caps, and vast jack-boots, driving
your carriage harnessed with ropes, and adorned with sheep-skins, can
never fail to strike an Englishman at his first going abroad:--But what
is our difference of manners, compared to that prodigious effect
produced by the much shorter passage from Spain to Africa; where an
hour's time, and sixteen miles space only, carries you from Europe, from
civilization, from Christianity. A gentleman's description of his
feelings on that occasion rushes now on my mind, and makes me half
ashamed to sit here, in Dessein's parlour, writing remarks, in good
time!--upon places as well known as Westminster-bridge to almost all
those who cross it at this moment; while the custom-house officers
intrusion puts me the less out of humour, from the consciousness that,
if I am disturbed, I am disturbed from doing _nothing_.

CHANTILLY.

Our way to this place lay through Boulogne; the situation of which is
pleasing, and the fish there excellent. I was glad to see Boulogne,
though I can scarcely tell why; but one is always glad to see something
new, and talk of something old: for example, the story I once heard of
Miss Ashe, speaking of poor Dr. James, who loved profligate conversation
dearly,--"That man should set up his quarters across the water," said
she; "why Boulogne would be a seraglio to him."

The country, as far as Montreuil, is a coarse one; _thin herbage in the
plains and fruitless fields_. The cattle too are miserably poor and
lean; but where there is no grass, we can scarcely expect them to be
fat: they must not feed on wheat, I suppose, and cannot digest tobacco.
Herds of swine, not flocks of sheep, meet one's eye upon the hills; and
the very few gentlemen's feats that we have passed by, seem out of
repair, and deserted. The French do not reside much in private houses,
as the English do; but while those of narrower fortunes flock to the
country towns within their reach, those of ampler purses repair to
Paris, where the rent of their estate supplies them with pleasures at no
very enormous expence. The road is magnificent, like our old-fashioned
avenue in a nobleman's park, but wider, and paved in the middle: this
convenience continued on for many hundred miles, and all at the king's
exp