e undeceived. I know of no description of packet-boats in our
waters bad enough to convey the idea. They are small, black, dirty,
confined things, which would be suffered to rot at the wharves for want
of the least custom from the lowest in our country. You may judge of the
extent of the accommodations when I tell you that there is in them but
one cabin, six feet six inches high, fourteen feet long, eleven feet
wide, containing eight berths.

"Our passage was, fortunately, short, and we arrived in the dominions of
'His Most Christian Majesty' Charles X at five o'clock. The transition
from a country where one's own language is spoken to one where the
accents are strange; from a country where the manners and habits are
somewhat allied to our own to one where everything is different, even to
the most trifling article of dress, is very striking on landing after so
short an interval from England to France.

"The pier-head at our landing was filled with human beings in strange
costume, from the grey _surtout_ and belt of the _gendarmes_ to the broad
twilled and curiously plaited caps of the masculine women; which latter
beings, by the way, are the licensed porters of baggage to the
custom-house."

"_Paris, January 7, 1830._ Here have I been in this great capital of the
Continent since the first day of the year. I shall remember my first
visit to Paris from the circumstance that, at the dawn of the day of the
new year, we passed the Porte Saint-Denis into the narrow and dirty
streets of the great metropolis.

"The Louvre was the first object we visited. Our passports obtained us
ready admittance, and, although our fingers and feet were almost frozen,
we yet lingered three hours in the grand gallery of pictures. Indeed, it
is a long walk simply to pass up and down the long hall, the end of which
from the opposite end is scarcely visible, but is lost in the mist of
distance. On the walls are twelve hundred and fifty of some of the _chefs
d'oeuvre_ of painting. Here I have marked out several which I shall copy
on my return from Italy.

"I have my residence at present at the Hotel de Lille, which is situated
very conveniently in the midst of all the most interesting objects of
curiosity to a stranger in Paris,--the palace of the Tuileries, the
Palais Royal, the Bibliotheque Royale, or Royal Library, and numerous
other places, all within a few paces of us. On New Year's Day the
equipages of the nobility and foreign ambassadors