ort of drunken state in the middle of
the principal thoroughfares. The festoons of "evergreens" have been
helplessly hanging about in a condition which shows that the immortality
of their greenness is a mere myth, for we never saw a collection of
used-up tea-leaves looking so thoroughly "done brown" as the long lines
of deceased box, dangling about in the blustering breath of BOREAS. The
rain, as if mistaking them for real "tea-leaves," and hoping to get
still some good out of them, has kept them in almost a perpetual soak,
and the pavements have been strewed with the dying or dead asparagus in
that feathery state it assumes when the asparagus has all gone, and the
plants have taken it into their heads to put forth a rather graceful but
unprofitable luxuriance of green-stuff.

We must give every credit to the "getting up" of the "EMPEROR'S"
reception, for we certainly never saw so many "set scenes" employed in a
single act, and when we remember that the act was a mere farce, the
expense incurred seems still more remarkable.

The "properties" were also on the most elaborate scale, and the
pasteboard eagles were equal to any owl we ever saw in the palmiest days
of _Der Freischuelz_. Immense "troops of auxiliaries" and
"supernumeraries" in military uniforms were engaged expressly for the
occasion, and as these had to be billeted on the inhabitants, there were
instances of a quiet English family or two having to entertain a
dragoon, while in one case the choice between a colonel, or two
lieutenants, or four privates was offered to a quaker, who was residing
at Boulogne for retirement.

There could be no objection to any amount of obsequiousness in which the
Boulonnais themselves might indulge, but surely a "loyal address" from
the English to any sovereign but their own was somewhat superfluous.
Nevertheless such a document was got up and was actually signed by
DOCTOR SOMEBODY, MRS. SOMEBODY, MISS SOMEBODY, MISS ANNA MARIA SOMEBODY,
MASTER J. SOMEBODY, and a lot of little SOMEBODIES or NOBODIES, who we
suppose had a family meeting with Papa or Mamma in the chair, to appoint
a deputation to "go up" with the piece of flatulent flattery to the
"EMPEROR." We can excuse the address of the _matelottes_, presented by a
very venerable _matelotte_, who read to the sham NAPOLEON the very same
address that she had read to the real NAPOLEON "forty years ago, in the
maturity of her beauty" (what a beauty she must be in 1853 if she was