o relieve the monotony of roads so often travelled,
by sleep; but so it is. We did not fall into the fashion simply because
it is a fashion, but the days are so short in February in these high
latitudes, that we could not make our preparations earlier.

I have little agreeable to say concerning the first forty miles of the
journey. It rained; and the roads were, as usual, slippery with mud, and
full of holes. The old _paves_ are beginning to give way, however, and
we actually got a bit of _terre_ within six posts of Paris. This may be
considered a triumph of modern civilisation; for, whatever may be said
and sung in favour of Appian ways and Roman magnificence, a more cruel
invention for travellers and carriage-wheels, than these _paves_, was
never invented. A real Paris winter's day is the most uncomfortable of
all weather. If you walk, no device of leather will prevent the moisture
from penetrating to your heart; if you ride, it is but an affair of mud
and _gras de Paris_. We enjoyed all this until nine at night, by which
time we had got enough of it; and in Beauvais, instead of giving the
order _a la poste_, the postilion was told to go to an inn. A warm
supper and good beds put us all in good-humour again.

In putting into the mouth of Falstaff the words, "Shall I not take mine
ease in mine inn?" Shakspeare may have meant no more than the drowsy
indolence of a glutton; but they recur to me with peculiar satisfaction
whenever I get unbooted, and with a full stomach before the warm fire of
an hotel, after a fatiguing and chilling day's work. If any man doubt
whether Providence has not dealt justly by all of us in rendering our
enjoyments dependent on comparative rather than on positive benefits,
let him travel through a dreary day, and take his comfort at night in a
house where everything is far below his usual habits, and learn to
appreciate the truth. The sweetest sleep I have ever had has been caught
on deck, in the middle watch, under a wet pee-jacket, and with a coil of
rope for a pillow.

Our next day's work carried us as far as Abbeville, in Picardy. Here we
had a capital supper of game, in a room that set us all shivering with
good honest cold. The beds, as usual, were excellent. The country
throughout all this part of France, is tame and monotonous, with wide
reaches of grain-lands that are now brown and dreary, here and there a
wood, and the usual villages of dirty stonehouses. We passed a few
hamlets, how