1827.] [ 467 ] 



TRAVELLING PARTICULARITIES I 



No. I. 



CALAIS. JulyS, 1827. 



I BELIEVE you are right, after all, in bidding me send you as many 

 facts as I can lay my hands on, and permit you the privilege of collecting 

 your own inferences from them, and forming your own opinions. We 

 tf mob of gentlemen who write with ease" are, I confess it, very apt to 

 insist that those whom it pleases us to enlighten by our lucubrations shall 

 accept the boon after our fashion, rather than their own. We modestly 

 believe that you, who are good enough to read what we write, cannot 

 be repaid for your kindness by any thing less than being spared all the 

 trouble of thinking for yourselves. Seriously, our travellers' letters of the 

 present day are very full of " wise saws;" but they leave the " modern 

 instances" to lag behind. This shall, at any rate, not be the case with 

 mine. The latter shall be all in all with them leaving you to form or 

 collect the former as best you may. In a word, I will endeavour to write 

 with a view to y0W7$satisfaction exclusively except in so far as mine can 

 be made to grow out of that. 



But you bid me write you from every town at which we stay in the 

 course of our desultory route forgetting that the track we are likely to 

 follow, for the next month or two, is a beaten one, upon which nothing 

 new has sprung up for the last century or two, much less for the last week 

 or two ; during which latter period you have, no doubt, seen it duly 

 described. This is what I told you when we parted : but still you insisted 

 that I must write all I observe, and all I do not observe ; tempting me to 

 do so by your flattering hints, that, in both cases, I shall tell you something 

 you did not observe or miss yourself, and have not been told by others. 

 There is no resisting this especially when you add, seriously, that you 

 have not yet obtained, either from your own or other people's observations, 

 any very distinct and\available general notions of the different places, per- 

 sons, and matters with which I shall come in contact in the course of my 

 errant journey ings. This last plea decides me. It refers to a want that I 

 have long felt myself, and that I am determined at last to remedy for 

 myself I mean. If, in doing so, I can also remedy it for you, the satis- 

 faction I shall feel in my success will be doubled. 



I think I told you that we mean to stay several days at least, in every 

 town of any note that we visit, and also in every one of no note, if we find 

 any thing, either in cr about it, that claims attention. Shall Calais, then, 

 be passed by without mention, merely because all the world has seen it, 

 and knows " all about it," as the phrase is ? Assuredly not. Calais will 

 merit to be described by every Englishman who visits it, and to be read of 

 by every one who does not so long as Hogarth, and " Oh ! the Roast 

 Beef of Old England !" shall be remembered, and which will be longer 

 still till the French and English become one people, merely by dint of 

 living within three hours' journey of each other. 



Calais has been treated much too cavalierly by the flocks of English, 

 who owe to it their first, and consequently most fixed impressions of French 

 manners, and the English want of them. Calais is, in fact, one of the most 

 agreeable and characteristic little towns in France. It is " lively, audible, 

 and full of vent" as gay as a fair, and as busy as a bee-hive and its form 

 and construction as compact. This latter is the great merit (riot to men- 



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