468 Travelling Particularities. [ Nov 



tion its being the great defect) of all fortified places. A town should be a 

 town ; and Calais is one entirely. Its inhabitants know no more about 

 " the country" than those do who have spent all their lives, except an 

 occasional Sunday afternoon, in Cheapside ; and they are wise enough to 

 care about it still less seeing that all the good appertaining to it, in their 

 eyes, is brought to them every Saturday throughout the year, and offered 

 at almost their own prices. 



Calais, therefore, unlike any English town you could name, is content 

 to remain where it is instead of perpetually trying to stretch away towards 

 Paris, as our's do towards London, and as London itself does towards them. 

 Transporting you at once to the " Place" in the centre of the town (an 

 entirely open square, of about 150 paces by 100), you can scarcely look 

 upon a more lively and stirring scene. The houses and their shops (they 

 have all shops) are like nothing so much as so many scenes in a pantomime 

 so fancifully and variously are they filled, so brightly and fantastically 

 painted, and so abruptly do they seem to have risen out of the ground ! 

 This last appearance is caused by the absence of a foot-path, and of areas, 

 porticos, railings, &c., such as, in all cases, give a kind of finish to the 

 look of our houses. The houses here seem all to have-, grown up out of the 

 ground not to have been built upon it. This is what gives to them their 

 most striking effect of novelty at the first view. Their brilliant and various 

 colourings so unlike our sombre brick-work is the next cause of the 

 novel impression they produce. The general strangeness of the effect is 

 completed by the excellence of the pavement, which is of stones, shaped 

 like those of our best London carriage-ways, but as white as marble in all 

 weathers, and as regular as the brick-work of a house-front. The uni- 

 formity of the " Place" is broken (not very agreeably) by the principal public 

 edifice of Calais the Town Hall ; a half-modern, half-antique building, 

 which occupies about a third of the south side, and is surmounted at one 

 end by a light spiring belfry, containing a most loquacious ring of bells, 

 which take up a somewhat unreasonable proportion of every quarter of an 

 hour in announcing its arrival ; and, in addition, every three hours they 

 play " Le petit chaperon rouge," for a longer period than (I should ima- 

 gine) even French patience and leisure can afford to listen to it. Imme- 

 diately behind the centre of this side of the " Place" also rises the lofty 

 tower, which serves as a light-house to the coast and harbour, and which 

 at night displays its well-known revolving lights. Most of the principal 

 streets run out of this great square. The most busy of them because the 

 greatest thoroughfare is a short and narrow one leading to the Port (Rue 

 du Havre} : in it live all those shopkeepers who especially address them- 

 selves to the wants of the traveller. But the gayest and most agreeable 

 street is one running from the north-east corner of the " Place" {RueRoyale}. 

 It terminates in the gate leading to the suburbs (Basse Ville), and to the 

 Netherlands and the interior of the country. In this street is situated the 

 great hotel Dessin rendered famous for the " for ever" of a century or so 

 to come, by Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The only other street devoted 

 exclusively to shops is one running parallel with the south side of the 

 Place." The rest of the interior of Calais consists of about twenty other 

 streets, each containing here and there a shop, but chiefly occupied by the 

 residences of persons directly or indirectly connected with the trade of 

 Calais as a sea- port town. None of them are either very good or very bad ; 

 but observe that (not golden, but) silver mean, which is so agreeable in most 

 foreign cities of this kind, and the absence of, which is so painfully felt in 



