1827.] Travelling Particularities. 469 



English towns similarly situated where you find little or nothing between 

 the town residence of the purse-proud trader, and the loathsome hovel of 

 his poverty-stricken dependents. Here you see no such thing as either 

 poverty or dependence. Even the female shrimp-catchers (of which you 

 occasionally meet a little army) march merrily along to their daily occupa- 

 tions their nets shouldered with an air of almost military defiance, and 

 their handsome sun-burnt legs (seemingly as firm as the stones on which 

 they tread) uncovered to the knees as if to prove that poverty never laid 

 his withering fingers on such a frame as they belong to. 



I shall, in a day or two, tell you something of the exterior of Calais 

 and of its inhabitants English as well as French ; and shall also give you 

 an insight into the prices, qualities, &c. of those various articles of con- 

 sumption which we are pleased to term " the necessaries of life." In 

 regard to this latter subject of observation, you may expect me to be very 

 particular wherever I go ; since, next to the promptings of a somewhat rest- 

 less and erring spirit, my chief inducement for travelling at present is to 

 determine, from my own experience, in what spot or neighbourhood 1 

 shall hereafter " set up my rest." 



Calais, July 10, 1827. 



I beg you not to believe a word of what any body may tell you against 

 Calais especially if they tell it you in print. Ferdinand Mendez Pinto 

 was but a type of the printing-press, that " liar of the first magnitude." I 

 never yet received a clear and distinct, still less a fair and unexaggerated 

 account, of any foreign place whatever, from the lips or pen of a person to 

 whom it was foreign much less from one who was native to it, or to the 

 country to which it belonged. And Calais has been more ill-used in this 

 respect than any other place merely because a few unlucky scapegraces 

 from England have taken refuge in its friendly arms. If you believe its 

 maligners, Calais is no better than a sort of Alsatia to England, a kind of 

 extension of the rules of the King's Bench. The same persons would 

 persuade you that America is something between a morass and a desert,, 

 and that its inhabitants are a cross between swindlers and barbarians ; 

 merely because its laws do not take upon them to punish those who have- 

 not offended against them ! If America were to send home to their respec- 

 tive countries, in irons, all who arrive on her shores under suspicion of not 

 being endowed with an Utopian degree of honesty or, if (still better) she> 

 were to hang them outright, she would be looked upon as the most pious,, 

 moral, and refined nation under the sun, and her climate would rival that 

 of Paradise. And if Calais did not happen to be so situated, that it affords 

 a pleasant refuge to some of those who have the wit to prefer free limbs 

 and fresh air to a prison, it would be all that is agreeable and genteel. It 

 seems to be thought, that a certain ci-devant leader of fashion has chosen 

 Calais as his place of voluntary exile, out of a spirit of contradiction. 

 But the truth is, he had the good sense to see that he might u go farther 

 and fare worse ;" and that, at any rate, he would thus secure himself from 

 the intrusions of that " good company," which had been his bane. By- 

 the-by, his last " good thing" appertains to his residence here. Some one 

 asked him how he could think of residing in " such a place as Calais?" 

 " J suppose," said he, " it is possible for a gentleman to live between 

 London and Paris." His choosing to reside here has, in fact, done more 

 for his reputation as a man of sterling wit and sense, than even he himself 

 would perhaps give it credit for. "And it is a finer satire on his great 



