1831.] My Uncles Diary at Calais. 525 



flannel, or half a dozen knives or spoons? The government will look 

 to this hereafter ; it will vindicate its character by the reformation of 

 such mean abuses, perpetrated, in the spirit of supererogation, by the 

 lowest of its functionaries, against the dignity and palpable advantage of 

 the country. For my part, Sir, I feel myself immeasurably degraded by 

 being at the mercy of such contemptible despoilers, and shall carry my 

 small modicum of money to some shore where the state protects the mean- 

 est of her subjects against the impudence, and fraudulence, and despo- 

 tism of dirty Jacks in office. 



April 25th. A Frenchman starting on a shooting excursion, arrayed 

 in all the novel apparatus of a gun-case, whistle, shot-bag, whip, and 

 pickers ; his ambitious imitation of the English sporting costume rather 

 frustrated by boots and long brass spurs ; the attendant dog, a grey- 

 hound out of all dimensions, as corpulent and jolly as an alderman. 



April 26th. Had my friend 's daughter to dine with me. She 



has been cursed with a French education, and is now in the blossom of 

 frivolity, vanity, impiety, and affectation a sheer compound of frigid 

 mechanism and heartless artifice. Her mind is exalted above the mean- 

 ness of vulgar belief. She has an argument against religion, against 

 natural affection, and against her native country. She is a philosophic 

 coquette a kind of hard-hearted liberal. She has, however, learned to 

 pin her clothes on with a foreign air, which bestows on her the sem- 

 blance of a hump-backed wasp in petticoats, with a stiff neck and 

 crippled feet. She has all the juvenile greediness and nastiness about 

 her that are contracted at a French seminary ; plays on the piano like 

 an impaled automaton, and knows no harmony, though she is prodi- 

 giously advanced in music. When at her instrument, she was only once 

 in obvious motion, in the performance of a passsage of extravagant dis- 

 cord, when, stretching out her crossed arms to the extent of the piano, 

 the union of sound and posture gave the auditor and beholder an idea 

 that she was strangling a kitten among the additional keys. She is elo- 

 quent in support of atheism, and unblushingly au fait on themes of 

 immorality. She has read all books on which good -men reflect with 

 indignation. She is perfect mistress of Dupuis a student of Faublas 

 an ardent lover of the tc Guerre des Dieux" I doubt not, too, possesses 

 a refined and copious cabinet of pictures ! She is too polite to feel a 

 preference for her relations, and seems, indeed, ashamed to own the com- 

 mon ties of mere humanity. Kill me a child if I should ever have one 

 rather than defile her youth with foreign immorality, base refinement, 

 and delicate indecency rather than rear a future monster, through the 

 foul degrees of vitiation, to make her husband a repentant laughing-stock 

 in profligate society, and the helpless patron and support of bastards 

 sprung from wantonness, depravity, and fancy. 



27th, 28th, 29th April. Employed in packing up. Walked to the 

 Basse- Ville, where I beheld an effort at translation. A projecting board 

 exhibits (f Basset- Gilliod, Veuve, Chaudronnier." It is rendered, on 

 the other side, in English u Basset-Gilliod, Mrs. Tinker/' 



30th April. All my things turned topsy-turvy by. the prying ruffians 

 at the custom-house. What do these public nuisances suppose an Eng- 

 lish gentleman can v/ish to smuggled/row their country ? Regaled my- 

 self, before departure, with some excellent Mortadella from Donnini's, 

 and a glass of pure Bourdeaux, from Carstaing's luxuries that I shall 

 leave with some reluctance. 



