A CALL ON HUMBOLDT 179 



The same guard goes throughout dressed in a magnificent 

 silver-lace uniform,' covered with a blue blouse. Altogether 

 he was an ill-conditioned dog, and fitted his garments hke 

 a hog in armour. The drag is curious, being a sort of com- 

 pressor, worked by this guard who sits in this Phaeton with 

 me and others, turning a thing like a coffee-mill handle, 

 which produces a pressure on the axle of one wheel, aiding 

 the dihgence in turning and taking the pressure off the 

 horses in descent. » 



By dark they reached Eouen ; thence by rail to Paris ; 

 * 100 miles for 16 francs, 14 stoppages, 4 hours in passage, 

 3 tunnels, one 3 miles long.' 



Thanks to Baron Delessert, a wealthy amateur, to whose 

 collection alone Sir William's took second place, he was able 

 to move from his first hotel, where ' last night I had some of 

 my Erehus friends in bed,' for clean rooms at the Hotel de 

 Londres in the Eue des Petits Augustins, * but and ben with 

 Baron Humboldt.' One or two impressions of Paris in 1845 

 may be quoted from a letter to his mother (February 2). 



My way led through the Champs Elysees, which are 

 very dirty indeed, and I soon got terribly splashed with 

 mud. I do not think these town avenues at all in good 

 keeping ; they are half rural and that is all ; the broad 

 flagged pavements and macadamised roads, covered with 

 carts and coaches, do not suit the noble trees at all, so that 

 I could not in any way compare the Champs Elysees with 

 the avenue at Bushey Park or at Inverary — the trees look 

 much more to advantage in our parks, where we have not 

 rows of shops at their backs and restaurateurs under their 

 shade. [Apart from the individual beauties of such build- 

 ings as the Louvre] there is here nothing so good as Eegent 

 Street, though a little bit of the rue Eivoli and the rue 

 Eoyale are better than any equal portion taken out of that 

 London thoroughfare. [Going to the rue St. Honore to 

 call upon Lord Howden] the street is very narrow, so 

 that two can scarcely walk abreast upon the pavement, 

 and the stoppages of carriages and carts are ten times 

 worse and more numerous than (in the) Strand at Temple 

 Bar. 



