is a profit of three hundred per cent., and another gentleman of the engine chamber, having such remarkably fine calves as attracted the envy of the landing waiters every time he stepped from the boat to the pier, being requested by one of them, rather anatomically curious in human veal, to divest this pride of flunkeyism of obstructions to his honest admiration, the gentleman aforesaid (custom-house applicants, like ladies, taking no denial) was found to have voluntarily submitted this portion of his legs to be blown up with two pounds of gun-powder without uttering a groan. The owners of the boat had to pay two thousand francs for the strange fancy of their engineer to lubricate their engines with Jacquenet lace, but what the gunpowder gentleman cost I never heard. Coarse gunpowder can be bought in England at this moment to pay a profit of six hundred per cent. in France, which has an army of five hundred and two thousand men, and a thousand or two cannon and mortars to keep in practise. The same day I landed at Havre, I might have gone off by the steamer to Cherbourg, and thence easily to Jersey, but the former place offered inducements to remain, and I will now state the advantages it has over Boulogne. There is scarcely any place where so much may be seen in so short a time, and for so little money, as in Normandy, and the passage not longer from England than Margate from London. Bridge. I was but eight hours and a half from Southampton. The hotels are inferior to those of Boulogne in spaciousness, style, and cleanliness. The Hotel de Paris, in the Rue de Paris, is perhaps the most popular; the table d'hôte is remarkably liberal; so is that of the Hotel d'Amirante, Hotel Normandie, and Hotel des Etats Unis. Wheeler's Hotel, on the quay of the Bassin du Roi, gives a table d'hôte for three francs-the substantiality of English cookery, with the savouriness of French. I have sat down to many a worse guinea dinner in England, than is afforded there daily for two shillings and sixpence. The restaurants, too, nearly approach those of Paris, and their comestibles are more satisfactory to an Englishman's palate, which may be accounted for, by the difference in the price of provisions, being nearly one-half in favour of Normandy. I never ate sweeter beef than at the Bourse de Commerce Restaurant, and there are half-a-dozen restaurants round the Place Louis XIV., decorated as handsomely as Very's in Regentstreet, or the Oriental in Vere-street, which give excellent dinners. I name these two because they are familiar to me, and because I know not a public dining-room in London, save the coffee-rooms of our hotels, where a gentleman can sit down with gratification to any other sense than his palate. Fish is to be had here, of course, and poultry, and game is abundant and cheap. On a mild moonlight evening there is no promenade like the Place de Louis XVI. The ground-floors of most of the houses are cafés and restaurants, blazing with lustres and gilding, which, seen through the trees which surround three sides of the Place, enlivened with the constant motion of promenaders, give it an air of metropolitan activity, only to be seen on the Italian Boulevards at Paris. Either by day or night, the vista from the corner of the Rue de Paris charms by its ever varying character. Before you the hills of Ingouville; an amphitheatre of white houses and shrubberies rises to the horizon; on the left, is the Place Louis XVI., its arcades and avenues; on the right,the bassin de Commerce, another Prince's Dock at Liverpool, a forest of masts; and behind, a wide, well-built street. Then there is the jetty of granite, a promenade of constant interest, close to which ships of magnitude, American packets-in fact, all the French import and export trade to America, and most of it to East and West Indies, pass to and from the port. The Bains-de-Frascati is the largest hotel, and most frequented by wealthy French families during the summer. Before the Paris mob pulled out the linch-pin of the statecarriage, and gave it a jolt beyond the genius of a generation of constitutive coach-makers to repair, a hundred and sixty visiters have slept within its walls at one time, and a hundred have sat down to dinner. About twelve were in the house when I went there, and was offered an excellent room, with dejeuner a la fourchette and a sumptuous dinner, for eight francs a day. I said something about the Revolution. I am sure it gave the landlord the stomach-ache. One may be in London all one's life, and never go nearer the docks than the Brunswick at Blackwall, in white-bait season; but here Indiamen and ices, American linens and lemonade, steam ships and shady arbours are on neighbourly terms; merchants, ship brokers, cotton importers, sugar and colonial produce dealers becoming the smiling figurants of a scene, which you cannot help at first sight believing is got up for your amusement, and auxiliary to some ballet d'action; a market-place scene in Massaniello, for which you await the music. Havre is the paradise of parrots. In the house I lodged, and in the next, some seven were kept, and these communicative neighbours kept up a contra-alto recitative all day cm their cages placed outside the windows of their respective mistresses. They are quiet at night, however, which is more than the tambour of the National Guard can keep. He beat the rappel under my window one night for an hour, until I was fain to rise at 3 A.M., and turn out in hopes of being in time for a revolution. Accompanying the troops, I witnessed the arrival of seven hundred insurgés at the railway station, from Paris, and saw them safely lodged on board a large war-steamer, which steamed away to Algeria with these impertinent gentlemen, whose offence was repeating in June what they had been crowned with laurels, lodged in three royal palaces, and made drunk with the king's champagne, for doing in February. Talleyrand used to say, "a fault in politics was unpardonable, crimes were committed to be forgiven." Bonaparte was ever lucky in his enormities. Lamartine and Ledru Rollin loll in the luxury of the Luxembourg: Algeria for their exalté associates, now that enthusiasm is mal à propos. Public men and public feeling are quite at issue at this moment, and the latter knowing it, disown the men by whose aid alone they mounted the ladder to power. "But stay, I say, Let me pause when I may, My digression is leading me sadly astray From my subject, a mottle-back paroquet's lay." Having visited the museum, the library, and the picturegallery, in which Yoon (the French Haydon) has a large and impressive picture of Christ purging the temple of traffickers, with more or less questionable specimens of Murillo, Velasquez, Vandyke, Greuze, Rubens, and the masters ever to be found in every picture-gallery in Europe; and I must not omit one by Conture, a living artist of great originality. The architect of the museum deserves great praise: there is light and space for every thing, objects of natural history, books, pictures. The entrance vestibule and staircase are to be preferred to those recently erected at the British Museum. Save in London, Edinburgh, and the universities, such noble rooms as the libraries at Caen and Havre are not to be found in the towns of Great Britain. The Palais de Justice is not worth a visit, but the theatre is. Ingouville fair commenced while I was at Havre, and was to last a month. Fancy a dozen streets of booths, full to their ceilings with ephemeral gimcracks, so many Lowther Arcades, a circus, a panorama, a casino, and bawling showmen passionately imploring you to pry into their phantasmagoria. During the day there is a lull, but every night during the month are the allées thronged with all ranks in Havre, Graville, Ingonville, Honfleur, Graville Montvilliers, and the intermediate hamlets. The walks on the Côte present at every point a magnificent amphitheatre, and Casimir Delavigne might well exclaim," Après Constantinople, il n'est rien de plus beau!" A week may cheerfully be spent in walking about Havre, and Ingouville, its suburb. The down above the cliffs reminded me of Sandown Bay and Shanklin, though in rural beauty I prefer Ste. Adresse to Bonchurch;—the former is a sweet valley, sloping to the sea. The walks from the light houses, through the villages of Bléville and Sanvic, to Montivilliers, are truly delightful. There are some remains of an abbey, erected in 682, the tower of the church; and beyond Montivilliers, I would have any reader of this induced thereby to exchange Havre for his next projected trip to Boulogne, (being a tolerable pedestrian,) to follow me to Chateau d'Eure, in the parish of Saint Martin-du-Manoir, where he will be reminded of many an English village, and thence on to Gournay, and the valley of Epouville. From thence to Harfleur, the path lies on high ground, commanding fine views right and left, and I think he will be as surprised as I was by the populousness of the French rural districts. There appear to be few farms of more than thirty acres, with houses attached to them, and right pleasant little homesteads they are, each having its orchard and coppice for fuel. Graville had better be taken in a direct walk to Harfleur, the view from the terrace of the presbytery, formerly the priory, and the church, well rewarding a visit. Not two miles further, lies Harfleur, a very ancient place, and called by Monstrellet, in 1055, the sovereign port of Normandy. The sea has since been sulky, and subsided miles away; and when the houses, like those of Tamworth, tumble down, no one thinks it worth while to build them up again, so that the churches in both, may be said to occupy the greater portion of their respective towns. The church is a vast edifice, built by us, and that it is not larger, is not our fault, for it was left unfinished, when four hundred of the inhabitants, conspiring together, raised a successful revolt against the victors of Agincourt, which this church was erected to commemorate. Harfleur was taken and sacked by us five years after, in revenge for our unceremonious ejection, but was only retained until 1449, when it fell into the power of Charles VII. king of France. A lateral door-way is enriched with exquisite sculptured tracery, and the portion which remains of the old choir presents specimens of gothic architecture, and arabesques of much delicacy of execution. The revolution cleared away all internal decorations, and knocked the saints from their niches on the towers and on each side of the western door, and the steeple, no mean one, was to have gone next, by order of the republican government, if time had been afforded for the work of demolition. A true democrat is always unhappy at the existence of any individual or institution, monarchs or churches, aspiring higher than himself; and when he has brought them down to his own level, is astonished at the ingratitude and perverseness of those who are below him, following his example. The first revolutionists, when led to the guillotine by their initiators, died for the most part in a paroxysm of amazement. Had the French legitimists at this moment a Henry V., with half the pluck of the founder of this church, our Henry V., he would be prayed for as their enthroned sovereign, at mass, next week, not only here, but in every church in France. Having ventured to say to the aubergist, where I took a glass of kirchst, that I feared the latest change in the government would not improve things in Harfleur more than in other places, he mouthed out a sacr—r—r—r, which sounded very much like, "the revolution be d-d." Those who think differently, may go to the large sugar refinery just by, and ask Messrs. Saglio and Co., who will tell them, how well they and all other manufacturers in France could have dispensed with its mission de la gloire à illumer l'Europe. We will now trot on to Orcher, if you please, whistling democracy down the wind; and a right pleasant walk it is of three miles from Harfleur, on the banks of the Seine. the natural terrace which crowns the cliffs, I could see the Departments of Eure and Calvados; while, from the left bank of the river, at its mouth, and the bays of Villequier-Touques and Caen. There is a good restaurant at Orcher, and pleasant walks in the grounds of the chateau, the proprietor of which is a gentlemanly man, for he invited me to dine with him. At the restaurant, I found several parties of excursionists dining, people coming to enjoy the view from Orcher, as they do from the Castle Hill at Richmond; but, from three with whom I conversed, I could not learn that they had as yet profited or expected to profit by the revolution. A hearty visit from Monsieur Cholera Morbus would have been more acceptable than Monsieur Ledru Rollin's call to the spirits of Paris, who had so promptly answered his hail. I had now been at Havre a fortnight, every day affording me a new pleasure. The steamer crosses to Harfleur daily, returning in the afternoon, and a day at least is well spent there. A more grotesque collection of old houses of the second class is not to be seen. In some of our towns, such as Tewksbury, Gloucester, Winchester, we have a few, here and there, left rather as curiosities; but here they remain in whole streets, the most recently built house in them not less than two hundred years old, and as they are at least half constructed of timber, braced, dove-tailed, and plugged together, they are never likely to fall to pieces, as in our moist |