The first fruits of my pen in a foreign land, shall be dedicated to you. Though you have only travelled by the fire-side, there is not any thing in the route that we are to trace which could afford you the slightest pleasure from its novelty. The appearance of Dieppe, the country, the posting, Rouen, the windings of the Seine, the chateaux, what is there that I have yet seen, which is not as familiar to you in description, as the map of Dublin? We left Brighton on Monday, and I felt as I took a farewell view of Beachy-head, an undefined sensation, which I dare say that thousands have felt before me, compounded of pride, pleasure, and sorrow. To go _abroad_, though become so common, that the difficulty is to find any one now who stays at home, has something in the very sound of the words inspiring to one’s spirits; a vague hope of adventure, a sort of self-applause at having commenced an enterprise; and a kind of nameless triumph in touching a foreign shore, and finding oneself understood when speaking a strange tongue; all these circumstances elevate the mind to enthusiasm, while the parting pang on quitting home, country, friends, though but for a limited season, must chequer the gladness of any heart, in whatever breast it may reside. I wish for your company always, but I particularly desired to have you at my elbow when I passed St. Germain en Laye, Rosni, and Malmaison. What a crowd of recollections rushed upon my mind, as Sully, Louis the Fourteenth, Madame de Maintenon, James the Second, and Napoleon, pressed upon my thoughts, and struggled for a precedence, which the different ages in which they played their parts, arranged in an order very unlike that in which they rose to my imagination; the wonderful Corsican contriving generally to jostle out every reminiscence that was not connected with his astonishing appearance upon earth.