Imagine, then, a party of Englishmen in Paris, rising one morning with the general desire to "do something to-day." Having done nothing for several weeks except amuse themselves--having been condemned to continual festivity, the necessity for some relaxation became imminent. We had been to see every thing that we cared to see, and every body who cared to see us, with a little over in both cases. We had filled "_avant scène_" boxes until the drama became a bore, and had reclined in _cafés_ until their smoke became a nuisance. We had scoured the Boulevards by day, and the balls by night; "looked in" at the monuments with patronizing airs and at the shops with purchasing propensities. We had experienced dinners both princely and penurious; fathomed mysterious _cartes_ from end to end, and even with unparalleled hardihood had ventured into the regions of the _prix-fixe_. We had almost exhausted every sort of game, active and sedentary; at billiards, we had exploded every cannon, possible and impossible, and reposed on every "cushion," convenient and inconvenient. One desperate youth had even proposed that we should addict ourselves to dominos; but, we were not far enough gone for that: the suggestion was received on all sides with that sensation of horror which shipwrecked mariners manifest when one of the party proposes to dine off the cabin-boy. No: we must find materials of amusement less suggestive of tombstones, that was clear, even if we perished miserably without their assistance. The fact was, that under the influence of the sunshine and flowers--the lustre and languor of the most bewildering of capitals, I was fast subsiding into a state of collapse. I felt a dash of the infatuation of the lotus-eater, in his "--land that seemed always afternoon." In our case--for we were all alike--instead of afternoon, we seemed to be in a perpetual state of "the morning after." It was at length agreed that we should enter the first public conveyance we could find that was leaving Paris. The conveyance destined to receive us was, in appearance, a cross between the English omnibus of domestic life and the French _diligence_, that has, alas! nearly disappeared; a fat, heavy vehicle, drawn by a couple of strong little hacks, with a driver who gave himself _diligence_ airs, and cracked his whip, and smoked his pipe most ostentatiously.