_24th._--Marched to Grandvilliers; everything looking wretched, for the day was dark and excessively cold: in France, on such occasions, there are no redeeming features. The country is in most cases without enclosures, and the few trees, stripped of their verdure, present most cheerless pictures, unrelieved by any appearance of warmth or comfort about the mean and wretched-looking dwellings of the peasantry. These, when we entered the village, presented rather a better appearance than usual, for all were _en habits de Dimanche_, which was the day. Lodged F. in the post-house (here an inn), and then went round our billets. Village very large, two broad streets crossing each other, but the houses all farms or cottages, most of them of mud, like the Devonshire cobbe, and all thatched; the site of the place a dead flat, but pretty well clothed with trees. At our post-house we procured a tolerably decent though very small parlour, the chimney of which, however, smoked so terribly that, spite of the weather, we were obliged to sit constantly with the door open; up-stairs (this was a sort of addition to the original house projecting into the yard) a bedroom of the same size, in which were two beds; and nothing could exceed the astonishment of our friend the chambermaid at our arrangement of sleeping together. The inhabitants here were ordered by beat of drum to feed us. We now came under the command of Sir Denis Park, who commands at Calais and up the road as far as this place, he having the arrangement of the embarkations. We lived well at our inn, and remedied the open door by a large screen. Every evening we saw company--_i. e._, our officers--and, although the weather was very cold, passed our time pleasantly enough. One day an immense market or fair afforded us ample amusement; another, our attention and curiosity were excited by the arrival of a troop of the National Guard, _à cheval_, from Beauvais; but, after staying the whole afternoon and night, they departed the next morning without our being a bit the wiser. One day the Earl of Westmeath arrived, and stopped all night; his lordship was obliged to put up with the rooms we had rejected.