The boys amused themselves with a swing; when the soldiers were exercising they used sometimes to look in at the garden gate to watch them. The servants were very dismal: they used often to say how much they had been mistaken in France, and what fine stories they would tell about it when they got back to Cumberland. FRENCH SCHOOL _June 11th._--This day Euphemia and I went for the first time to Madame Crosnier's. Catherine had gone for some time, and given us a very strange account of it; but notwithstanding all she had said, it was far worse than we had expected. There were twelve or fourteen English girls, three Miss Stephens whom we had formerly seen at Bath, where they did not look at all nice--they were here very well dressed and genteel-looking; Miss Fuller, a daughter of General Fuller, who had a French mamma, a complete little dandy; Miss Fitzgerald, who was a little plague; Miss Molyneux, a nice little girl who had been left there; Miss Julia Carpenter, and several others. The nicest were two Miss Wergs. The eldest was scarcely nine years old. They were sweet, pretty little girls, with good colours; they were a great contrast to the French girls beside them. Ellen Werg told me that they had come to France for their education, and that their papa liked it so much that they were never going home again; but that they and their mamma hated it. They used sometimes to cry when they heard the other girls talk of going home, and say, 'Oh, I wish I was going too!' We used often to see them at church; their papa was very crabbed-looking. They could not speak a word of French: they left school about the same time as I did without knowing a word more than when they came. Their mamma said it was such a ruinous school they should stay no longer. The French girls were the dirtiest, rudest set I ever saw. They wore very coarse dark cotton frocks or black petticoats, dirty blue or red aprons with pockets, spotted with ink, black worsted stockings, and listen shoes. Some of them had large bunches of keys hung by their sides, and others sashes and braces of broad scarlet galloon. One girl--Mademoiselle Rose--was so dirty, that even Madame Crosnier used to speak to her about it. She had on an old cotton frock bedaubed with ink, that did not meet by three or four inches; through the gap one saw a pair of dirty stays and an old striped worsted petticoat, and on the top of a frock there was a gauze frill hanging in rags. Her hair was matted with dirt. Some of the girls had pieces of green glass in their ears for earrings, black velvet round their head, and gilt combs with the teeth broken out stuck in their dirty, black, uncombed hair, which hung over their faces. Their skins were dirty and yellow. The neatest of these young ladies was a Mademoiselle Sélina--who was conceited-looking, and Mademoiselle Joséphine. The girls' manners were as elegant as themselves--they called each other names, and used the most vulgar words.