My anti-leave-taking foible is certainly not so much affected when I quit the residence of an hotel--that public home--that wearisome resting-place--that epitome of the world--that compound of gregarious incompatibilities--that bazaar of character--that proper resort of semi-social egotism and unamalgable individualities--that troublous haven, where the vessel may ride and tack, half-sheltered, but finds no anchorage. Yet even the Lilliputian ligatures of such a sojourn imperceptibly twine round my lethargic habits, and bind me, Gulliver- like, a passive fixture. Once, in particular, I remember to have _stuck_ at the Hôtel des Bons Enfants, in Paris--a place with nothing to recommend it to one of ordinary locomotive energies. But there I stuck. Business of importance called me to Bordeaux. I lingered for two months. At length, by one of those nervous efforts peculiar to weak resolutions, I made my arrangements, secured my emancipation, and found myself on the way to the starting-place of the Diligence. I well remember the day: 'twas a rainy afternoon in spring. The aspect of the gayest city in the world was dreary and comfortless. The rain dripped perpendicularly from the eves of the houses, exemplifying the axiom, that lines are composed of a succession of points. At the corners of the streets it shot a curved torrent from the projecting spouts, flooding the channels, and drenching, with a sudden drum-like sound, the passing umbrellas, whose varied tints of pink, blue, and orange, like the draggled finery of feathers and flounces beneath them, only made the scene more glaringly desolate. Then came the rush and splatter of cabriolets, scattering terror and defilement. The well-mounted English dandy shows his sense by hoisting his parapluie; the French dragoon curls his mustachio at such effeminacy, and braves the liquid bullets in the genuine spirit of Marengo; the old French count picks his elastic steps with the placid and dignified philosophy of the _ancien régime_; while the Parisian dames, of all ranks, ages, and degrees, trip along, with one leg undraped, exactly in proportion to the shapeliness of its configuration.