The interior of Calais I need not describe further, except to say that round three-fourths of it are elevated ramparts, overlooking the surrounding country to a great extent, and in several parts planted with trees, which afford most pleasant and refreshing walks, after pacing the somewhat perplexing pavements of the streets, and being dazzled by the brilliant whiteness which reflects from that, and from the houses. The port, which occupies the other fourth, and is gained by three streets parallel to each other, and leading from the "Place," is small, but in excellent order, and always alive with shipping, and the amusing operations appertaining thereto; and the pier is a most striking object, especially at high water, when it runs out, in a straight line, for near three quarters of a mile, into the open sea. It is true our English engineers--who ruin hundreds of their fellow citizens by spending millions upon a bridge that nobody will take the trouble to pass over, and cutting tunnels under rivers, only to let the water into them when they have got all the money they can by the job--would treat this pier with infinite contempt as a thing that merely answers all the purposes for which it was erected! as if _that_ were a merit of any but the very lowest degree. "Look at Waterloo Bridge!" they say; "we flatter ourselves _that_ was not a thing built (like the pier of Calais) merely for use. Nobody will say that any such thing was wanted! But, what a noble monument of British art, and what a fine commemoration of the greatest of modern victories!" True: but it would have been all this if you had built it on Salisbury Plain; and in that case it would have cost only half the money. The pier of Calais is, in fact, every thing that it need be, and what perhaps no other pier is; and yet it is nothing more than a piece of serviceable carpentery, that must have cost about as much, perhaps, as to print the prospectuses of some of the late undertakings, and pay the advertisements and the lawyer's bill. _Monthly Magazine._ * * * * * CURIOSITY.