‘On leaving Vauxhall,’ says his lordship, ‘we drank a bottle of Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds; lunch, bottled porter; at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought, with pity, of the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below; more bottled porter; over Calais; dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle, and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner.’ The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbours make many better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress:-- ‘Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale, Est ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle, C’est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard; On s’y couche à minuit, et l’on s’y lève tard; Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu’une boxade, Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade, Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster; Et n’était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume, Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil œil s’allume, Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus, Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j’ai lus, Il n’en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique Que cette nation qu’on nomme Britannique!’ The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months in England, as an _attaché_ to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places the heroine of his tale in a _petit réduit près le Strand_, ‘with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!’ He next places her-- ‘Dans un Square écarté, morne et couverte de givre, Où se cache un Hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;’ and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is truly unhappy in that village. ‘Arthur dessèche et meurt.--Dans la ville de Sterne, Rien qu’en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer; Il n’aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne, Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le _soda-water_.[12]