But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly. As the poet has observed, ‘Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;’ with such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don’t give us, cries the patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else can do that), but rather continue in that good-humoured, facetious, descriptive style, with which your letter has commenced. Your remark, sir, is perfectly just, and does honour to your head and excellent heart. There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne; which, haute and basse, with the new lighthouse and the new harbour, and the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number of English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honour of the grand _Armée d’Angleterre_, so called because it _didn’t_ go to England, have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned Dr. Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it is to hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon’s time argue how that audacious Corsican _would_ have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson and all his gunboats, but for _cette malheureuse guerre d’Espagne_ and _cette glorieuse campagne d’Autriche_, which the gold of Pitt caused to be raised at the Emperors tail, in order to call him off from the helpless country in his front. Some Frenchmen go farther still, and vow that in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed, if you read in the _Biographie des Hommes du Jour_, article ‘Soult,’ you will fancy that, with the exception of the disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns in Spain and Portugal were a series of triumphs. Only, by looking at a map, it is observable that Vimieiro is a mortal long way from Toulouse, where, at the end of certain years of victories, we somehow find the honest Marshal. And what then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of beating the English there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment would be superfluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate; let us break off further palaver, and away at once.... (During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay his bill at the hôtel at Boulogne, to mount the diligence of Laffitte, Caillard, and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postillions.) * * * * *