At Havre the same process is going on. New houses are springing up all along the new boulevards. Between the town and Frescati’s great hotel and bathing establishment, which faces the sea, there used to stand a curious old round tower of great size, which commanded the mouth of the harbour, and some elaborate fortifications of more modern date. All these have been levelled, old and new together, and the ground is now clear for building, and will, no doubt, be covered long before I shall see it again. Large seaports are always interesting towns, and Havre, besides the usual attractions of such places, has a sort of shop in greater perfection than any other port known to me. In these you can buy or inspect curiosities, alive and dead, from all parts of the world. Parrots of all colours of the rainbow scream at the door, long cages full of love-birds, and all manner of other delicate little feathered creatures one has never seen elsewhere, hang on the walls, or stand about amongst china monsters, and cases of amber, and inlaid stools from Stamboul, and marmoset monkeys, and goodness knows what other temptations to solvent persons with a taste for collections or pets. To neither of these weaknesses can I plead guilty, so after a short inspection I stroll to the harbour’s mouth, and do wonder to think over the astounding audacity of our late countryman, Sir Sidney Smith, who ran his ship close in here, and proceeded in his boats to cut out a French frigate under the guns of the old fortifications. His ship got aground, and was taken; he also. But, after all, it was less of a forlorn hope than throwing himself with his handful of men into Acre, and facing Bonaparte there, which last moderately lunatic act made him a name in history. _Audace! et encore d’audace! et toujours d’audace!_ was the rule which brought our sailors triumphantly through the great war. And there is another picture in that drama which Havre harbour calls up in the English mind, to put in the scale against Sir Sidney’s failure--I mean Citizen Muskein and his gunboats skedaddling from Lieutenant Price in the _Badger_. Do you remember, sir, Citizen Muskein’s--or rather Canning’s--inimitable address to his gunboats in the _Anti-Jacobin?_-- Gunboats, unless you mean hereafter To furnish food for British laughter, Sweet gunboats, and your gallant crew, Tempt not the rocks of St. Marcou, Beware the _Badger’s_ bloody pennant And that d----d invalid Lieutenant! Enough of war memories, and for the future the very last thing one wishes to have to do with this simple, cheery, and, for all I can see, honest people, is to fight them.