The preferable route from London is by Folkestone and Boulogne, and it will save trouble if tickets are taken at Charing-Cross station direct for Paris, getting luggage ticketed accordingly. The steam-boats between Folkestone and Boulogne, though well managed, are certainly poor in comparison to what they might and ought to be; but there is nothing superior in the Channel service, and all we can do in the meantime is to make the best of them. At the railway terminus at Boulogne there is an excellent restaurant, where travellers have a choice of refreshments, tastefully served, and with a composure which pleasantly contrasts with the hurry and confusion which prevail on the English side of the Channel. Any one, going or coming, who has occasion to stop for a night at Boulogne, may be safely recommended to the Hôtel Christol, a comfortable and well-conducted establishment not far from the railway terminus. On each of my recent trips, I spent two nights in Paris at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre; a night at Lyons in the Hôtel de l’Univers (good, and near the station); and two nights at Marseilles in the Grand Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix. The reason why I remained more than a single night in Marseilles was to note the extraordinary improvements which have taken place within the last few years. If we except Paris, no city in France has been so much changed for the better as Marseilles. Its new streets and boulevards are a sight worth seeing, and so is its new port of Joliette, constructed at a great cost with much engineering skill. The most surprising novelty, however, is the system of water-supply, effected by bringing the waters of the river Durance a distance of sixty miles by means of tunnels and aqueducts, at an expense of fifty-two millions of francs. One of the aqueducts, that of Roquefavour, measures as much as four hundred mètres in length by eighty-two in height—a gigantic work, creditable to French engineering, which may compare favourably with some of the grandest of recent undertakings in Great Britain.