In thinking of how much I missed seeing, I sometimes have said to myself, Oh, if the carpet of the story in the Arabian Nights would only take me up and carry me to London for one week,—­just one short week,—­setting me down fresh from quiet, wholesome living, in my usual good condition, and bringing me back at the end of it, what a different account I could give of my experiences!  But it is just as well as it is.  Younger eyes have studied and will study, more instructed travellers have pictured and will picture, the great metropolis from a hundred different points of view.  No person can be said to know London.  The most that any one can claim is that he knows something of it.  I am now just going to leave it for another great capital, but in my concluding pages I shall return to Great Britain, and give some of the general impressions left by what I saw and heard in our mother country.

VII.

Straitened as we were for time, it was impossible to return home without a glimpse, at least, of Paris.  Two precious years of my early manhood were spent there under the reign of Louis Philippe, king of the French, le Roi Citoyen.  I felt that I must look once more on the places I knew so well,—­once more before shutting myself up in the world of recollections.  It is hardly necessary to say that a lady can always find a little shopping, and generally a good deal of it, to do in Paris.  So it was not difficult to persuade my daughter that a short visit to that city was the next step to be taken.

We left London on the 5th of August to go via Folkestone and Boulogne.  The passage across the Channel was a very smooth one, and neither of us suffered any inconvenience.  Boulogne as seen from the landing did not show to great advantage.  I fell to thinking of Brummel, and what a satisfaction it would have been to treat him to a good dinner, and set him talking about the days of the Regency.  Boulogne was all Brummel in my associations, just as Calais was all Sterne.  I find everywhere that it is a distinctive personality which makes me want to linger round a spot, more than an important historical event.  There is not much worth remembering about Brummel; but his audacity, his starched neckcloth, his assumptions and their success, make him a curious subject for the student of human nature.

Leaving London at twenty minutes before ten in the forenoon, we arrived in Paris at six in the afternoon.  I could not say that the region of France through which we passed was peculiarly attractive.  I saw no fine trees, no pretty cottages, like those so common in England.  There was little which an artist would be tempted to sketch, or a traveller by the railroad would be likely to remember.