At Calais, we were delighted with Dessein’s Hotel, and admired the waiter and chambermaid as two of the best-bred people we had ever seen. The next sensation was at Rouen. Nothing (as you know) can be finer;—Beautiful country, ships, trees, churches, antiquities, commerce,—everything which makes life interesting and agreeable. I thank you for your advice, which sent me by the Lower Road to Paris. My general plan in life has been to avoid low roads, and to walk in high places, but from Rouen to Paris is an exception.
The Ambassador lent us his box yesterday, and I heard
Rubini and Grisi, Lablache and Tamburini.
The
| 376 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. |
We are well lodged in an hotel with a bad kitchen. I agree in the common praise of the French living. Light wines, and meat thoroughly subdued by human skill, are more agreeable to me than the barbarian Stonehenge masses of meat with which we feed ourselves. Paris is very full. I look at it with some attention, as I am not sure I may not end my days in it. I suspect the fifth act of life should be in great cities; it is there, in the long death of old-age, that a man most forgets himself and his infirmities; receives the greatest consolation from the attentions of friends, and the greatest diversion from external circumstances.
Pray tell me how often the steamboats go from Boulogne; whether every day, or, if not, what days; and when the tides will best serve, so as to go from harbour to harbour, in the week beginning the twenty-fifth of October. Pray excuse this trouble. I have always compunctions in asking you to do anything useful; it is as if one were to use blonde lace for a napkin, or to drink toast-and-water out of a ruby cup;—a clownish confusion of what is splendid and what is serviceable. Sincerely and respectfully yours,
