The Argosy . is is quaintrather than ancient. It is picturesque, and on a market day it is houses of various forms and sizes—no two houses alike from oneend to the other—remind one of so many of the streets and squaresseen on the Continent, and never seen in England. The streets areuninteresting and narrow. You may fire a cannon from one end ofthe town to the other: the windows perhaps will rattle in their oldcasements, but the inhabitants will be none the wiser and none theworse. No one afflicted with melancholy must sojourn in Calais : inthe language of the learned faculty, it wou
The Argosy . is is quaintrather than ancient. It is picturesque, and on a market day it is houses of various forms and sizes—no two houses alike from oneend to the other—remind one of so many of the streets and squaresseen on the Continent, and never seen in England. The streets areuninteresting and narrow. You may fire a cannon from one end ofthe town to the other: the windows perhaps will rattle in their oldcasements, but the inhabitants will be none the wiser and none theworse. No one afflicted with melancholy must sojourn in Calais : inthe language of the learned faculty, it would root the disease uponhim. And yet Calais possesses one glorious privilege par excellence,to which, by-and-bye, we will give due honour and record. We were bound for Calais, but then we were not afflicted withmelancholy. Even if suffering from that distressing malady, whichescapes the touch of the healer as cunningly as a will-o-the-wisp (isit after all much more than a phantom vapour ?), we were accom-. Calais. Across the Water. 491 panied by an antidote in the form of two high-spirited boys. They, inall the excitement of visiting the French shores for the first time,would effectually have banished from a whole army of invalids theweeping image of II Penseroso. The crossing would be splendid.— They should remain on deckthe whole time, examine the boat, look down the funnel, learn themysteries of the engine-room.—Would the boat be a screw or apaddle ? — They would watch the shores of Old England disappear;catch a first glimpse of Calais, and find out why Mary was nearlyheartbroken at its loss—what a fine place it must have been to affecther so much ! Sea-sick ? That was all very well for girls, but boysknew better than to go in for such things. Hope told a flattering tale. On reaching Dover, the April skieswere unpropitious. It blew, it rained, the boat rocked inside thepier; everyone shivered vnth cold, and shuddered at the mauvaisquart dheure inevitably in store
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