The first measure to be adopted after any one has decided upon visiting
Paris, is to provide himself with a passport, which he will procure at
the French Ambassador's office in Poland street, for which there is no
charge, but it is requisite to state by which port you mean to proceed;
but in order to leave some latitude for caprice, you may mention two
places, as Calais or Boulogne, or Dieppe or Havre, etc. There are now
many different means of travelling to Paris; that which was once the
most frequently adopted was by coach to Dover, then embarking for
Calais, as those are the two ports which present the shortest distance
between the two countries, being only about twenty-one miles apart; many
however prefer embarking at Dover at once for Boulogne, thus avoiding
about twenty-five miles by land from Calais to Boulogne, which certainly
does not afford a single object of interest, and the distance by sea is
only increased eight miles. Another route is by railway to Brighton,
then crossing to Dieppe, and which is certainly the straightest line of
any of the routes from London to Paris; but on account of there being
more sea, the distance is not generally performed in so short a period
as the other routes, from the uncertainty of the Ocean. It is not
therefore so much frequented by travellers as those on which they can
reckon with more accuracy; the same may be said of the route by
Southampton, which is performed by railway to that town, and afterwards
by steam-packet to Havre, which includes above a hundred miles by sea,
consequently but little resorted to as compared with the former routes.
There was another means of reaching Paris, and that was from London to
St. Vallery by sea; which being near Abbeville and only 33 leagues from
Paris, there was the least of land travelling, consequently it was the
cheapest if all went smoothly, and this line was often adopted by strict
economists, who however have frequently found themselves much
disappointed, as sometimes it happened they could not make the port, and
have either been obliged to put back and lie off Ramsgate, or lay to,