apt introduction to the narrative of his journey, it familiarises
us with the milieu, and reveals to us in Smollett a man of
experience who is both resolute and capable of getting below the
surface of things. An English possession for a short period in
the reign of the Great Harry, Boulogne has rarely been less in
touch with England than it was at the time of Smollett's visit.
Even then, however, there were three small colonies,
respectively, of English nuns, English Jesuits, and English
Jacobites. Apart from these and the English girls in French
seminaries it was estimated ten years after Smollett's sojourn
there that there were twenty-four English families in residence.
The locality has of course always been a haunting place for the
wandering tribes of English. Many well-known men have lived or
died here both native and English. Adam Smith must have been
there very soon after Smollett. So must Dr. John Moore and
Charles Churchill, one of the enemies provoked by the Briton, who
went to Boulogne to meet his friend Wilkes and died there in
1764. Philip Thicknesse the traveller and friend of Gainsborough
died there in 1770. After long search for a place to end his days
in Thomas Campbell bought a house in Boulogne and died there, a
few months later, in 1844. The house is still to be seen, Rue St.
Jean, within the old walls; it has undergone no change, and in
1900 a marble tablet was put up to record the fact that Campbell
lived and died there. The other founder of the University of
London, Brougham, by a singular coincidence was also closely
associated with Boulogne. [Among the occupants of the English
cemetery will be found the names of Sir Harris Nicolas, Basil
Montagu, Smithson Pennant, Sir William Ouseley, Sir William
Hamilton, and Sir C. M. Carmichael. And among other literary
celebrities connected with the place, apart from Dickens (who