written in the form of letters to his friends at home. [Footnote: Newman
and Lord Congleton were both at this time about twenty-three years of
age.]

"River Garonne,
At Anchor in Steamboat,
_23rd Sept._, 1830.

"We sailed finely on Saturday from Dublin, while sheltered by the Irish
coast; but in the evening we tasted the Atlantic with a south-wester,
which proved a bitter dose. For nearly fifty hours we tossed, with very
slow progress, until all our bones were bruised, etc., etc.... I have
never seen anything like the sea on the French coast.

"The Bay of Biscay fulfilled all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea
was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while
his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the
sailors in their arms.... The custom-house officers have detained the ship
so long that we are left here by the tide.... The officers were very
civil. They were all amazed at the number of our packages" (as well they
might be!)... "The prospect of our porterages is frightful. Think of us at
the top of a hotel and an army of porters carrying up the height of three
stories many hundredweights of trunks, chests, hampers, bags, baskets, to
stow into our bedrooms _for the night!_ And this misery is to be repeated
everywhere....

"I talk French clumsily, yet get on somehow.... My French having been
chiefly mathematical, I do not know the names of many common things...."

At Toulouse in October:--"I am already a Frenchman. If you doubt it, learn