there has hardly been a morning when I should have less willingly
bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp and inclement was the
atmosphere. We started at half past eight, having taken through tickets
to Paris by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer (a long, flat
tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into the carriage just before we
started; but it did not make us more than half comfortable, and the frost
soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the prospect, so that we
could only glance at the green fields--immortally green, whatever winter
can do against them--and at, here and there, a stream or pool with the
ice forming on its borders. It was the first cold weather of a very mild
season. The snow began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes;
and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome out, and were to
find nothing genial and hospitable there any more.

At Folkestone, we were deposited at a railway station close upon a
shingly beach, on which the sea broke in foam, and which J----- reported
as strewn with shells and star-fish; behind was the town, with an old
church in the midst; and, close, at hand, the pier, where lay the steamer
in which we were to embark. But the air was so wintry, that I had no
heart to explore the town, or pick up shells with J----- on the beach; so
we kept within doors during the two hours of our stay, now and then
looking out of the windows at a fishing-boat or two, as they pitched and
rolled with an ugly and irregular motion, such as the British Channel
generally communicates to the craft that navigate it.

At about one o'clock we went on board, and were soon under steam, at a
rate that quickly showed a long line of the white cliffs of Albion behind
us. It is a very dusky white, by the by, and the cliffs themselves do
not seem, at a distance, to be of imposing height, and have too even an
outline to be picturesque.