ideal traveller. I mean one of those pleasant fellows who travel post
in their elbow-chair, sail round the world on a map suspended to one
side of their room, cross the seas with a pocket-compass lying on
their table, experience a shipwreck by their fireside, make their
escape when it scorches their shins, and land on a desert island in
their _robe de chambre_ and slippers.

I have, therefore, here and there mentioned names, time, and place,
to prove that, _bona fide_, I went to Paris immediately after the
ratification of the preliminary treaty. To banish uniformity in my
description of that metropolis, I have, as much as possible, varied
my subjects. Fashions, sciences, absurdities, anecdotes, education,
fetes, useful arts, places of amusement, music, learned and
scientific institutions, inventions, public buildings, industry,
agriculture, &c. &c. &c. being all jumbled together in my brain, I
have thence drawn them, like tickets from a lottery; and it will not,
I trust, be deemed presumptuous in me to indulge a hope that, in
proportion to the blanks, there will be found no inadequate number of
prizes.

I have pointed out the immense advantages which France is likely to
derive from her Schools for Public Services, and other establishments
of striking utility, such as the _Depot de la Guerre_ and the _Depot
de la Marine_, in order that the British government may be prompted
to form institutions, which, if not exactly similar, may at least
answer the same purpose. Instead of copying the French in objects of
fickleness and frivolity, why not borrow from them what is really
deserving of imitation?

It remains for me to observe, by way of stimulating the ambition of