_Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax, at Venice_

_Paris, Hotel de l'Universite, pres le Pont Royal_

I write, Fairfax, according to promise, to inform you that I have been
a fortnight in France, and four days in this city. The tract of country
over which I have passed, within these three months, is considerable.
From Naples to Rome; from Rome to Florence; from Florence to Venice,
where we spent our carnival; from Venice to Modena, Parma, and Genoa;
from thence to Turin; from Turin to Geneva; then, turning to the left,
to Lyons; and from Lyons to Paris. Objects have passed before me in
such a rapid succession, that the time I have spent abroad, though not
more than a year and a half, appears something like a life. The sight
of the proud Alps, which boldly look eternity in the face, imparts a
sensation of length of time wholly inadequate to the few hours that are
employed in passing them. The labour up is a kind of age; and the swift
descent is like falling from the clouds, once more to become an
inhabitant of earth.

Here at Paris I half fancy myself at home. And yet, to timid people who
have never beheld the ocean, and who are informed that seas divide
France and England, Paris appears to be at an unattainable distance.
Every thing is relative in this world; great or small near or distant
only by comparison. The traveller who should have passed the deserts,
and suffered all the perils all the emotions of a journey from Bengal
by land, would think himself much nearer home, at Naples, than I do,
coming from Naples, at Paris: and those who have sailed round the world
seem satisfied that their labour is within a hair's breadth of being at
an end, when they arrive, on their return, at the Cape of Good Hope.