dear Louisa. My very first demand has been for pen ink and paper, to
inform my kind friend of our safe arrival: though I am so giddy, after
this post haste four day's hurry, that I scarcely can write a straight
line. Neither do I know whether I have any thing to say; though I
seemed to myself to have acquired an additional stock of ideas, at the
very moment that I first beheld Calais and the coast of France.

What is there, my dear, in the human mind, that induces us to think
every thing which is unusual is little less than absurd? Is it
prejudice, is it vanity, or is it a short and imperfect view; a want of
discrimination? I could have laughed, but that I had some latent sense
of my own folly, at the sight of a dozen French men and women, and two
or three loitering monks, whom curiosity had drawn together upon the
pier-head, to see us come into port. And what was my incitement to
laughter?--It was the different cut of a coat. It was a silk bag, in
which the hair was tied, an old sword, and a dangling pair of ruffles;
which none of them suited with the poverty of the dress, and meagre
appearance, of a person who seemed to strut and value himself upon such
marks of distinction.

Sterne was in my pocket, and his gentle spirit was present to my mind.
Perhaps the person who thus excited a transient emotion of risibility
was a nobleman. For the extremes of riches and of poverty are, as I
have been informed, very frequent among the nobility of France. He
might happen to think himself a man highly unfortunate and aggrieved.
The supposition occasioned my smile to evaporate in a sigh.

But the houses!--They were differently built!--Could that be right?
They were not so clean! That was certainly wrong. In what strange land
is the standard of propriety erected?--Then the blue and brown jackets