friend in that shabby cloak and those shabby
pantaloons? I tried to get Captain Jesse's
Life of George Brummel, Esq., at the
circulating library, but the book was in hand. I
attempted to bespeak it, but the library-
keeper told me that it was always in hand.
" Ils ont la peine de lire ces Mémoires de
Monsieur Brommele," the man said, speaking of his
English customers. Do they study the life of
the poor worn-out dandy as an example or as a
warning, I wonder? I forgot to mention that
the hotel to which I drove on my arrival was
Dessein's. DESSEIN'S HOTEL! There are
associations enough connected with that immortal
inn and the illustrious Dead to satisfy the
most enthusiastic admirers of Podgerism. I
believe George the Fourth put up at Dessein's
when he passed through Calais on his way to
Hanover, and departed without seeing Brummel.
To Dessein's, too, came Louis the
Eighteenth when he first set foot in France
after his twenty years' exile. They covered the
place on the pier which had been covered by his
foot — a broad foot it was, somewhat inclining to
the elephantine — with a brazen plate, commemorating
the happy day of the Bourbon's return.
They almost deified the gross old fellow. They
kicked his brother out of France fifteen years
afterwards, and I suppose the brass plate — unless
it be preserved in the museum of some Legitimist
pipemaker at St. Omer — was long ago
melted down by a marine store dealer.

But what are George the Superb and Louis
the Desired among the associative Dead in
comparison with the Reverend Mr. Yorick, and
the Sentimental Journey, and LAURENCE
STERNE? I was at Dessein's. And walking
or even hobbling under the influence of gout
being an amusement of which a very little went
a long way, I sat on a three-legged stool under
a covered gallery in Dessein's court-yard, and
moralised for considerably more than three-
quarters of an hour on Shandyism in general.
There were but three guests staying at Monsieur
Dessein's, and I had nearly the whole inn to
myself. I peopled the desolate court-yard with
Sentimental figures. There was the door of
the remise; there was the "little French
captain," who came "dancing up the street;"
there was the Franciscan monk, his pale cheek
yet crimsoned with the cruel rebuff he had
suffered from the Sentimental Traveller. There,
upon my life, was the very "Désobligeante" itself,
and the Reverend Mr. Yorick, né Sterne, in
propriâ personâ, with his six shirts and his pair
of black silk breeches in a cloak-bag, and the
manuscript of the second volume of Shandy
under his arm, flirting with the Flemish countess.
It was delightful! I expected every moment
to see La Fleur pass by, whistling, with his
immortal curl papers, and the little lingère come
tripping up with her bandbox to know if the
Monsieur Anglais wanted any embroidered
bands and laced ruffles. I peeped into the
porter's lodge to see whether there might not
be haply in a cage a starling who could not get
out. I looked out of the porte cochere, and
expected to find the grisette trying on the
sentimental gentleman's gloves; every moment
I was prepared to see rumbling into the
court-yard a heavy chaise de poste, with Mr.
Walter Shandy, ex Turkey merchant, of Shandy
Hall, and Captain Tobias Shandy, his brother,
inside, and Corporal Trim, their faithful body-
servant, in the dickey. For, the court-yard of
Dessein's brought back to my mind, not unnaturally
I hope, all the scenes and all the characters
in that wonderful human comedy, of which you
find Frenchmen and Italians and Spaniards
discourse with as much delighted appreciation
as any English lover of Sterne can do.

It was an awful disappointment. I underwent
a terrible revulsion of feeling when I was
informed shortly before dinner-time by the
wondrous landlord of the very clean and comfortable
hotel, and who is, I believe, a lineal descendant
of the innkeeper immortalised in the Journey,
that Dessein's, as it at present exists, is not by
any means the Dessein of the Reverend Mr.
Yorick. It is not even a new house built on the
site of the old mansion. The old original
Dessein's is in quite another part of the town, and
is no longer an hotel, but has beeu turned into
a Municipal Museum. I did not go to see the
curiosities which the municipality of Calais are
good enough to exhibit free of charge. I do
not know what those curiosities are. Eustache
de St. Pierre's hypocritical shirt and halter might
be among them, but they were nothing to me.
I was thoroughly disgusted and all but heart-
broken.

After this I gave up Calais as a hopeless
place, and the rain coming down again in so
persistently leaden a manner that it might have
been mistaken for a torrent of Goulard water, I
withdrew to the solitude of the salle à manger,
the principal decoration of which apartment
consisted of a faded screen covered with
horrifying caricatures, seemingly satirising the vices
and follies of the world before the Flood. I
have heard people profess to like old
caricatures; but to me they are as melancholy as
old love-letters. The vain and silly creatures
laughed at, are all in their graves.

I have a very indistinct remembrance
of how I got through the next day, Sunday.
I know that it rained continually, and
that the coals hissed in the grate as though
they were damp, as they probably were. I
can vaguely recal the apparition of a Fried
Sole, alone in the dish, desolate, on a napkin
like a winding-sheet, and of some anchovy
sauce, which had gotten a crust like old port
wine, and for many minutes declined to be either
persuaded or forced from the cruet, but at last
came out with a blob in a far larger quantity than
was required, and looked like dissolved sealing-
wax made into a compost with sprats. I
know that I made several desperate attempts to
read a copy of the Sentimental Journey, placed
in the public-room by the obliging Monsieur
Dessein for the convenience of travellers. It
was a sumptuous edition, though slightly out
of repair, in the French and English languages,