cabriolet, expressed his astonishment we would think
of staying a day, when he had seen more than enough of the filthy place
in an hour, we amused ourselves very well till the moment of
departure....

At 4 on Monday we stepped into the cabriolet or front part of our
diligence, on the panels of which was written "Fugio ut Fulgor," and
though appearances were certainly against anything like compliance with
this notice, the result was much nearer than I could have conceived.
Five horses were yoked to this unwieldy caravan--two to the pole, and
three before, and on one of these pole horses mounted a Driver without
Stockings in Jack Boots, crack went an enormous whip, and away galloped
our 5 coursers. It is astonishing how they can be managed by such simple
means, yet so it was; we steered to a nicety sometimes in a trot,
sometimes in a canter, sometimes on a full gallop.

The time for changing horses by my watch was not more than one
minute--before you knew one stage was passed another was commenced; they
gave us 5 minutes to eat our breakfast--an operation something like that
of ducks in a platter, the dish consisting of coffee and milk with rolls
sopped in it. The roads are incomparable--better than ours and nearly if
not quite as good as the Irish. The country from Havre to Rouen is rich
in corn of every description--there is nothing particular in the face
of it, and yet you would, if awakened from a dream, at once declare you
were not in England; in the first place there are no hedges--the road
was almost one continuous avenue of apple-trees; the timber trees are
not planted in hedgerows but in little clumps or groves, sometimes but
generally rather removed from the road, and it is amongst these that the
villages and cottages are concealed, for it is surprising how few in
comparison with England are seen. The trees are of two
descriptions--either trimmed up to the very top or cut off so as to form
underwood. I did not observe one that could be called a branching tree;
the finest beech we saw looked like a pole with a tuft upon it. The
cottages are mostly of clay, generally speaking very clean, and coming
nearer to what I should define a cottage to be than ours in England.

You see no cows in the fields, they are all tethered by the road-side or
other places, by which a considerable quantity of grass must be saved,
and each is attended by an old woman or child. We passed through 2 or 3
small towns and entered Rouen 8