the more ancient edifices,
which is so remarkable in the capital of Normandy. The Hotel de Ville,
in the large square, is a particularly fine building, and the whole
city looks as if it had been for centuries the seat of wealth and
commerce.

Friends in England, and the few we met with or made in Paris, had
furnished us with the names of the hotels it would be most advisable
to put up at; but these lists were, as a matter of course, lost, and
we usually made for the nearest to the place where we stopped. The
Hotel de Paris, which looks upon the Hotel de Ville, was the one we
selected at Lyons; it was large and commodious, but had a dull and
melancholy air. As it is usual in French hotels, the building enclosed
a court-yard in the centre, with galleries running round the three
sides, and reaching to the upper stories. The furniture, handsome of
its kind, was somewhat faded, adding to the gloom which is so often
the characteristic of a provincial inn.

As soon as possible, we sallied forth, according to our usual wont, to
see as much as we could of the town and its environs; both invited a
longer stay, but we were anxious to be at Marseilles by the 19th, and
therefore agreed to rise at half-past three on the following morning,
in order to be ready for the steamer, which started an hour after. We
had begun, indeed, to fancy sleep a superfluous indulgence; my female
friend (Miss E.), as well as myself, suffering no other inconvenience
from three nights spent in a diligence than that occasioned by swelled
feet and ancles.

We found a very considerable number of persons in the steam-boat, many
of whom were English, and amongst them a gentleman and his wife, who,
with four children, were travelling to Nice, where they proposed to
spend the winter. The fine weather of the preceding day had deserted
us, and it rained in torrents during the first hours of the descent
of the Rhone. The wet and cold became so difficult to bear, that I
was glad to take up a position under the funnel of the steamer,
where, protected a little from the rain, I speedily got dry and warm,
enjoying the scenery in despite of the very unfavourable state of the
weather. We missed our communicative boatman of the Seine, but
met with a very intelligent German, who gave us an account of the
remarkable places _en route_, pointing out a spot once exceedingly
dangerous to boats ascending or descending, in consequence of a
projecting rock, which, by the orders