From Mr. Rives, our Minister, I have received every possible kindness. He has attached me to his legation, to facilitate my access to other courts and the society of other cities, and to free me from all delays and annoyances at frontiers and custom-houses. It is a particular and valuable kindness, and I feel a pleasure in acknowledging it. Then there is Dr. Bowring, the lover and defender of the United States, who, as the editor of the Westminster Review, should be well remembered in America, and of him I have seen much, and from him I have received great kindness. Altogether, as I said before, Paris is a home to me, and I leave it with a heavy heart.
I have taken a place on the top of the diligence _for a week_. It is a long while to occupy one seat, but the weather and the season are delicious; and in the covered and roomy cabriolet, with the _conducteur_ for a living reference, and all the appliances for comfort, I expect to live very pleasantly, night and day, till I reach Marseilles. _Vaucluse_ is on the way, and I shall visit it if I have time and good weather, perhaps. At Marseilles I propose to take the steamboat for Leghorn, and thence get directly to Florence, where I shall remain till I become familiar with the Italian, at least. I lay down my pen till all this plan of travel is accomplished, and so, for the present, adieu!
CHALONS, ON THE SAONE.--I have broken my route to stop at this pretty town, and take the steamboat which goes down the Saone to Lyons to-morrow morning. I have travelled two days and nights; but an excellent dinner and a quickened imagination indispose me for sleep, and, for want of better amusement in a strange city at night, I will pass away an hour in transcribing the hurried notes I have made at the stopping places.
I chose, by advice, the part of the diligence called the _banquette_--a covered seat over the front of the carriage, commanding all the view, and free from the dust of the lower apartments. The _conducteur_ had the opposite corner, and a very ordinary-looking man sat between us; the seat holding three very comfortably. A lady and two gentlemen occupied the _coupé_; a dragoon and his family, going to join his regiment, filled the _rotonde_; and in the interior was a motley collection, whom I scarce saw after starting; the occupants of the different parts of a diligence having no more association, even in a week's travel, than people living in adjoining houses in the city.