I am now at the Hotel de l’Empereur Joseph II., Rue Tournon, près du Palais du Luxembourg. Here I have been established for about half an hour, and my first business shall be to fill this sheet for you. I suppose I must begin at the beginning and tell you how I came here. Voilà. I left London at nine o’clock in the morning of the 14th inst. (Thursday), stopping on my way to the steamboat which was to take me to Boulogne, to leave a parcel of letters at Mr. Putnam’s office, to be forwarded to dear friends at home. It was a nasty, rainy morning; and our boat was, as indeed I expected, not very comfortable. The cabin was well enough, but much too small for the accommodation of some fifty or sixty persons, and there was no covering to the deck, nor any deck-cabin, except two dirty little places for the poorer passengers, who were not allowed the use of ours; so we had our choice the whole day between the soaking in the rain upon the deck and the close atmosphere of the crowded cabin. Of course I was vibrating between the two dilemmas the whole day, but took as much pains as I could to keep dry. The only thing I saw worthy of notice as we went down the Thames was Greenwich Hospital, of which I will perhaps send a print. I should add also chalk cliffs, for I never before saw rocks and hills of chalk. In the afternoon, as we had fairly got into the Channel, a thick fog came on. The captain lost his way and seemed in fear that he should run the boat upon the Sands, so he dropped anchor about five in the afternoon. We were to have arrived at Boulogne at nine that evening. But as I saw there was no great chance of our moving for some time, I set about making amends for my loss of sleep the previous night. I took possession of two thirds of a hard sofa, and, wrapped in my cloak, was soon in a comfortable doze. I awoke late in the evening; and such a sight as there was before me! It seems that there were no accommodations for sleeping on board, or next to none, and the passengers, men, women, and children, were indiscriminately but thickly strewn over the sofas, chairs, and even over the whole floor, with portmanteaus, great-coats, and whatever they could find for pillows, attempting to secure such rest as they could,--some sixty persons or more crowded into a space not larger than the cabin of one of our ferry-boats....