Page:Mrs. Siddons (IA mrssiddons00kennrich).pdf/179

Rh you would have laughed to have seen my amazement at the valet of the inn assisting the femme de chambre in the making of our beds. The beds are the best I ever slept upon; but the valet's kind offices I could always, I think, dispense with, good heavens! Well, we returned to Calais, where I would have stayed a few months, and have employed myself in acquiring a few French phrases with the dear children, if Mrs. Temple would have taken me in; but she said she had not room to accommodate me, and I unwillingly gave up the point. In a day or two we set sail, after seeing the civic oath administered on the fourteenth. It was a fine thing even at Calais. I was extremely delighted and affected, not, indeed, at the sensible objects, though a great multitude is often a grand thing, but the idea of so many millions throughout that great nation, with one consent, at one moment (as it were by Divine Inspiration), breaking their bonds asunder, filled one with sympathetic exultation, good-will, and tenderness. I rejoiced with them from my heart, and most sincerely hope they will not abuse the glorious freedom they have obtained. We were nearly twenty hours on the sea on our return, and arrived at Dover fatigued and sick to death. Dr. Wynn was obliged to make the best of his way to London on account of a sermon he was engaged to preach, and took his charming sister with him. We made haste here, and it is the most agreeable sea-place, excepting those on the Devonshire coast, I ever saw. Perhaps agreeable is a bad word, for the country is much more sublime than beautiful. We have tremendous cliffs overhanging and frowning on the foaming sea, which is very often so saucy and tempestuous as to deserve frowning on; from whence, when the weather is clear, we see the land of France,