course met with little credence.  Still, they listened to me, and did not show angry signs of a consciousness that I was audaciously befooling them, till the talk having veered to London, I ventured to assure them that London was not surrounded by any octroi boundary, and that no impost of that nature was levied there.[1] Then in truth I might as well have assured them that London streets were literally paved with gold.

[Footnote 1:  It may possibly be necessary to tell untravelled Englishmen that the octroi, universal on the Continent, is an impost levied on all articles of consumption at the gates of a town.]

On the 30th of May, 1840, I returned with my mother from Paris to her house in York Street.  Life had been very pleasant there to her I believe, and certainly to me during those periods of it which my inborn love of rambling allowed me to pass there.  But in the following June it was determined that the house in York Street should be given up.  Probably the causa causans of this determination was the fact of my sister’s removal to far Penrith.  But I think too, that there was a certain unavowed feeling, that we had eaten up London, and should enjoy a move to new pastures.

I remember well a certain morning in York Street when we—­my mother and I—­held a solemn audit of accounts.  It was found that during her residence in York Street she had spent a good deal more than she had supposed.  She had entertained a good deal, giving frequent “little dinners.”  But dinners, however little, are apt in London to leave tradesmen’s bills not altogether small in proportion to their littleness.  “The fact is,” said my mother, “that potatoes have been quite exceptionally dear.”  For a very long series of years she never heard the last of those exceptional potatoes.  But despite the alarming deficit caused by those unfortunate vegetables, I do not think the abandonment of the establishment in York Street was caused by financial considerations.  She was earning in those years large sums of money—­quite as large as any she had been spending—­and might have continued in London had she been so minded.

No doubt I had much to do with the determination we came to.  But for my part, if it had at that time been proposed to me, that our establishment should be reduced to a couple of trunks, and all our worldly possessions to the contents of them, with an opening vista of carriages, diligences, and ships ad libitum in prospect, I should have jumped at the idea.  A caravan, which in addition to shirts and stockings could have carried about one’s books and writing tackle would have seemed the summum bonum of human felicity.

So we turned our backs on London without a thought of regret and once again “took the road;” but this time separately, my mother going to my sister at Penrith and I to pass the summer months in wanderings in Picardy, Lorraine, and French Flanders, and the ensuing winter in Paris.