HGHE H H? ')H> ■ ■ \4^uJ?^ih&A^C^ J3 O-tfSV LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ^%e//£±Z UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. iv* ,600 in- habitants. It is rather a lively place, on account of the numbers of English people that are almost constantly arriving here, and those of our country people (for I understand there are a great many) that are settled for a time in the town, or about the neighbourhood. In the centre of the town there is a large square, in which the market is held, and within which, indeed, appears to be encom- passed the greater part of the stir and inte- rest that belong to this place. Calais has all the appearance of being strongly fortified. There are but two ways of entrance to the town ; namely, one gate leading to the sea side, and another gate on the opposite side of the town, through which I pass in my way to Paris. There are no less than three or four gates and drawbridges in succession, besides the principal gate and its bridge, through and over which people must^pass in order to go to or come from the town. ARDRES PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. (Four leagues from Calais.) Sunday Morning, 12 Oct. 19. A French land-league is equal to two and a half English miles, or thereabouts ; so 14 A RIDE IN FRANCE. that my ride of yesterday was only of ten miles. The league is generally supposed to be equal to three of our miles, but I am sure it is not so much as that. 20. Yesterday the weather was very wet, till about noon, when I set off from Calais. Coming out of Calais I met a diligence, or French coach, with two outriders. The ca- valcade, altogether, was the most uncouth thing of the kind I had ever seen. I was obliged to retreat before it for some distance, to find a convenient place to let it go by, on account of the fear manifested by my horse. I stopped, and let it pass. One of the out- riders gave my nag a cut with his whip in going by, and I did not expect any salutation more polite, from the barbarous appearance of the whole 'concern, and especially from the manner in wh'ch the horses were driven along, which was, by the bawling of the riders, and the clacking of their whips in such a manner as almost to stun one. There were five horses to the vehicle, which looked as cumbersome as those things in which they carry wild beasts in- England, and certainly less handsome, if beauty may be considered in such a case. The driver rode on one of the wheel-horses, which were two abreast of each other, the PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 15 three others being all abreast before. A de- scription of the dress of the drivers of these carriages would appear incredible to an Englishman. I have seen caricatures of it in England ; but, I expected to find the mode of travelling much altered; nevertheless, it appears to be nearly the same that it was in; my years ago. The driver and the outriders wore boots, which admit of no comparison with any thing that I ever saw before that went by the name of boots. Take off the foot, which was twice as big as feet generally are, the boot is a long jire-bucket ; and if 1 were to fill a sheet of paper, I could not convey a more correct idea of the thing. The hat worn by the wearers of these boots is of the old French fashion ; that is to say, inclining in its shape towards a pyramid, the width of the crown at the top being, com- pared to its width at the bottom, in about the same proportion as six inches bear to eight. The brim of the hat is remarkably small ; and, from under the hind part of this hangs el pigtail, which, in respect to its size, needs no alter- ation to make it correspond with the boots. A great part of the powder belonging to the pigtail serves, as the rider bumps upon his saddle, to variegate his skeleton jacket, which was, in this case, of a blue colour with red collar 16 A RIDE IN FRANCE. and cuffs, and of so very scanty a fashion, that it appeared to be much too small for the wearer : it puts one in mind of one of those lucky school-boys, who have not been suf- ficiently starved to prevent them from growing out of their jackets. 21. The country, after leaving Calais, is, for some miles, entirely flat, and has formerly been a common, with furze growing upon it. I saw a man at plough at a mile from Calais, from whom I found that I had come a mile out of my way, having taken the road to Dunkirk in mistake. They plough here with three horses a breast, and with a plough which is ugly, but not so heavy as some of ours in England-? and the land appears to be very well ploughed. 22. Before I left Calais yesterday morning, I went to the market, Saturday being market- day. I saw many farmers with their wheat, at some samples of which I looked. The wheat seemed to be very good ; I did not see a bad sample. I was surprised to see that women had so much to do in the corn- market, with which market they have so little to do in England. I supposed, at first, that they must h be buying corn for their own home PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 17 consumption; but I soon found, from their conversation, that they were selling com at market just the same as if they had been men. Upon the road I saw a great many people, mostly women, going to and coming from market. They were going, or had been to market, it appeared, to buy things for do- mestic use; as those that were going home- wards, were, I perceived, carrying bread, apples, clothes, crockery-ware, and many other articles. These people were all well dressed. The labourers pretty much in the same fashion as the English, with smock- frocks and trowsers, made of a linen stuff of a blue colour, and shoes and hats like the English. The women are strikingly uniform in their dress. In wet weather they all wear cloaks. They very seldom wear bonnets, but caps instead, which, when it rains, they cover with a handkerchief, or with the hood of their cloaks. I speak here of what are called pea- sants, or country people. 23. The soil about here is of a dark sandy kind, but pretty good. I see some men walk- ing on high pattens. 24. Ardres is a little fortified town, with a population of about 1500. Between this place 18 A RIDE EN FRANCE. and Calais there is a bridge, called Le Pont- sa?is-Pareil, which name means, that there is not such another bridge to be found. The curiosity of it is, that there . are two canals crossing each other under the bridge at right angles, the one going from St. Omers to Calais, and the other from Ardres to Gravelines. 25. Set out from Ardres this morning, having slept there on account of bad weather. The inn, or auherge, at which I lodged last night, was the best that I could find in the place. The stable for my horse was close and good, but not divided into stalls; it was just such a stable as a good cart-horse stable is in England; not so clean, and not kept in such order, as the stables of inns in England are; never- theless quite good enough, excepting only in the circumstance of there being no stalls, w T hich does not do so well where several strange horses have to lodge in the same stable. As soon as I got to the inn I bespoke a bed-room, to take possession of which I went through the kitchen, and then up stairs. The bed-furniture and linen and the room were all clean and neat, but in place of a carpet, there was a sprinkling of sand upon the floor. The weather was very chilly, and some dinner which I had asked for was given PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 19 to me in a room, comfortable in all respects, save that of its having no fire in it. I wanted very much to get into some place warmer than this, and the kitchen being the only place where I could see a fire, I made bold to enter that, and was rather surprised on being asked to sit down there. I did not find the company disagreeable, however, and passed the evening in a manner much to my satisfaction. ST. OMERS — PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. {Six leagues from, Ardres.) Sunday Night, 12 Oct. £6. As I came out of Ardres this morning, I met the country people, at seven o'clock, going to church. At two leagues from Ardres, passed through the village of La Recousse, a pretty little place. The harvest nearly finished. Saw some horse-beans, a good many, all along the road from Calais. The beans are standing in the fields in sheaf and in shock, and seem to be very fine ; but the harvest of these is not yet begun. Saw one piece of oats and one piece of barley, yet in the field, but cut. The harvest here must have been full a month later than in the eastern part of Kent 5 that is to say, at only about fifty miles off. The beans have all been housed in 20 A RIDE IN FRANCE. Kent more than a month. They grow rape, or coleseed, here, from which they make a great deal of oil. It is sowed in the spring and transplanted in the fall of the year; not with a setting-stick, but with a plough. They lay the plants, at about a foot apart, against the ploughed land, and then turn a furrow against them, laying a row of plants for every furrow they turn. The seed ripens and is harvested the following summer. — The soil here is chalky and apparently very good; with hard flinty hills, and muddy by-roada (in this weather, which is wet). — There is a row of planted trees, on each side of the great road, for almost every step of the way from Calais to this place. The trees are, for the most part, wil- lows, black Italian poplars, ashes and elms, which latter appear to be much cultivated in this way. These trees give the road and country a very fine appearance ; and (which is by no means an unpleasant circumstance) there are no turnpike gates. I have seen some woods, at a distance, but the land near the road is, in general, very open ; in many places, for a thousand acres together, and more, nothing but an open plain. The cattle that I have seen are good. Good cart-horses and good cows. As for the sheep, I have seen very few, and those were at a distance from the road. PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 21 27. I got to this place about eleven o'clock, in time to save myself from a ducking. Went this afternoon to see the cathedral, which is a very fine building ; and also to see the ruins of the church of St. Berlin, a great part of which yet remains undemolished by the revo- lution, during which the riches of the monks of St. Benedict, to whom it belonged, were con- fiscated. That part of the church which remains, stands on a base of about 120 yards by 60. The convent, to which it belonged, is entirely destroyed ; and the remnant of the church (a beautiful piece of building) is now being sold to build houses for the citizens ! The original possessions of this community were immense. The flour-mills that belonged to it have not, like the rest of the establishment, gone out of fashion. They remain, and grind wheat to feed the people of Saint Omers. All the land which used to belong to it in the shape of beautiful gardens, is now cut up and built upon, or made into gardens of a less luxurious description. At the entrance, under the tower of the church, which remains almost perfect, there are some statues of saints, in hewed stone, over the porch ; but people have knocked off their heads and limbs, at different times, and have carried these awav. 22 A RIDE IN PRANCE. Monday Evening, 13 Oct. 28. 1 have stayed all this day at Saint Omers on account of my horse being a little lame. I consulted a French Farrier, who told me he thought the horse only wanted fresh shoeing ; and charged me 15 sous, for his fee as horse- doctor, having, besides, come some distance to see the patient. Two new shoes for my horse cost me 2 francs ; but, the blacksmith said he charged, in this sum, 10 sous extra, on account of his having done the job in the English fashion, which is a little different from the French. 29. Having some time on my hands, I went to see the place, about a mile from Saint Omers, which was once the convent of a com- munity of Carthusian Monks, and was called Le Convent des Chartreux. This convent for- merly possessed a great deal of wealth, and included, within its possessions, a considerable part of the surrounding country. That part of the land which is yet undivided, along with the remains of the convent, and the gardens, now belong to a gentleman of the name of Denis, who is the Post-master at St. Omers, and who was so polite as to let me look at the gardens and the comparatively little that is PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 23 now to be seen of the ancient building. The greater part of the building appears to be entirely destroyed. There is still, however, a very commodious house remaining of it, some of which, in places that have not been patched up in a modern fashion, has a very venerable appearance. The remains of the once grand building, near to which is the modest looking dwelling-house of their present proprietor, are now made use of as the farm-house of the estate, being environed by cart-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and the like, with which simple offices the altered aspect of the convent itself very well corresponds. In the gardens, which are protected by a part of their old walls, I saw a good deal of fine fruit, though there did not appear to be much care bestowed on its cultivation. The pippin a" or, and a large apple, called the calms, were the best of the apples that I saw ; but the pears, the chau- montelle, the cuisse-dame, the poire de laPucelle, and a pear called the mauquete, were, I think, the finest pears I have ever seen, and grew here in great abundance. Excepting these fruits, there was not much vegetation in the garden, worth speaking of. I saw a little false bridge (without any water under it), and a little mound of earth, which I should not forget to mention, because the gardener informed me that these 24 A RIDE IN FRANCE. had been made in imitation of our English gardeners. The French gardener, however, did not appear to have been enamoured of the bridge for any great length of time, for I could see that it was going to ruin very fast. There was a patch of potatoes here, and a plan- tation of young elm-trees. The elm-tree is much planted, alongside of roads and lanes, about houses, and in many of the fields ; and these young trees that I saw, were intended to be planted out, in this way, on the estate. 30. This place, Saint Omers, has a popula- tion of 21,000 inhabitants, two or three thousand of whom are supposed to be English people. There is a good deal of manufacturing done here, of cloth, glue, leather, starch, soap, and some other things. There is a college, and a playhouse ; to the latter of which I saw the citizens crowding yesterday, Sunday, evening. Saint Omers is a fortified town, though not of a regular form. The country about it is flat, and, to the north west, it is one continued marsh nearly all the way to Dunkirk. This country of marshes is very curious. It is a mass of fields and meadows divided by water instead of by hedges and other fences. Canals are the roads, ditches the lanes, and boats and rafts, the carts and wagons, and also the gates PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 25 and stiles. The land is rich ; it grows corn, carrots, parsnips, hemp, and tobacco, which latter is much cultivated in the vicinage of Saint Omers, or, correctly, Omer. 31. The origin of the name of this fine old city is curious and interesting. Tradition says, that Omer was a most pious and active man, and that he caused to be drained the marshes above mentioned, and enabled the peo- ple to cultivate them. There is not a farmer within ten miles of Saint Omers, or a farmer's wife, who will not tell you this. Nor is history silent as to the virtues and services of Omer, who, it appears, was born in the Vale of Gol- denthal, near Constance, on the Upper Rhine. He is reported to have been of a rich and noble family, and to have entered in early life into the monastery of Luxeuil. He was appointed Bishop of Terouane, by King Dagobert, in 636, in "v^hich office he greatly distinguished himself by his industry, zeal, and piety. The spot (and most probably a large tract round it) where Saint Omers now stands, was, at the period here spoken of, the domain, or part of the domain of a gentleman, who had been recently converted, and who bestowed it on the church. This spot, which was then called Sithieu, was, under the direction of Omer, c 26 A RIDE IN FRANCE. aided by his nephew Bertin, brought into cultivation ; and on it Omer founded a mo- nastery, which he called the monastery of Sithieu, which flourished exceedingly. Omer died in 688 ; and Bertin, whom he had made the chief of the monastery of Sithieu, died in 706, in a little hermitage to which he had retired. Gratitude to Omer caused the city, which rose up round the monastery, to be called by his name ; and the same cause gave to the monastery the name of Bertin. Hence come the names of this ancient city and of that famous convent, the fragment of the church of which I mentioned in paragraph 27. SAINT POL PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. (Thirteen leagues from St. Omers, through Aire, Litters, and P ernes.) Tuesday Evening, 14 Oct. 3£. My bill, for two day's board, and two night's lodging, at Saint Omers, amounted to 7 francs ; and that for the keep of my horse during the two days and two nights, 6 francs. This was not a heavy sum, considering that I was treated with great civility, and that my fare was very good, although the inn was not the largest in the town. The French manner of cooking is so materially different from the PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 27 English, that it would be difficult for me to describe,, with particularity, the sort of dinner that I got at this inn. The French are famed for eating a great deal of vegetable, and but little of animal food. I, however, have found it quite the contrary, as far as I could judge by what I saw of their cookery at Saint Omers ; for, while the people who dined at the Table d'Hote ate meat in a great variety of shapes, I never saw an?/ vegetables upon the table, except salad, which the French are very fond of, and some little pieces of carrot, onion, and garlick, which I found mingling together in the soups, fricassees, and ragouts. 33. As I came out of Saint Omers this morning, I took notice of a fine old church, which, I was informed, used to be called the church of the Jesuits. I perceived some strong marks of the Revolution upon its exterior, which is, in general, much defaced, while the gothic window-places are filled up by a neg- ligent application of some old hurdles and straw, in the stead of glass, to keep the wea- ther out. The inside of the church is con- - verted into a riding-school, and a place in which to break in young horses! 34, Aire is a fortified town of considerable c2 28 A RIDE IN FRANCE. size, in which there are some manufactures like those of Saint 'Omers. It is situate at the confluence of the rivers Lys and Laquette. Lillers is a village of no note, in particular, on the river Navez; and Pernes is a village rather larger than Lillers, hut one in which I could see nothing very interesting ; as I may say, indeed, of most of the little places in this part of the country; for, except in their situation, or the views that surround them, they very seldom have any beauty belonging to them. The country towns and villages, unlike the generality of those in England, are dirty look- ing and confined in their streets. They have, however, almost without an exception, plenty of trees of various kinds planted about them, and this is a great advantage to their appearance. 35. The soil hereabouts is stiff, with a good deal of brick earth underneath the surface. In this part of the country the horse-bean forms a great proportion of the crop. It is cul- tivated here more for the fatting of pigs, than as food for horses. There is a vast quantity of beans on the land, generally in sheaves, and, now and then, some yet growing. The manner of harvesting these is, to pull them up by the roots (but they sometimes cut them), then bind them in sheaves and stack them. PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 29 I saw many women employed in harvesting the beans ; indeed, I see women doing almost every kind of work that is to be done upon a farm. There are full as many women em- ployed in the fields as there are men, and, I think, even more. They manage and har- vest the flax, a good deal of which is grown here, and the cress, of the stalks of which they make brooms, after threshing out the seed, for oil. The women appear to do all the turnep- hoeing that is required here; but turneps do not seem to be by any means a general crop, for I see but few of them upon the land. The dress of the women that I see at work in the fields is coarser than that commonly worn by our labourers' wives and daughters; but, it exhibits very little of that raggedness, which now characterizes the dress of so large a por- tion of those who earn their bread by hard work in England. 36. Along here I see the farmers use a swing-plough, a very good implement, as light as the English swing- plough, and as neatly made as our ploughs generally are. The poppy is one of the crops cultivated in this part. They make use of the poppy, I under- stand, for medical purposes altogether. Num- bers of women are busy in the harvesting of SO a Hide in france. these poppies, which they tie up in bundles, when dry, and put into stacks, when the seed is not collected in the field. In some places I see a parcel of women in a field of poppies, with a large piece of sackcloth spread upon the ground to catch the seed, which they get out of the pods by knocking the heads of two bundles of poppies together; just as good mo- thers in England very often threaten to do with the heads of their children, when two of them happen to be participators in one fault. 37. In the neighbourhood of this place, Saint Pol, is the little village of Azincour, on the plains of which was fought the famous battle called] the Battle of Jzincour, in the reign of Henry the Fifth. — Fine weather to-day. — ■a^ AMIENS — PROVINCE OF PICARDY. {Fourteen and a half leagues, through Doulens, Fravant and Talmas.) Wednesday Evening, 15 Oct. 38. To-day I saw the people in the fields threshing out the seeds of flax, which they do with a solid piece of thick flat board, or slab, fastened on to a handle ; with this thing they rap the flax about on a barn's floor, or on some PROVINCE OF PIOARDY. 31 boards or canvass laid down for the purpose, in the fields. Of poppies, also, there is har- vesting going on here. Oats and vetches are much sowed together, as in England, for fodder ; and they cut them here just as the seed of each begins to get hard, letting them lay on the ground for some time, till suffi- ciently dry, and then they are stacked like hay. The oats in this part of the country are good; though, further towards Calais, they are very indifferent. This has been, they in- form me, a singularly backward season for oats ; and I can see this, indeed, by the quan- tity of that crop that remains yet unhoused. The other crops that I see upon the ground are buckwheat, carrots, and beets, with some red clover, which is now being made into hay, notwithstanding the lateness of the season. Much red clover is grown, as in England, along with wheat and barley, for feeding the sheep on, a,nd cutting for hay the next year. Weather fine, but cold. 39. I saw something coming along the road, which was quite a novelty to me, although I had often heard speak of such before : it was a young woman riding on a horse, which was in the shafts of a cart, and drawing a load of flax to the farm-yard. The peculiar manner of 32 A RIDE IN FRANCE. sitting upon the horse is what I think worthy of mention, and that was, what we in England vulgarly call a straddle. 40. Between this place and Saint Pol I passed through a village called Boucmaison. It is a village of farm-houses, a thing very common here, where there are not, as in England, two or three or more good large farm-houses to be found within every mile square over the country. The greater part of the country I have come over is very open, and the farm-houses are not so much distri- buted over the land as they are in England, but are to be found in the little hamlets and villages, which they serve, in great measure, to compose. This village appeared to have scarcely any other than farm-houses in it. They were almost all built in one fashion, and of one size, with their ends, instead of their fronts, facing towards the road. Joining that end of the house which is furthest from the road, there is, in general, a continuation of the roof, under which is the cart-house, stable, pigsty, and other out-places belonging to the farm-yard. The w r alls of every house, as far as I could see, were made of mud, and the roofs thatched with straw. The frames of the house were very slight, and the mud PROVINCE OF PICARDY. 33 walls built up in a rough manner ; and in no case did I observe, except in that of one house only, that there was any white-wash on the outside of the mud. It is probable that the name of this place, Boucmaison, owes its deriva- tion to the two French words boiie and maison, which, in English, mean mud and house. 41 . The country is more woody as I come on. About here there is much fine beech timber, with some oaks, and coppices of hazel and withy, and various other sorts of mixed underwood. Much of the sowed wheat is up ; but I see some of the farmers now sowing wheat. 42. The city of Amiens, which is the capital of this province, is on the river Somme, and has a good deal of manufactures in it. It has formerly, I believe, been well fortified, but does not seem to be so at present. Population, 40,000. The gothic cathedral is well worth going to see. It is a beautiful building ; and is, I am told, the most complete specimen of its style of architecture that now remains in France. c5 34 A RIDE IN FRANCE. SAINT JUST — PROVINCE OF PICARBY. (Thirteen leagues from Amiens, through Heber 'court, Flers, Breteuil, and Wavignies.) Thursday Evening, 16 Oct. 43. My bill at Amiens amounted to 4 francs and 10 sous. I supped and lodged at the inn, and gave my horse as much as he chose to eat. At the Table d'Hote, at which I supped, there were eight or nine persons besides my- self. Here I observed, as I have done before, the great quantity of meat upon the table, and the comparatively small quantity of ve- getables. After we had disposed of divers ragouts and fricassees, a roasted shoulder of mutton was brought in, hot from the spit. I had witnessed the cooking of this as I sat by the kitchen fire before supper, but had not thought of having any of it to eat. However, I saw that the shoulder of mutton was con- sidered as no superfluity by those who had to deal with it, for it was almost entirely con- sumed before it had been a long while upon the table. Rosseau says, that the French people are more gentle and humane than the English ; that they have not so much cruelty, or bloodthirstiness, in their character, as we have. He accounts for this assumed fact by supposing that we eat too much of animal food, PROVINCE OF PlCARDY. 35 which is not sufficiently cooked; while his countrymen, on the contrary, subsist, in a great measure, on legumes, or vegetables. If I had adopted the principle of this great author, in judging of the company in which I supped at Amiens, their manner of treating the shoul- der of mutton must have induced me to doubt their possession of that humanity which, from the courteousness of their behaviour, I gave them full credit for* 44. I find the ostlers at inns quite 'polite enough, though, in point of work, very dif- ferent from the same class of people in England. To clean a horse they make use of a curry- comb and a brush (which are imported from England for the purpose) ; but, they will not fatigue themselves in their application of these instruments, as I have experienced in the case of my own horse, which has not had a real cleaning since I left Dover. I have de- sired, upon all occasions, that he should be well cleaned ; but I have met with no ostler that seemed willing to understand what I meant, if I wanted him to keep on combing or brushing my horse for more than a very few minutes at a time. To wash a horse is not an uncommon thing here. I do not mean the legs of the horse merely, but almost all over 36 A tilDE IN PRANCE. the carcass of the animal, even when the travelling is not at all muddy. Passer a Veau, which means, to pass, or to go through the water, is the expression they make use of, when they talk of taking your horse to the river or pond. The horse is ridden into the water up to his belly, and then, on his coming out again, if he stand in need of any dressing above where the water has reached, the ostler dismounts, and, taking some water up in his hand, or with a whisp of straw, dashes it over the upper parts of the horse's body. At Amiens, when I got up early this morning to start, I found, when I went into the stable, that my horse had been washed ! He was wet nearly all over. It was a clear cold morning ; and my horse, just returned from the watering-place, stood in the midst of a little fog, if 1 may so describe it, produced by the co-operation of the warmth of his body along with the cold water which had been thrown over him by the ostler. While I stood wondering to see my nag in such a pickle, the ostler came up to me, and, making me a very polite bow, said, PROVINCE OP PICARDY. 37 45. I have mentioned before, the rows oj trees that grow on each side of the road that I am travelling. From Calais to this place, with scarcely any open interval, there are these two rows of trees all the way. Elm- trees appear to be the favourites ; but, from Talmas to Saint Just, a distance of more than twenty leagues, apple and pear trees have been employed in this capacity for the whole dis- tance, to the exclusion of all others. The fruit of these trees is very insipid. The trees do not seem to have been selected at all for their fruit : indeed, most of them appear to have come from seed, without any attention being paid to them on any account but that of their wood. They grow about the fields, as well as alongside of the roads ; and of the apples, such as they are, a good deal of cider is made. I tasted some of this at Flers, where I stopped to breakfast, and it was poor stuffy but, as I was told, very cheap. 46. I saw, as I passed through some little villages, which are composed of farm-houses, for the most part, several women threshing wheat and rye with a flail, of the same de- scription as that used by the English threshers. Women also going to market, leading asses and mules, of which auimals great use is made OS A RIDE IN FRANCE. here. On the backs of these they bring loads of vegetables of all sorts to the markets of the larger towns and villages. 47. The soil here is. rather lighter^ with much chalk, in places, on the surface. Sainfoin much cultivated. Some lucerne ; the greenest crop on the ground, except the coleseed (colsa, they call it here : our name is a corruption), which is a very general crop, all along the road. Sheep here; two kinds, Flemish sheep, and Spanish sheep; the latter, in some places, looking very well. They tell me that these have degenerated in France ; but they are far the best, in every respect, that I have seen yet. The Flemish sheep are very poor things ; coarse in the fleece, long-legged, like deer, and light in the carcass. There are, how- ever, some of these that are pretty good sheep ; but, comparing the best of them with almost any kind of our English sheep, they are de- cidedly had. 48. I stopped to breakfast to-day at Flers. I paid 1 franc for my breakfast, and 5 sous for a feed of oats for my horse. The coffee that they gave me here was exceedingly good; but I have found this good every where in France. Bread, of which the French eat a PROVINCE OF PICARDY. 39 great deal, is very good here. The inn at which I put up at Flers was, as is frequently the case in this country, a farm-house as well as an inn. The generality of the inns have, as respects the interior part of them, very much the appearance of an old-fashioned English farm house. The fire-place of the kitchen, in particular, is just such as we see in all the old English farm-houses ; but, in general, the kitchens here are veiy dirty, and the floor of the dining room, whether it be boarded or paved, seldom looks as if it had been lately washed. A labourer at Flers gets from 1 to 2 and a half francs a day, according to his abilities ; journeymen carpenters, bricklayers, and the like, about the same. The price of beef here is 8 sous the pound; mutton the same. A loaf of bread, about the size of the English quartern loaf, sells for 5 sous ; a tur- key, 3 francs; a pair of ducks, 3 francs; a pair of fowls, 2 francsV I saw a large flock of turkeys, about fifty in number, roving in the stubble fields, with a girl to take care of them. These were like the wild turkeys in America, not very large, but the whole of them as black as crows. 49. Between this and Amiens, near a little village called Aicanois, there is a vineyard. 40 A RIDE IN FRANCE. consisting, perhaps, of about fifty acres. The untowardness of the season had rendered the crop of grapes very indifferent. This is the first piece of vineyard that I have seen on the road. The vines were growing very low, tied to little sticks, as our carnations are tied up in the gardens in England ; and, from all the ideas I had had of vines, before I saw these, I could not conceive at first what sort of ve- getables they could be. 50. I remark, as I go along, that the com- mon people are very civil and obliging, whenever I ask them any questions about what I do not myself understand. There is nothing uncouth, nothing boorish, in their manners. They explain to you, as well as they can, what you want to be made ac- quainted with; and, when they do not in- stantly comprehend your meaning, they seem as anxious to anticipate it,*as if you were not a stranger, but rather one to whom they have been used to talk. This is a great merit, and a mark of intelligence in the French people. It enables you to get along with them, which they cannot well do with us in England. A Frenchman is most completely out of his ele- ment in England; while an Englishman in France, though the country may appear very PROVINCE OF PICARDY. 41 strange at first, finds, in the courtesy of the people, a great deal to reconcile him to the strangeness of their customs. 51. Hereabouts they have much wheat land. The stubble is now being cut, tied up in bundles, and carried in as litter for the cattle in winter. I see, in many farm-houses, knitting and spinning going on, and some looms, one or two in a house, which are worked mostly by the women. 52. When I got to this place, there was to be, in two days' time, a fair, for the sale of cattle. I saw some men, a most simple look- ing description of horse-jockeys, with their horses, which they had brought to be sold at the fair. These horses were, generally, colts, just fit to work ; and some of them were very pretty horses. They were all nearly of one breed, such as they use for the plough, for farmers to ride upon, and for post-horses ; in all which various capacities, according to the manner of the French, they are employed. These horses had shape to recommend them. They were, mostly, of a middling size, and much of the same make as a light English cart-horse. The price of one of them here is, they tell me, about 300 francs, or 12L 10s. 42 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 53. The corn is ground here almost entirely by windmills, half a dozen of which are very nearly always, at a time, to be seen, in tra- velling along the road. There are some mills turned by water, but comparatively few. ECOUEN PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. (Fourteen leagues from Saint Just, through Cler~ viont, Luigneville, Chantilly, and Luzarches.) Friday Evening, 17 Oct. 54. The soil here is stiff, with a good deal of chalk and lime-stone. There are some fine coppices of oak, and some good oak timber. 55. Early this morning, on leaving Saint Just, I saw some sheep in a fold. The fold was made of hurdles, much like those used in our sheep-folding. But the care of the sheep here is somewhat different from that of the English. The shepherd, accompanied by two or three dogs, is (unlike some pastors else- where) always along with his flock. He attends them through the day, while they are roving about; and, in the night, he sleeps alongside of the fold, in a small wooden house, which is placed upon wheels, as a cart is, with a pole to draw it from place to place, as the fold itself may have to be removed. PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 43 56. Some hemp is grown here, I see; but most of the land is icheat and oat land, with some lucerne for the cows. Stick Leans (hari- cot, the French call them,) are cultivated here for the table. The French eat these boiled ; that is, the seed part of the bean, after it is ripe and hard. I saw an old lady carrying some of these off the ground. There was, growing in rows, in the interval between the rows of beans, a winter crop of some plant. I asked her the name of this plant, which, she informed me, was chardon (thistle). It is a sort of thistle that we call teazle, and these teazles were raised, she said, to be sent to the manufacturing towns, for the dressi?ig of cloth, in which they are used, I believe, to give the cloth a fine nap, which operation the French call chardoner, that is to say, to thistle it, or, to scratch it with a thistle* 5/. There are some few vines near Saint Just, and some in the neighbourhood of Cler- mont, a little town on the river Oise, a fine clear river, where they climb up the fruit trees, and look very ornamental growing in this way. 58. Chantilly, an ancient little place, and formerly the seat of much nobility, is a ma- nufacturing town, with a fine canal running 44 A RIDE IN FRANCE. by it. The manufacture i?, principally, of linen. Luzarches (formerly a country resort of the famous Rosseau,) has also some manu- facture belonging to it, of lace. I do not wonder that Rosseau should have been at- tached to this part of the country (comparing it with all that which I have passed through), for it certainly is very pretty. There is, be- tween Laigneville and Chantilly, a pretty village called Crai, which is also, I believe, on the river Oise, as well as Clermont ; and ano- ther village called Lamorlai, near Luzarches. These places are all very prettily situated ; though I cannot say much for the habitations of the people, which have no signs of taste or neatness about them. 59. I saw a man coming out of Clermont with a load of fagots. The price of these, he informed me, was 40 francs for 50 fagots : he having then 50 fagots on his cart, which made a good load for two strong horses. CO. In coming from Clermont to Ecouen, there is much wood on the sides of the road, and some locust trees, evidently planted by hand. I had a fine morning; but got to Ecouen just before the fall of a heavy rain, which came on this evening. PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 45 Paris, Saturday Noon, 18 Oct. 61. At Ecouen there is a fine castle, built about three hundred years ago by the Due de Montmorency. I met with the steward of the estate last evening, while at Ecouen, and I went early this morning„on my road to Paris, to see him at the castle, as he had invited me so to do. This gentleman showed me all over the castle, a fine old building, in the Dutch style. He pointed out to me, as we went from one part of it to another, the signal alterations that it had undergone during the Revolution, accompanying his observations with many shrugs of regret on account of those effects, and as many expressions of devotedness to the royal family of his master, the present posses- sor of the castle, who is the Due de Bourbon. The chapel of the castle is a beautiful little place. It occupies one corner of the castle, which is a very large building, comprising, within its own extent, an open space, of a square shape, and of about thirty square yards. The castle has a sort of fortification round it, so that, to enter the square, you have to pass over a bridge, which is the only way of admit- tance. On one side of the castle, you look, from a terrace, immediately over the town of Ecoueu and the neighbourhood, which lie be- 46 A RIDE IN FRANCE. neath its site ; and on the opposite side the building is sheltered by a very pretty coppice of hazel, beech, and chestnut, with many of the locust tree, of which there is a good deal about the town of Ecouen. I do not know whether these trees are precisely what the Americans call the locust. They are not, how- ever, the rose acacia, but one of the larger species, though none of them have arrived at any considerable size ; and they seem to be of a kind more diminutive than the true locust. 62. When I got to Ecouen, I found the ostler at the inn quite drunk. This is the first person that I have seen, in France, so far under the influence of liquor. He was not, however, a Frenchman; but a German, as I was told by the landlady. 63. The land, between Ecouen and Paris (a good stiff soil) is, for the most part, em- ployed for the cultivation of vines, and in the raising of vegetables for Paris market. The people here were gathering grapes into bas- kets, and then putting them into little wooden vats, ready for the first process of making the wine. 64. The roads, all the way from Calais to PROVINCE OF ISLE DB FRANCE. 47 Paris, are very good ; though not so even as those made by the hard-used "paupers," who crack the stones to make our roads in England. From Saint Omers to Pernes, and from Saint Just to Paris, the middle of the road is paved, leaving room, on each side of the pavement, for a carriage to pass. The paving is done .with a sort of stone, which is found along with the limestone, like what w T e call burstone in England. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; 19, 20, & 21 Oct. 65, As I pass but three whole days in this city, it cannot be expected that I should be very particular in my notice of it here. It is said, that Paris contains a population of 750,000 souls. Nevertheless, it is, compared with London, almost a small place. It is about a fourth part the size of London : not a bit more, I am certain, if you include the environs of both places. On entering the busy part of the city, you see very little difference, in its con- struction, between it and the city part of London, that is to say, Fleet Street, Cheapside, Lombard Street, and the rest of those streets in London, in which there is so much passing, and so much difficulty to pass. The houses are high, and the streets are narrow. There 48 A niDE IN FRANCE. are not, as in London, any separate pavements for foot-passengers to go upon : so that, on this account, the general confusion of the streets is even greater than that which is observed in the streets of London. There are scarcely any fine streets. Nothing like the west-end of London : no straight, broad streets, with fine houses, throughout, all of one order and size. —The river Seine, which passes through the town, so as to divide it into nearly two equal parts, has fifteen bridges, crossing it from one part of the town to the other, just as London Bridge crosses the Thames to communicate with the Borough of Southwark. One of these bridges is, I believe, built upon the principle discovered by Mr. Paine. It is made of iron; and, from the style of its con- struction, looks very light and elegant. — Paris is not so black as London is, owing to the use of wood-fuel instead of coal, 66. I have seen nothing in England to equal some of the buildings here. Except the public buildings, there are few that have any gran- deur about them; but some of the palaces here are very fine. We have nothing in England to be compared with the Tuileries, which is the habitation of the King, and which, though in the middle of the city, has PROVINCE OF ISLE DE PRANCE 49 a spacious and beautiful park in front of it. The Palais du Luxembourg, in which is the Chamber of Peers, is a palace, nearly as grand in itself, with a garden, or park, even finer than that of the Tuileries. The Tuileries is about ten times as capacious, and full ten times as grand, as the palace of our King in Pall-mall. The palace called the Louvre is little more than an enlargement, or a con- tinuation, of that of the Tuileries; but it is, in itself, a noble building, though not yet finished. The greater part of the Louvre Was built by Buonaparte, who was the projector of it; and the scaffolding, erected to complete it, is now rotting as it stands ; because the present disposers of such places do not like the idea of finishing a job which was begun under the direction of a person of so obnoxious a name. The Palais de Justice is a beautiful building, of modern structure, but not of such reverend aspect as the buildings of Westminster Hall and Guild Hall. The. Palais Roy ale, originally the palace of, and built by, Cardinal Richlieu, and which was confiscated during the Great Revolution, is now a sort of market-place for all sorts of fashionable merchandize. It forms a large square, the interior space of which is a favourite resort for promenade; while the great range of building is divided into coffee- D 50 A RIDE IN FRANCE. houses, milliners' and tailors' shops, shops of t?inhet-sellers, and the like. The inner parts of some of the churches are very magnificent ; but I see no churches in Paris, excepting that of Notre Dame, which is the metropolitan church, to equal some of our ancient cathe- drals in external appearance. The Museum of Natural History (the only one of the mu- seums in Paris that I have seen), and the collection of live animals, are superior, by far, to any thing of the kind that we have in England. The famous Garden of Plants, {Jar din des Planies), is, I am told, well worthy of the esteem in which it is held ; but, it is not, however, any thing like so beautiful a place as Kew Garden, either in point of its laying out, or of its plantations of trees. One great recommendation to this garden is, that it is open to the inspection of every one ; as are, also, both the two former institutions. — The Corn Market, (Halle aux Grains), is a good large solid building, situated in the middle of the city. It is, in form, just like the cupola or dome of St. Paul's Cathedral ; that is to say, round at its base, and rising up into the shape of one half of a perfect oval. 67. Almost the whole of the buildings in Paris are made of a soft sandy stone, which PROVINCE OP ISLE DE FRANCE. 51 they cover over with a white plaster, or ce- ment. The stones that form the walls are rough, and not regular in shape or size ; but the cement, which is laid smooth over the outside of the walls, and then scored with a trowel into square or oblong shapes, makes the houses appear as if they were composed of a solid white stone ; and as there is no black smoke arising from the fuel made use of by the inhabitants, the city (like the. country towns, which are generally built of the same material) has, at a distance, a much brighter look than that of London, or any of our prin- cipal towns in England. 68. In the Garden of Plants I saw a spe- cimen of a new invented thatch, for the roofs of dwelling houses or out-buildings. It was, in fact, nothing more than an imitation of the beehive, the straw being laid on across the skeleton of the roof, in little handfuls at a time, one u,pon another, each being separately bound round tight with a piece of rope-yarn, or some of the bark of brambles. The straw, after being laid on in this manner, must be covered by a thin coat of lime plaster, to turn the weather. This mode of covering a roof would be a great saving in straw ; neverthe- less, I think the old fashioned way of thatch- d2 52 A RIDE IN FRANCE. ing, without the coat of plaster on the outside, is more neat and handsome, by far. 69. The land just round Paris consists in vineyards, or in gardens full of various sorts of vegetables for the market of Paris, and walled gardens, for the cultivation of peach, apricot, nectarine, and plum-trees. There are very few fences made use of, besides the walls, which are built for the trees to grow against; and many of these walls, though close by so large a place as Paris, are built quite in the open, at a distance from a*iy house, not en- closing a piece of ground, but merely one line of ivall; so that, if the people passing were inclined to steal the fine fruit that grows in this way, they might, without hinderance ; nevertheless, the gardeners (who garden for profit) do not find any reason to apprehend such depredation. 70. At a league from Paris, at a village called Montreuil, there lived a gentleman, nearly a century back, of the name af Girar- dot, who, by his example, taught the people in his neighbourhood the mode of cultivating peach-trees and other wall fruit. His house is still remaining, but his garden is not. The whole village of Montreuil is, however, like PROVINCE OP ISLE DE FRANCE. 53 some other little places in the vicinity of Paris, now almost entirely inhabited by people de- pending on the cultivation of wall fruit. At Montreuil there is about a hundred acres of land, every particular half acre, quarter of an acre, or half quarter of an acre of which has a separate wall to enclose it; so that, the quantity of wall fruit that is grown here annually must be immense. I went into the garden of a Mr. Merielle, who showed me how these walls are constructed. They are first built up in a rough manner, of the soft stone which I mentioned in paragraph 67. Then a stiff cement, like that which they apply to the walls of the houses, is made use of, to fill up all the cavities between the rough stones. The cement should be laid thick upon the face of the wall, not only to make it smooth, but to give a hold to the nails, which are to hold the branches and shoots of the trees, and which are tacked into this plaster or cement* just as we tack ours into the mortar between the bricks of our garden walls. On the top of the wall there must be made a little roof, or projection, of about six inches from each side of the top of the wall. This roof is easily added to the wall, by the use of the same materials as those employed to erect the wall itself. The roof is necessary to guard 54 A RIDE IN FRANCE. the tree from blight and bad weather. This prevention is effected by suspending from the roof a sttaw mat, which is made for the ex- press purpose, and which, being thus sus- pended in front of the tree, forms a perfect protection to it when it is in bloom, or at any time when danger may be apprehended to it from the state of the weather or the season. The peaches grown against these walls are sold for from one sou to four sous a-piece, ac- cording to their size or flavour ; but, all the fruit was gone. I came rather too late in the season, and could not, therefore, see a spe- cimen of it. I saw nothing in the manner of training the fruit trees here that was different from the manner in which the same trees arc trained in England. The peaches here are budded generally upon almond-stocks, which are preferred to plum-stocks, as being more of the same nature as that of the peach itself. Some of the peach-trees that I saw were up- wards of sixty years old; nevertheless, they had, from good management, plenty of young wood upon them, and had borne well this year. 71. There is a duty, in the form of a per centage, levied upon all articles brought into the market of Paris. The duty is not, how- PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 55 ever, sufficiently heavy to make any con- siderable difference in the price of provisions of any kind. The money which is collected in this way is employed in nearly the same manner as are the funds of a corporation in England. All towns, of any importance, have this regulation attached to them. A little way from the walls of the principal towns there is a gate, at which those who may be bringing any thing to market must stop to have it in- spected. Coming into Paris I passed through a gate, at which I saw two or three men stand- ing, each of them having an instrument in his hand which looked much like a kitchen-spit : a long sharp piece of iron, with which they pierced the loads of hay and straw as they came through the gate to market, in order to prevent any thing like smuggling, 72. Paris, compared with London, is, in one respect, strikingly different. There are very few houses here, that do not appear to have been built for some years. New houses are, of course, erected, in the place of those that fall to ruin from age. But, what I mean to say is, that Paris does not seem, like London, to increase in size: the number of new build- ings in it appear to be very little more, if any, than just sufficient to make the town cover 56 A RIDE IN FRANCE. the same space of ground as that which it must have extended over twenty or thirty years ago. There is nothing at all of what, about London, they call " a box:" that is to say, a genteel, new-fashioned, and miserably inconvenient small house, with a very small piece of grass- plot, in which there are two or three fancifully carved patches of bare earth, for the cultiva- tion of some " exotics,'' which, either for the want of their native sun, or the want of expe- rience in the planter of them, are never seen to grow after the time of their being stuck into the ground. CHAJLLY PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. (Eleven and a half leagues from Paris, through Villejuif, Fromenteazi, Essonne, and Ponthierry.)\ Wednesday Night, 22 Oct. 73. The hotel at which I put up at Paris (Hotel de Meurice) belongs to the same person as the hotel at which I was in Calais. This is the most superb hotel that I ever saw any where ; and, like some other establishments of the kind here, is supported, almost entirely, by the custom of English visitors. I did not dine or sup at this place, all the while that I stayed in Paris, being abroad the greater part of my time, either walking about, or at the PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 57 house of my friend, who is a gentleman re- siding in the city. I shall, however, give the particulars of the charges, as far as I had any to pay, at the Hotel de Meurice. For break- fasting here five days, I paid 10 francs. For four nights' lodging, 12 francs. For lights, 1 franc and 10 sous. For boot cleaning, 1 franc and 5 sous. For servants, that is to say, the waiter's fee (which was charged in the bill), 4 fyancs. In all, 28 francs and 15 sous. I could not have expected a bill of less serious amount, at a place where the accommodation was so very good as I found it here. I paid for my horse, 14 francs, reckoning the feeding and care of him to have been for four days, which is at the rate of 3 francs and 10 sous a day. At the ordinary hotels or inns in France, a traveller's horse will not cost him much more than one half of what I paid here for mine. My horse has cost me, I think, upon an average, about 2 francs a day, on my road from Calais to Paris; which is about one third of what he would have cost, in a similar situation, in Eng- land. In London, a horse, by the week, cost?, at livery, 4 francs a day, every thing included; and, if he stand for a day or two, as mine did at Paris, he does not, including every thing, cost less than five shillings a day ; that is to say 6 francs. d 5 58 A RIDE IN PRANCE. 74. The land is good all about Paris, as far as I could see. The greater part of the culti- vation, for some distance round the city, seems to be that of vines, from which, owing to the backward season, which has affected this part of France as well as England, the grapes are not all yet gathered. The grapes of this year are not good, compared with those of com- mon seasons; they are very small, and will not make as good wine as what is generally made near Paris. The lovers of wine ought to be select as to the years when their stock is produced; for the wine of some years is not, though from the same ground, nearly so good as the wine of other years. 75. The face of the country, just after com- ing to Fromenteau, at about three leagues from Paris, forms, I think, the most beautiful scenery of the kind that I ever beheld. Just as you look over the hill, on one side of which is situated the little village of Fromenteau, a fine view presents itself to your sight. There is a space of perfectly flat land, through the middle of which the road is cut, and which is about two or three miles square. On one side of the road you see fine water meadows on the River Orge, and, after getting on to the level below, you are surrounded, in every direction, PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 59 by hills, sloping gently up from all sides of the open plain, and covered With vines and fruit- trees and plantations and parks, and little vil - lages, each having its church and spire, scat- tered about among the trees, the foliage of which is, at this time of the year, very various and rich in hue. This view extends from Fromenteau to another little village called Ris. On leaving Ris to come to Essonne, which is at about another three leagues distant, and situ- ated on the river Juine or Essonne, the view of the country is still more beautiful. The river Seine runs along here, and goes off to the left; and, on my right hand, I had to lament a like departure of a delightful valley which winds across the country away from the road I am travelling. I think this valley, as far as I was able to follow it with my eye, was the very prettiest of all rural scenery that I re- member to have seen. It is on the sides of hills, like those which were here most ele- gantly disposed by nature, that the vine flou- rishes most. Here the vines were growing finely, and covered almost every hill, as far as I could see, except in those places where orna- mental trees and orchards gave a variety to to this enchanting landscape, which I could not lose sight of without congratulating my- 60 A RIDE IN FRANCE. self on having seen ie The vine covered hills and gay regions of France" 76. I observe, here, a method of training peach trees, and other wall fruit, which I did not see at Montreuil. Against some of the walls in gentlemen's gardens there are rod?, quite straight and round, with the bark left on, and about an inch in diameter. The rods are placed against the wall, long-ways and perpendicular, so as to cross one another, like lattice icork, leaving square spaces of about six or eight inches. Placed irt this manner, and fastened together, the rods form a frame for the trees, or vines, to grow against; and as the branches and shoots must be kept, by means of this frame, from touching the wall, they are, perhaps, more healthy than they would be, being fastened to the wall itself instead of to these rods. 77* I" the neighbourhood of Paris, particu- larly about Fromenteau and Essonne, there are some fine gentlemen's seats, or castles. The word ca&le is, in French, chateau. But by chateau, the French seldom, or never, mean a place of defence, but merely a large country mansion. The truth is, however, that every PROVINCE OF JSLB DB FRANCE. 61 large country house was, formerly, a place of defence. It was generally encompassed by a moat, or wet ditch. It had turrets and parapets and loop-holes. The same custom prevailed in England; but in France it prevailed to a much later period; and accordingly the French have continued to call their large country mansions, castles, which indeed have, in many cases, still their ancient appurtenances of turrets and the like. There is a great display of good taste in the laying out of the grounds belonging to country mansions in France, but such places are very scarce here compared to what they are in England. The vicinity of London is overstocked with fine houses, while Paris, comparatively speaking, has nothing of the kind about it. There seem to be scarcely any more large buildings within five leagues of Paris than I have seen at fifty leagues from it. Almost all of the large establishments of this kind appear to have existed for many~ years, and have belonged, no doubt, the greater part of them, to the nobility that were ejected dur- ing the Revolution. The plantations and parks that encircle these places in France have been l$id out with much taste. There is hardly any of that appearance of art which is very frequently the case with us in England. A gentleman's castle, or country house, here, 62 A RIDE IN FRANCE. looks as if it had* been built up amonst the trees: not the trees as if they had been planted about th6 castle. It is about gentlemen's houses only that I have seen any quickset hedges, of any consequence, on the road from Calais to this place. When I do see these hedges they are, in general, kept in very nice order. Upon some of the plain lands in Pi- cardy, there are, here and there, plantations of trees in square patches, of about an acre each, with close quick-set hedges to enclose them. These plantations have been allowed to grow into thick coppice, and are intended, I suppose, as a protection to the game, where the land Kes so open. PUITS DE LALLANDE PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. {Thirteen and a half leagues from Chailly, through Fontainebleau, Nemours, La Crosicre, and Fon- tenay.) Thursday Night, 23 Oct. 78. Soon after leaving Chailly, to come this way, I entered the Forest of Fontainebleau. This forest is said to be full twelve leagues in circumference, and to contain 84,000 acres of woodland. The timber in the forest has been well cultivated. There are some fine plantations of oaks, planted in rows, now got PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 63 to be of a large size ; besides plantations of various other sorts of trees, quite lately made. The beeches and the oaks, especially the latter, tower up more here than they generally do in England. The timber is much like that of America ; taller, and straighter in its growth, than the English timber is. 1 think I saw some timber in this forest as fine, almost, as I ever saw in any wood in America. 79. The town of Fontainebleau is surrounded by its forest, the land of which is very rocky and mountainous in places, much resembling the wild woodlands of America. You enter the town from the forest, and the forest con- tinues again on the road which I am travelling. The manufactures of Fontainebleau consist, principally, in porcelai?ie. The neighbour- hood is famous for a fine sort of grape, which is called Chasselas de Fontainebleau, This place owes its importance, almost entirely, to a castle, which was built here a great many years ago. The castle, which has been the residence of many of the kings of France, is yet in very good order, although it is one of the most ancient castles that remain in this country. 80. Nemours is a little town on the river 64 A RIDE IN FRANCS, Loing". This river runs, after you leave Ne- mours, through some beautiful water meadows, which continue along on the right hand side of the road, for a whole day's ride. Feeding on these meadows I saw a great many cows, of a pretty little sort; just such as, in Eng- land, we call the French or Alderney cow. The kinds of cows that I have seen further back seemed to be much mixed ; but, in this part of the country, the cows are very distinct in their species, as well as very handsome. They are small, and of different colours; red, yellow, brown, and black, and a mixture of all these colours with white. I observed, as soon as I began to see these cows, that the butter was vastly superior to any I had tasted before ; and, upon inquiry, I find that Montargis, a town between this place and Briarre, is celebrated foi* the goodness of its butter. One of the best of these little cows may be bought for 60 francs. A good farmer's horse here sells for 200 or 250 francs ; or, about 81. 81. I saw a labourer, to-day, on the road, who was going to work, having a pickaxe upon his shoulder. He told me that he could get, at this time of the year, 1^ franc a-day ; or, 1 franc, the employer finding him in food. PROVINCE OF ISLE DE FRANCE. 65 82. There is a good deal of wine made along here. The people are yet harvesting the grapes. This business would have been about finished by this time, had not the untoward- licss of the season, even as far South as this, had sufficient influence to retard the ripening of the fruit. S3. I perceive that there are more shep- herdesses in this country than there are shep- herds. The women and the girls are attend- ing the flocks of sheep and herds of cows, and the flocks of turkeys, which latter are, here, to be seen in great numbers. While they look after these animals, assisted by many dogs, they are employed, at the same time, in dress- ing hemp and flax, and knitting woollen stock- ings and gloves. The hemp and the flax they afterwards spin, and then sell the yarn, or get it converted, by some of their neighbours who have looms, into shirts and sheets, and various other articles of wearing apparel, and articles for domestic use. A great deal of this manufacture is going on in all the villages and hamlets that I pass by. The weather is now beautiful and mild, as it has been ever since I got to Paris ; and the women sit outside of their houses, in their gardens, or alongside of the fields, knitting and spinning, and dressing hemp and flax. 66 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 84. The people, that is to say, the peasantry, or country-folks, wear a wooden shoe, which they call sabot, and which is made somewhat in the same shape as a rough leather shoe, there being a strap of leather, round the sole of the sabot and over the wearer's instep, to keep it on the foot. Towards Calais the sabot is not so common, but here it is much more commonly worn by the labouring people than shoes made of leather are. Some fellow, in an English play, execrates the French, because they wear wooden shoes. What difference, however, is there between these and the nailed shoes of our labourers ? The sabot is lighter, very little less stiff, and a better security against wet. Most excellent things, when you are compelled to stand long on wet or damp ground. BRIARRE — PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS. (Twelve and a half leagues from Puits de Lallande, through Montargis, La Commodite, Nogent, and La Bussiere.) Friday Night, 24 Oct. 85. This morning, as I was leaving Puits de Lallande, 1 saw some oxen, which were on their way to Paris market. There were three different kinds of cattle, which were called, after the names of the several parts of the PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS. 67 country in which they are bred, Bourbonnois, Lyonnois, and Nevernois. The Bourbonnois are of a cream colour, all over ; the Lyonnois are white with red spots ; and the Nevernois are white, with yellow spots. They are all very good looking, though not very large cattle. All the kinds were much of one form and size. They were grazing cattle, and in excellent con- dition ; and they were more like the Scotch kilos than any other of our cattle that I can compare them to. The price of a new plough here, is, as 1 was informed by a wheel- wright, about 50 francs ; a cart, /0 francs j a wagon, 110 francs, 86. I see great flocks of fine black turkeys, in the stubbles, all along the road. The price of one of these turkeys is, about 2 francs ; a goose, about the same price ; and a common fowl, about 10 or 15 sous; or, 7id« 87. No crops unharvested, here, except some buck-wheat, and a few potatoes. The potatoe is not, in France, the same grand article of consumption that it is with us. The French cut potatoes up into little thin slices, and toss them about in a frying-pan. But the comparatively small quantity of this sort of cookery that they eat, makes it appear more 68 A RIDE IN FRANCE. like playing- with potatoes than feeding upon them. 88. The inhabitants of the little towns, and the villages, on this side of Paris, are cleaner in their dress, and about their houses, than the people of Picardy or Artois. The dress of the labouring people here is certainly better than tbat of the labourers in England ; but, it is not so neat nor so clean. The Americans say of the French people, that they are pigs in the parlour and peacocks in the street. This is a thorough saying, to be sure ; it is somewhat hyperbolical; but it is not, if I may judge from what I have already noticed, wholly un- founded in truth. 89. From Nogent I came over a flat and uninteresting district of country, the soil ot •which seemed to be any thing but good ; but, a very different view is presented, the moment you catch sight of Briarre, and the beautiful river Loire, close on the border of which are situated those farms of Beauvoir, which were advertised, in London, by Mr. Hoggart, as being so free from all taxes, tithes, and poor- rates. 90. As I approached this neighbourhood, I CHATEAU DE BEAU VOIR. 69 saw a great many chestnut-trees growing on the sides of the road. The chestnut is a pretty common tree here, though not so much so as it is in some other parts of France, where, I hear, the peasantry make great use of the fruit in the way of food. The chestnut tree that I see here is the same as the Spanish chestnut. It bears a large nut, which is dry, rather bitter, and hard, to eat raw, but very good when cooked. It is a good deal different from the American chestnut tree, which makes finer and taller timber, and bears a nut much svreeter than the Spanish chestnut, though nothing like so large. CHATEAU DE BEAUVOIR. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; 25, 2C, 27, & 28 Oct. 91. This chateau, or castle, is a large man- sion, about a mile distant from the village of Briarre. The estate, which consists, all to- gether, of about 3,500 acres of land, surrounds the castle, on one of the banks o£ the Loire, upon the eminence of which the castle is situated, so as to command a view, for a great distance, of the fine river and the valley through which it runs. 70 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 92. A part of the land, about here, is, evi- dently, very good. Much of it is very light ; but the lighter part of it is not, by any means, incapable of yielding a crop. There is a variety of soil here : some inclining to a sand, and fit for rye, or oats ; and some more of the nature of clay, that is to say, stiff, strong loam, which will grow good wheat. There is a fair distribution of marl, all over the land j and a great deal of this is laid upon the land as manure. The soil seems kind, as we say, to most of the English crops. Wheat* rye, barley, oats, vetches, upland-hay, turneps, sainfoin, lucerne, and hops : these will ail grow here. I have seen some samples of wheat and barley and rye, which have been produced on this land. The wheat and the rye are very good ; the wheat is small, like the wheat of America, very clear in colour, and firm in substance. The sample of barley, which was given to me out of a barn here, was certainly a brighter, if not a plumper sample, than any I remember to have seen in England. The grain is short, very plump, and every way excellent. 93. The finest hay made here, is that of lucerne, which is better, they tell me, than that of sainfoin; but, both of these are jrowu here CHATEAU DE BEAUVOIR. 71 for hay. I saw some lucerne hay, which was given to my horse, and I was told that this hay had been made from one of three cuttings which a field of lucerne had undergone this summer. 94. They have a method here of sowing grain which I never saw before. Neverthe- less, I have been told that the fashion belongs to Suffolk and Norfolk. The grain is sowed, in the usual way, but, instead of being har- rowed in upon the flat fallow, the ground is ploughed into one bout, two bout, or three bout ridges. Most frequently one bout ridges. The ploughing prevents any of the grain from growing in the space between each ridge, so that the crop lies higher, and ha* more room to get up in. 95. For a good distance before I got to the Loire, the land, I could see, was much too flat for any vines to grow upon it ; but here they grow well, all along on each side of the river, and some excellent wine is made at this place. 96. From the village of Briarre there is a canal which runs, through Montargis, into the Seine, whereby there is a direct communica- I 72 A HIDE IN FRANCE. tion by water with Paris. This canal is a very fine one, and is one of the first things of the kind in France. 97. The price of land here is, in general, from 3 to 8 pounds sterling the acre ; and the French acre, or arpent, is, according to what I learn here, just three-sixteenths of an English acre more than an English acre is : that is to say, one acre, and three quarters of a rood, English measure; or (which is the best way of stating it) the French arpent contains (at Briarre at least) one hundred and ninety English rods, or poles, each pole being sixteen and a half English feet square. 98. Two farmers from Norfolk, who first saw Mr. Boggart's advertisement as it was quoted in the Political Register, have lately been to Briarre, and they had left this place just before I got here. They have taken two of the farms at Beauvoir, which consist of several hundred acres each, at a rent of 10s. sterling the acre. The farms have comfortable and substantial farm-houses upon them, be- sides all the out-houses common to an English farm, all of which are in good repair. 99. The law of Real Estate in France, as far CHATEAU DE BKAUVOIR. 73 as it relates to the power of a foreigner, or alien, to become a proprietor of land, is one of the matters about which it may be useful for me to say something. The law says, that all foreigners shall, in this particular, enjoy the same privileges in France as would be ex- tended to French subjects by the laws of the countries to which such foreigners belong. Now, then, as to subjects of our King, before a foreigner can hold real estate in England, Scotland or Ireland, he must be made either a denizen, or a naturalized subject,* A denizen * Blackstone, in speaking of denizens and natura- lized, subjects, gives the following, in definition of the difference between the two titles. " A denizen is an alien bOrn, but who has obtained " ex donatione regis letters patent to make him an H English subject; a high and incommunicable branch " of the royal prerogative. A denizen is a kind of " middle state, between an alien and a natural born " subject, and partakes of both of them. He may " take lands by purchase or devise, which an alien " may not, but cannot take by inheritance ; for. his " parent, through whom he must claim, being an alien, " had no heritable blood, and therefore could convey " none to the son. And, upon a like defect of here- «' ditary blood, the issue of a denizen, born before de- " nization, cannot inherit to him, but his issue born " after, may. A denizen is not excused from paying " the alien's duty, and some other mercantile bur- " thens ; and no denizen can be of the Privy Council, E 74 A RIDE IN FRANCE. is created by letters patent from the King ; but the title of naturalized subject can be con- ferred by Act of the Legislature only. So that, in order for an Englishman to possess the right of holding real property in France, he must (in conformity with the above-mentioned prin- ciple of the French law,) obtain either the special favour of the King of France, or the sanction of the Legislature of that country, in the form of an enactment. The Americans have settled the matter differently. Any Frenchman, or other foreigner, may become a citizen of the United States by residing there for the space of five years. A residence of five years in that country, without asking the leave " or either House of Parliament, or have any office " of trust, civil or military, or be capable of any grant " from the Crown. " Naturalization cannot be performed but by " Act of Parliament ; for by this an alien is put in ex- " actly the same state as if he had been born in the " King's ligeance ; except only that he is incapable, " as well as a denizen, of being a member of the " Privy Council or Parliament, &c. No bill fornatu- " ralization can be received in either House of Parlia* H ment without such disabling clause in it. Neither " can any person be naturalized, or restored in blood. " unless he hath received the Sacrament of the Lord's " Supper within one month before the bringing in ef " the bill ; and unless he also takes the oaths of allegi- " ance and supremacy in the presence of Parliament." CHATBAU DB BBAUVOIR. 7» of any body, entitles a foreigner to all the privileges belonging to a natural born citizen ; except that alone of being President of the United States. In France, consequently, the American has a certainty of being able to pos- sess real estate ; while an Englishman, who is treated by the laws of France, in this respect, in a manner according to that in which a Frenchman would be treated by the laws of England, is in no certainty at all, and must depend upon the good will of the King, or upon that of the Legislative Body, for the ob- taining of the right of holding any property that can be called real. The laws of France are, then, upon this subject, apparently, more indulgent than those of England, as far as re- gards such persons as, according to our laws, Would be considered foreigners. By the laws which existed before the Revolution, the child of an alien, born in France, had no more pri- vilege than that which belonged to the pa- rent as an alien. The laws have since been altered, so as to correspond, in this respect, with the common law of England. A child born of foreign parents in France, as the laws novtf are, will enjoy the same rights as a natu- ral born subject of that country; provided that, when he arrive at his majority (twenty- one years of age), he declare it to be his in- £ 2 76 , A RIDE IN FRANCE. tention to fix his abode in France, or, in case of his residing abroad, still to consider the Government of that country as the one to which he owes his allegiance. 100. The bushel of wheat here weighs, upou an average, 18* lbs. French weight ; and the French pound weight is just equal to eighteen English ounces. The French pound weight lias, like the English, sixteen ounces; but these sixteen ounces weigh just as much as eighteen of our ounces. The sack of wheat, consisting of eight of these bushels^ weighs 148 lbs. French weight, and 166^ lbs. English weight. This quantity of wheat is now worth about sixteen francs. The same sack of rye, 12 francs; of barley, 11 francs; of oats, 10 francs. 101. Now, then, for a comparison between these prices and the prices of England. The 166* lbs. of wheat do not quite make the weight of three English bushels. Our wheat weighs, on an average, 57 lbs. a bushel, or perhaps 58 lbs. Three times fifty-eight pounds would be 1741bs.; and w r e have in the French sack only 166 J.. There is, then, one twenty- fifth less in weight in the French sack than in the English three bushels. To purchase French CHATEAU DB BEAUVOIR. 77 wheat being equal in weight to three English bushels, that is to say, weighing 174 lbs. Eng- lish, would, at the above rate, require 16 francs and 13 sous; or, in our money, 13s. 10|<2. Therefore, the price of wheat, at this place, is, four shillings and sevenpence halfpenny the English bushel. The prices of the two coun- tries, at this time, placing Mark- Lane against Briarre, and taking the English bushel in botli cases, will stand thus : — MARK-LANE. BRIARRE. S. d. S. d. Wheat - - 6 3 Wheat - - 4 7h Rye - - - 3 6 Rye - - - 3 54 Barley - - 3 4 Barley - - 3 2* Oats - - - 2 n Oats - - - 2 10 The whole, 15 H The whole, 14 H Thus, though the difference in the prices of wheat is very considerable, the difference upon the whole is not great ; and, it is upon the whole that we ought to build all comparisons of this kind. 102. This is gOod sheep land. They have a sheep here called Sologne, or Sologneois (after the name of one of the Departments of France), which is very generally bred on this side of Paris. This sheep, though not handsome or 78 A RIDE IN FRANCE. large, is hardy, and makes, they tell me, very fine mutton. I see this sort of sheep, as well as merinos, on the farms of Beaiivoir. The merinos are bred more for the sake of their wool than for any thing else, and they seem to do well here, although they are a very tender sort of stock. The sheep of Sologne, and the merinos, are worth, here, from 6 to 10 and 12 francs a head. COSNE PROVINCE OP GASTINOIS. (Seven leagues from Briarre, through Neuvy Sw Loire.) Wednesday, 29 Oct. 103. Amongst many circumstances to in- duce me to stay longer at the Chateau de Beauvoir, was the offer of a dog and gun, which I should have gladly accepted of, if I had not, by the lateness of the season, been hurried to get on. This is a fine sporting country. There is plenty of game ; and so there appears to be generally in France ; for I have seen partridges and hares, and people in pursuit of them, in almost every neighbour- hood that I have passed through. They hive here, the English hare, partridge, quail, wood- cock, snipe, and rabbit; and, in some places, PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS. 7$ the pheasant. In addition to these, there is a bird, which they call the red-legged partridge ; a very beautiful bird, rather larger than the commori partridge, and in great abundance here. I went a coursing two or three times while at Briarre ; and it appeared to me that the French hares were quite a match for the English grey-hounds that ran after them. 104. The * GAME LAWS" in France are exceedingly simple in their provisions. The law that affects sportsmen, is more properly a military law than a game law. You may chase, and kill, any game that you please, without the law's having any thing to do with you. But, if you wish to carry a gun, you must have a certificate to authorize you to do so. Any erne is qualified to purchase this certifi- cate ; and the cost of it is fifteen francs, which is about ticehe shillings and sixpence sterling. The certificate (to procure which it is neces- sary, I understand, to show that you have a permission to shoot from some person who is a landowner to the extent of seventy-five acres) is called a portend' armej that is to say, a per- mission to carry fire-arms. Having this, you may shoot whatever game you please ; but it does not give you a right to go on the land of another person without having his leave to do 80 A RIDE IN FRANCE. so, and you are liable, if you go on another person's land without such leave, to an action for trespass. The soldiers of the king have a right to shoot game without any certificate. Game may be bought and sold by any body, and is bought and sold at all times of the year. So, it would appear, that the " Game Laws" of France have more an eye to the guns of sportsmen, than they have to the preserva- tion of those animals which sportsmen love to destroy. 105. The labourers here sometimes catch the game in springes, without being either whipped, or sent to goal, much less across the seas, for so doing. There is> however, little to induce them to " poaching," as we call it in England. A French labourer would be a fool if he could find any delight in prowling about in a coppice, at a time when he might be*, sleeping at home in such a house as is the habitation of a labouring man at Briarrtv There are cottages, or small houses, separate from the farm-houses, all over the estate of Beauvoir. A labourer, employed by the year, has one of these houses for his family to live in, with from twelve to fifteen acres of land, fire- wood, and two cows allowed him ; a little piece of vineyard, and apple-trees and pear- PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS. 81 trees, to make wine, cider, and perry for his drink. For this little estate he pays 150 francs a-year. And he earns, by his labour, from 15 to 30 sous a-day, according to the season of the year ; which would leave him, upon an average, after he has paid the 150 francs, more than as much as that sum, in clear money. The labourers who live under these circumstances cannot, generally speaking, be otherwise than happy. They have every thing that they can want; every thing, in fact, that a labourer ought to have. If they like to have beer to drink, they have land on which to grow the materials for making it ; and they may grow the hops and make the malt, without fearing the interference of the Exciseman. They have - not a farthing of taxes to pay, nor money in any other shape, excepting that which they pay to their landlord, who gives them a suffi- cient price for their labour to enable them to preserve comfort and happiness for themselves, and to pay him a rent for the advantages which he gives them. There is no need of " pot-houses," here : and, consequently, there are no such things in France. The labourer can sit at home in the evening, because in his house there is enough of plenty to give con- tent ; and, for the same reason, he can go to bed, without being afraid of awaking in misery. e 5 $3 A RIDE IN FRANCE. The state of the French labourer forms, in short, a perfect contrast with that of the poor raggod creature of the same class in England, who, after a hard day's work, slinks into the w pot-house" to seek, in its scene of drunken- ness and degradation, a refuge from the cheer- lessness of his own abode. 106. The dress of the labourers in France, is good. They wear, in all the parts of the country that I have yet seen, a smock-frock and trowsers, of a blue colour, like the dress worn by most of the labourers in the county of Sussex. The garments of the Sussex-men, however, are very frequently in a state of rag- gedness, which is seldom the case with those of the French. The men, when at work, generally wear some sort of cap upon their heads. In this part of the country, I see, they wear a hat, which has a very wide brim to it, a brim of about eight or ten inches wide, that serves as a shelter to the shoulders as well as a covering for the head. Sometimes this large brim is turned up, in such a way as to form a complete cocked-hat, like that which is worn by the officers in our army. 107. When a man is employed, here, in threshing wheat or rye, it is a common cus- PROVINCE OP GASTINOIS. 83 torn, as it used to he, I believe, in England, for the farmer to pay him by giving him a certain portion of the corn threshed, in place of pay- ing him for his work in money. 108. At Beau voir there is some good timber land. Timber is much cheaper in France than it is in England; but coppice wood of oak, at fifteen or twenty years' growth, selis for about 500 francs the acre ; or 201. 16s. Sd. which is a high price in England. Fagots, of a middling size, fit for the heating of an oven, sell here for 12 francs the hundred, which is not quite Jive farthings each ; and that is very cheap. But, I suppose, that a fifteen or twenty years oa/c-coppice, yields bark. It is a good English coppice that will fetch 10/. an acre at ten or twelve years old. 109. Oak coppices are made here by sowing the acorns, in the fall of the year, along with wheat or rye, or some other winter crop. The acorns are sowed broadcast, as well as the grain that is sowed along with them. By the time that the crop of grain comes off the ground, the oaks get to be two or three inches high, and are then allowed to grow into a coppice. 110. The wine of Beauvoir, which is rather 84 A RIDE IN FRANCE. famous in the neighbourhood, is worth 110 francs the piece, as they call it, which is a barrel, containing 250 bottles ; but, then, these bottles are large ones, according to the wine-measure of France, which is, I believe, about one-third larger than the wine-measure of England. So that the piece of wine contains about eighty gallons, English wine-measure. Wine, in general, about here is worth from 60 to 90 francs the piece. The borders of the Province of Burgundy, the name of which is so familiar to the ears of the lovers of wine, are not further distant than about half a dozen leagues from Briarre : so that, the wine made at that place is quite as good as a great part of the wine of Burgundy itself. 111. There is a fine farm new offered for sale, close by Beauvoir, for 2000 pounds ster- ling consisting of 210 acres of arable land, some of which seems to be as fine land as any former can want. No part of it is bad land ; and the farm yields plenty of fuel in its scat^ tered trees and its hedge rows. The farm- house and out-houses, are all convenient enough, and in good repair. This price is but 9L 10s. b\d. an acre for land freehold and tythe-free. The taxes are very light. There are assessors appointed by the government, PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS. 85 who lay the tax upon the land here ; and the tax so imposed is called the " contribution," and is levied, in amount, according to the real value of the land. Perhaps an English farmer, with his experience in taxation, w r ould suppose that the estate of Beauvoir, 3500 acres of land, could not be worth much, if he should hear that the whole of the taxes levied upon it amount to but one hundred pounds sterling a-year. Nevertheless, they do not amount to any more than that sum. 112. The climate, of this part of France, is of a very pleasant temperature. Peaches and apricots grow in the open fields amongst the vines, and there is a great abundance of all the common sorts of fruit. There is, they tell me, very little winter here, and the spring comes on full a month sooner than it does with us in the south of England. The harvest of this year has been backward j but it is, in some seasons, entirely finished by the latter end of July. It is to this climate that must be attri- buted the firie dry wheat, and the bright barley, which I saw at Beauvoir. We have a great deal of land in England much richer than any that is to be found in this neighbourhood ; but, for the want of a climate like this, we can never depend upon having such fine crops, as, 86 A RIDE IN FRANCE. in this part of France, where there is no blight of any kind, and where the weather for the banyest is almost always fair from beginning to end, a farmer is pretty sure of reaping. 113. This place, Cosne, is a little town, situated upon the banks of the Loire, and at the mouth of the river Novain. There is a good deal of hard-ware manufacture belonging to it, in which, I understand, many Englishmen are employed. Iron foundery, and cutlery, a.re the two chief branches of the business, for the latter of which the town has become famous. The French are very poor, compared to us, in all sorts of cutlery ; but at Cosne they have got some Englishmen to assist in bring- ing this article of manufacture towards per- fection. 114. The house at which I stop at Cosne happens to be kept by a brewer, Who spoke to me of the hops grown at Beauvoir, which, he said, were worth 1 franc a pound. I tasted some of the beer brewed here : it was very good beer, and sells for 5 sous (about 2^d.) the bottle, which holds nearly a quart. 115. I was sorry to find, when I arrived at Briarre, that the vintage, at that place, had PROVINCE OF GASTINOIS. 8? been all finished a day or two before. Upon inquiry at Cosne, however, I found that 1 was not too late to see something of the process of making wine. The vintage, they tell me, is full a month later this year, than it has hitherto been in ordinary seasons. 116. The bunches of grapes are cut from the vines by means of a pair of scissors. They are then put into large baskets, which the gatherers carry to one side of the vineyard, and there the grapes are tipped into tubs, placed ready for their reception. The tubs, when filled, are carried home in a cart or wagon, and the grapes are then, while in the tub, pounded or bruised, by a stout and pretty heavy piece of wood, which is made use of by hand. From the tubs, the grapes are thrown into a very large vat, as soon as they are suffi- ciently bruised. In this vat the pulp of the bruised grapes, and their juice, all together, remain for as much as a week or ten days, covered over, as beer is when set to work, in order to undergo the fermentation that is ne- cessary. While this fermentation is going on, the pulp and juice in the vat rise up, just as bread does that is made of yeast. After rising up and frothing for some time, the head sinks, as that of beer does ; and then the fermenta- tion is supposed to be nearly at an end. As 88 A RIDE IN FRANCE. soon as this sinking takes place, the juice that flows in the vat is drawn off, leaving the pulp, and the juice which that still retains, behind. The juice thus drawn off, is considered to make the best wine of the vintage. When this juice is drawn off, all that which remains in the vat is taken out and pressed in the wine- press. The juice runs away, from the press, into a large tub sunk in the ground, from which it is emptied, directly, into the piece, or barrel. There is nothing at all mixed with the juice of the grape ; and, from the time that it is first put into the barrel, it remains there, until it is drawn off to bottle. The bung-hole of the barrel, after receiving the juice, must be left open, covered only by a vine-leaf, for about ten days, in order that all fermentation may subside before the barrel be made close for good. — This is the whole pro- cess of the vintage, as far as relates to the red-wine. That of the white-wine is some- what different. The white grapes must be pressed directly after they have been bruised, and, instead of fermenting in the vat, pulp and juice mixed all together, like the red- wine ; the white wine must not be allowed to fer- ment till it have undergone all the pressing and separation of the pulp from the juice. It must be bruised, pressed, and put to fer- PROVINCE OF BERRY. 89 ment in the barrel, without there being" any lapse of time between these different stages of the process. The reason for this is, that if the white wine were to be allowed to ferment, like the red, when its juice is mixed along with the pulp of the grapes and their stalks, the pulp and the stalks would spoil the colour of the wine; and the wine would not, in fact, be white wine at all. COUPOIS PROVINCE OF BERRY. {Eleven and a half leagues from Cosne, through Pouilly and La CharitL) _ Thursday Night, 30 Oct. 117. The bill, which I paid this morning, at Cosne, came to 4 francs and 10 sous. — I supped, last night, in company with two per- sons, one of whom was the driver of what the French call a voiture de roulage ; that is, a heavy cart, or two-wheeled carriage, which is used in France to convey all sorts of goods or merchandize, from one part of the country to another. I might, if I had chosen so to do, have supped alone ; but, I have made it a point to mix with the various classes of com- pany that I meet with in this way. as much as 90 A RIDE IN FRANCE. possible. It is necessary for a traveller to do this, if he would become acquainted with the real character of the people. This driver of a roulage, although not a person, perhaps, of the most refined conversation^ was one, neverthe- less, in whose company there was none of that coarseness which shows itself so generally in the company of those who, in point of rank, would be upon a level with him in England. — The supper consisted of some roasted fowls; and some little fish fried, which were caught, I was told, in the Loire : they are called gud- geons here ; and are very small, but very good. Besides this, there was a ragout made, I think, of beef; some peaches, apples, and grapes, by way of dessert; and as much wine as we chose to drink, of which two or three bottles were emptied, in great good humour, by my com- panions at table. 118. Pouilly and La Charite, are both situated on the banks of the Loire, in the road from Briarre towards Lyons. Both of. these places are in the province of Nevernois, which I entered on leaving Cosne, and left, again, just on th*s side of La Charite\ At La Charitt' I cross the Loire, to come to this place, and go directly away from the bank of this side of the river. The Population of La Charite PROVINCE OF BERRY. 91 is about 4000, and that of Pouilly nearly one half as many. 119. On the other side of the Loire, after coming from Briarre, on the road to La Charite, the country is flat and uninteresting, excepting just in the neighbourhoods of Pouilly and La Charite\ Both these two places are surrounded by hills that are covered with vines, and that slope down to the brink of the river. The view all around Pouilly is beau- tiful ; but, generally, as I came along the road from Briarre to La Charite, I could see that the opposite bank of the Loire, so far, was much the most rich and highly cultivated of the two. La Charite' is an ancient looking place. There is a church in the town, which has a convent attached to it ; both of* the buildings are still in pretty good repair, but seem to be very old. 120. Coupois is a place of one house only, which is a stage-inn, or place at which to change horses, or lodge, upon the road. The house is in a delL between two mountains that are covered with oak wood, and is what is here called the Poste mix Chevanx, which means post-horse-house. There is one of this kind of inns, at every few leagues, on all 92 A RIDE IN FRANCE. the posting roads in this country. It is situated most commonly, in a town or a village ; but, in cases where there are no considerable num- ber of houses together for a good distance, as it is, for instance, in the case of Coupois, you meet with the inn in a lone situation. The Poste aux Chevaux is where the diligence al- ways changes horses. The words, " Poste Royale" (royal post-house), are generally written on the sign of the house. It is licensed by the government, which manages such matters with great precision. There is al- lowed to be but one inn of the kind in any town. The diligences all stop at that one place ; although, in many cases, there may be a dozen or more inns in the town besides. The Poste mix Chevaux is, almost in every case, the public house of best accommodation that is to be met with upon the road. 121. There is nothing worth noticing in the country from La Charite to this place, five leagues distance, excepting a little hamlet, called Sansarge, a pretty little place, which is not far on this side of La.Charite\ 122. Throughout all my journey from Calais to Paris, and from Paris to La Charite", I have been travelling upon two of the principal roads PROVINCE OF BiiRRY. 93 in France. From Paris to La Charite I came along the main road to Lyons; but after cross- ing the tfoire I get into what may be called al- most a cross-country road. The greater part of the travellers that I have met on my way from Calais to Paris, and thence towards Lyons, have been English people, excepting those who travel by diligence, or coach. By travellers, I mean persons travelling in their own carriages. 1 have seen a great many English people travelling with fine English carriages and horses ; but very few of the French have I seen with any thing like an equipage. Within the city of Paris, even, there are very few persons that ride in their carriages, compared to what there are in London. 123. The country inns in France are a good deal like the inns in America. The business of the house is by no means altogether con- fined to the entertainment of the guests. The landlord is frequently a farmer as well as an inn-keeper ; and his house and the buildings belonging to it, answer more the description of those of an English farmer than of one of our inn-keepers. The landlady here super- intends and takes an active part in the cook- ins:, and all the other sorts of work that are 94 A RIDE IN FRANCE. going on in the house. There are a greater number of people employed, very often, in an inn here, than there would be in one that has as much custom in England ; but the employ- ment of these people is of a more various kind. The ostler is frequently a carter as well as a servant to look after the horses of strangers : the women servants spin, dress hemp and flax, and attend to the rearing of large flocks of poultry, and get them ready to send to market. The chambermaid, or even the land- lady herself, in many cases, knows as well how to tie up a traveller's horse, and to give him a feed of corn, as if she had been accustomed to the office of ostler. There are very few per- sons travelling upon the roads here to what there are in England; and it is for this reason, I suppose, that the business of entertaining and providing for travellers is so frequently con- nected with the various sources of profit that belong to the land. BOURGES — PROVINCE OP BERRY. {Six leagues from Cupois.) 31 October. 124. The winter appears to be approaching this part of the country. They told me, at Briarre, that there had been no cold weather PROVINCE OF BERRY. 95 before I came there. The weather was beau- tiful all the while I remained at that place ; but yesterday and to-day have been wretchedly bad. I was glad to get to Bourges, out of a cold and cutting rain, in which I thought that six leagues ride was quite enough. 125. The city of Bourges, which is the ca- pital of this province, is a good-sized place, and is situated upon the rivers Auron and Yevrette; its population is upwards of 1 6,000. The manufactures of Bourges are, woollen cloths, sail-cloth, cutlery, and saltpetre. 126. Two gentlemen, with whom I supped at Coupois last night, spoke to me of the cathe- dral of Bourges, which I went to see as soon as I got here. It is a beautiful specimen of gothic architecture ; but the revolution seems to have handled it very roughly. The cathedral at Amiens is in a much better state of preservation, and is, on that account, thought more of than the cathedral at Bourges. It is the tower of this cathedral, and the figures and devices that ornament the principal entrance to the building, in which its chief beauty con- gists. The groupes of figures over the door porches, which are intended to represent diffe- rent parts of scriptural history, and the sta- tues of saints, have been sadly battered about. 96 A RIDE IN FRANCE. A great many of the saints, like those of St. Bertin, at St. Omers, have lost their heads or arms, or legs, while others have been totally knocked away from the face of the building. The archbishop belonging to this cathedral, has an ancient and fine large palace, which stands close by it. He seems, I think, to in- habit but a small portion of his palace, and not to be rich enough to keep the rest of it in repair; for, the greater part of the windows in it are so bare of glass as to render the apart- ments not fit to live in. ST. FLORENT PROVINCE OF BERRY. {Four leagues from Bourges.) Saturday Noon, 1 Nov. 1823. 127. When I got to Bourges, yesterday, I found that the inns in the place were almost all full of Spanish officers, prisoners of war, who were either quartered there for some time, or going through. I could not get a room to myself at all ; and I was obliged to sleep in a room where some of these Spanish officers slept also. I was not a little asto- nished to find, that one of these gentlemen smoked a segar as he laid in bed ! This morn- ing presented a sad look-out for a traveller : rain and cold. Nevertheless, I did not like PROVINCE OF BERRY. 97 the thought of breathing some more tobacco- smoke in my sleep ; so, I encountered the weather, and came off to this little village of St. Florent. SUNDAY NIGHT, 2 NOV. 128. Having no company to smoke me out, I remained all this day at St. Florent, on account of the weather, which was very stormy and unpleasant. 129. At the inn at which I am here, which is but a small one, I see more to induce me to think that the French are no Pythagoreans ; that is to say, that they do not like vegetables better than meat. While I sat by the kitchen fire last night, I saw three Frenchmen at their supper. One of them appeared to be a farmer, and the other two were both labouring men. They made (as it appeared to me) a very hearty meal, upon two or three sorts of stews, or fricassees, that had been placed before them : but, they afterwards ate one half of a goose, CHATEAUROUX PROVINCE OF BERRY. I Ten and a half leagues from St. Florent, through Essoudun) 3 Nov. 130. A great change of weather took place last night ; and I started, this morning, upon yb A RIDE IN FRANCE. ground that was frozen pretty hard. This is the first frosty weather that I have had. 131. The city of Chateauroux, the popula- tion, of which is 8000, is the capital of the Department called Indre, and is situated on the river of that name. There are manufac- tories here for coarse cloth, fulling, and. the making of 'parchment. I see nothing in the way of buildings, of any importance, at Cha- teauroux, excepting the ruins of a fine old church (just opposite to the inn where 1 lodge) which are now made use of as a brewery. 132. From this city I turn again towards home ; so that this place, which is, as near as can be, in the centre of France, and at about four hundred miles from Calais, will be the extremity of my little tour. 133. Essoudun is a town of about the same size as Chateauroux, situated on the river Theols. At this place they bleach a good deal of cloth, and manufacture parchment and paper. 134. As I was upon my road from St. Fio- rent towards Essoudun, I saw a great number of well-dressed country people coming, from PROVINCE OF BERRY. 99 all quarters, to a fair, which was held at a little village through which I passed. A great part of them appeared to be going for plea- sure merely ; but many of them were taking cows, asses, goats, and sheep to the fair to sell. I took particular notice of the sheep : they were all merinos, and the smallest and poorest animals of the sheep kind that I ever saw. Many of them could not have weighed more than Jive pounds a quarter, 135. The country I have passed over to-day is much the same as all that between LaCharite* and St. Florent. Excepting just round the towns, where I see vineyards, with peach-trees andother fruit-trees growing amongst the vines, the country consists of one large plain, with now and then a wood of beech or oak. This plain land is all in cultivation, and seems to be, generally, good land. There is a great deal of stone under the surface of this plain land. I do not know what sort of stone it is ; but they make great use of it in repairing the roads. I see that the men, who make the roads here, and who are appointed by the go- vernment for the purpose, crack the stones always before they put them upon the roads. These men wear a sort of uniform cap, as a sign of their employment, as road makers. 100 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 136. It appears tome, that the newly-adopted mode of making our roads in England, must have been borrowed from the French, The shape of the main roads here is exactly that in which our turnpike-roads have heen made of late. The materials to repair them are laid on in the same manner ; and the instrument made use of to crack the stones here, a sort of long-handled sledge-hammer, is precisely the same as that made use of with us. 137. In this part of France they use many oxen in harness. I saw some oxen at work at Briarre. They are not made to draw (as oxen are in England, or in America) from the shoulder, but from the horns. There is a slight wooden beam, to the centre of which the chain of the plough, or the pole of the wagon or cart is affixed. The beam is placed, each end of it, across the poles of two oxen which are abreast, so as to come close to the back part of their horns. Then a leather tie is brought round the front part of their horns, and both ends of the tie are fastened together round the beam. And thus the animals draw along the weight that is intended to be re- moved. I remember a book published by Lord Somerville, inculcating the making of oxen draw by the horns. I remember that PROVINCE OF BERRY. 101 the plates amused me very much. I admired his Lordship's invention 1 " No tricks upon travellers'' is an old saying. — I heard a far- mer in England say, that he did not ap- prove of oxen, in general use, upon a farm. He said he found that, when he had oxen at work, they fell away, because, said he, they had not time enough to chew their cud! This was certainly a sufficient argument to show that oxen should not be worked by him. The French farmers say, that oxen are very useful. They are, in France, very tract- able and laborious animals ; and do, some how or other, find time enough to chew their cud into the bargain. The truth is, that the - English farmer himself* as well as his oxen or other working cattle, has a great deal more to do than the farmer here has. Farm- ing, in France, is not the same bustling, money-making business, that it always has been in England, as long, at any rate, as I can remember any thing about it. The far- mer here has, like the American farmer, very little anxiety about him. His fortune, or wel- fare, does not seem to be so uncertain as it is, more or less, with the greater part of our ac- tive farmers. In the character of a French farmer there is not that indefatigable pursuit of his employment, without which, in England, 102 A RIDE IN FRANCB. a farmer cannot get on. The English farmer is full of care : he cannot do without money, and, to make that, work must be "done by somebody. The French farmer has less to do with money. Comparatively speaking, he has scarcely any call for money. The demands upon his purse are not so large and so fre- quent : and, consequently, his strivings to ob- tain money are not so unremitting and so la- borious. His land is cultivated with less anxiety to himself ; and if the oxen that turn it over fall away, it is not for want of time enough to chew their cud. There are no "gentlemen farmers'' in France. There are no farmers here that do not, with their own hands, do some part of all the work that is done upon their farms. A farmer, in France, works at the head of his men ; and, while in the fields, he does not, in his dress, seem to he any thing more than a foreman in the bu- siness about which he is engaged. In short, to say " gentleman farmer " in French, would be incongruous : it would be putting two words together which would have, in such conjunc- tion, no meaning ; no sort of practical sense. 138. A great part of the ploughing, and other ordinary work upon a farm, in this part of France, is done by mules and asses, parti- PROVINCE OF BERRY. 103 cularly by the latter of these animals, which are here in very general use. I cannot see so many of these patient, gentle, laborious, useful, and cheaply-kept animals, without thinking of the just, the feeling, the beautiful eulogium pronounced on them by Bcjffon ; nor can I behold the kind manner in which they are treated in France, without reflecting with shame on the treatment they almost always receive in England, where the owners of them seem, in general, not to have more feeling for them than they have for pieces of stone or of wood. To make positive laws to reach the crime may be difficult ; but, there can be no doubt, that, in the eye of morality, an act of common theft is less criminal than it is to load one of these animals until it be ready to sink under the weight ; till its limbs tremble and, its spine bends ; and then to beat, to goad, and to lacerate it for not advancing with speed. 139. The French are much more gentle in their treatment of all tame animals than we are. I must observe, however, that, while they do no not drive their oxen, for instance, so hard, they are not so much inclined to work hard themselves. The best horses that run in the diligences here, are almost as rough in their 104 A RIDE IN FRANCE. coats as our forest poneys are ; but they do not get knocked about as our coach-horses do. The sleekest of our coach-horses would, I dare say, if he could speak for himself, rather belong to the diligence than to the English stage-coach. In the former of these concerns he would be oftener washed than he would be well brushed ; but he would lead a much easier life. — J never knew a French sportsman with a starving dog : with an English sports- man I have rarely seen a well-fed one. 140. I see that there is very little variety in the mode of cultivating the vine in France, as far as I have gone through the country. In all the vineyards that I have seen, the vines are planted in rows. The rows are from three to four feet apart, and the vines, in the row, from two to three feet from each other. The vines seldom get up to above four or five feet high. They are cut down, in the month of February, or thereabouts, very close. There is a little of the last year's Wood left, but not many inches of it, to give new wood for the next season. When they begin to shoot, in the Spring, there are stakes, of either round or split coppice wood, which are about four feet long, and an inch and a half in diameter; and one of these stakes is stuck into the ground PROVINCE OF BERRY. 105 near the stem of each vine. The stakes are intended to give a hold to the tendrils, by the means of which the vines climb up, and, thus, keep themselves clear from the ground. CHATILLON SUR 1NDRE — PROVINCE OF BERRY. {Eleven Leagues from Chateauroux, through Bu- zancois.) Tuesday Night, 4 Nov. 141. This morning 1 breakfasted at Cha- teauroux. 1 had some coffee for breakfast ; but the landlord of the inn and his family, who had their breakfast about the same time, ate soup and drank red wine. Not only did they eat soup, but, in the soup there was cab- bage : boiled cabbage for breakfast! This shows how much habit does for the taste ; for, what Englishman would, if he could get any thing else, feed upon soup with cabbages in it early in the morning? I do not see, how- ever, why this cabbage soup (which had plenty of bread in it) and the wine, should not be about a thousand times better for breakfast than the cold potatoes and the tea, which are now so fashionable amongst the common people in England. 142 Chatillon sur Indre is a little town, on F 5 106 A RIDE IN FRANCE. the left bank of the river Indre. Buzancois is situated on the right bank of the same river. This latter place has a cannon-fcmndry belong- ing to it, besides some other iron-works. It ought to be, if it be not, celebrated for its ugliness. There are not many streets, all to- gether, in the little town ; but those that there are, are the most crooked, the most narrow, and the most dirty of all the streets I have ever seen. There are two little villages on the road, one on each side of Buzancois : the first is called Villedieu, the next Clion. There is a good deal of vineyard all about these vil- lages, as well as about the town of Buzancois. 143. At Villedieu there is an old castle, with a plantation of trees round it, encircled by a stream of water which flows round the pre- mises so as to give them the appearance of a little island. A great many of the old castles and fine country houses in France are now tumbling to pieces, for want of somebody to inhabit them. They seem as if their day had gone by : as if they had belonged to a state of things very different from that which now exists here. 144. The river Indre runs, at no great dis- tance from the road, all the way from Cha- PROVINCE OF BERRY. 107 teauroux to this place. The river is bordered by water meadows, with cows, of the pretty little kind I before mentioned, and oxen, graz- ing upon the meadows. Some of these oxen are almost as good looking cattle as any I have seen in England. They are of a middling size, but well formed, and seem to be of a very dis- tinct, or true, breed. 145. The labouring people, or peasantry, have, generally, cows of their own. Some- times one cow, sometimes two or three cows belong to one labourer's family. They also keep pigs, of their own. The wives or children of the labourers attend to the cows and the pigs, through the day, during which these animals are suffered to rove about, and feed on the sides of the roads and lanes. The pigs of France are all of one kind, as far as I have seen. That kind is not, by any means, the most beautiful kind of pig. A great many French pigs, of the sort that I see here, were taken to England just after the last war. They were very long legged and ugly crea- tures, to look at, when poor ; but they were not, according to the reports of those who fattened them, so uncomely when in the shape of pork and bacon. 108 A RIDE IN FRANCE. CORMERY PROVINCE OF TOURAINK. {Ten leagues from Chatillon sur Indre, through Loches.) 5 Nov. 146. When the French drink each other's health, they tap their glasses, one against the other, and do so, very frequently, without ac- companying the act by any speech. Last evening, at Chatillon sur Indre, I saw five or six Frenchmen, who appeared to be all me- chanics or labourers, drinking wine with the landlord of the inn. They all held up their glasses together, and each one tapped the glasses of all the rest of the company, before he drank. It appeared to be a rule of polite- ness that they should all drink at one time. They talked almost incessantly, and seemed to be all talking at once. If one of them hap- pened to say a word, just as they were all about to drink, all the rest would simul- taneously take the glasses from their mouths, and fall a gabbling again directly : so that, the ceremony of salutation had frequently to be repeated four or five times over, before the ardour of their conversation would admit of a pause in which there was time enough to take a draught. This manner of drinking together, which I have noticed upon more than one oc- PROVINCE OF TOCRAINE. 109 casion, has a good deal tended to strengthen my preconceived notions of the sobriety of this people, as far, at any rate, as relates to drink. The conversation of Frenchmen is not, to be sure, always serious enough to be called sober. But, there was a something in the putting off, the postponement of the draught, which I could not help regarding as a sign of sobriety ; as a departure from that paramount devotion which, in the company of our countrymen, is too commonly paid to the bottle. 147. Loches is a town, on the river Indre. The Indre, a little river, is a branch of the Loire, and joins the Loire at about half way between Tours and Angers, which two places are both situated upon the Loire. The popu- lation of Loches is between 4000 and 5000. Its manufactures are, woollen cloth, cotton cloth, and paper. There is, I am told, an English lady at this place, who has a large manufactory of cotton cloth, established and carried on under her own direction. 148, Loches is a most curious old place, and is well worthy the examination of stran- gers and travellers, on account of the manner in which a great part of its houses are si- tuated and made. The town stands round the 110 A RTDE IN FRANCE. slope or declivity of a higli mountain. The mountain is, I believe, an entire rock, excepting on the surface, where there is a stoney and good soil, such as the vine likes best to grow in. The houses, of the manner of making which I am speaking, are excavations in the solid rock, or hard stone, which composes the body of the mountain. After having made a hole in the rock, sufficiently large to form a dwelling, they build up a wall, in front of the hole, with a part of the materials cut out in the excavation. In the wall the window- places and the door-way to the house are left open. But it is not absolutely necessary to have any building, in the making of this sort of house ; for I see, in many cases, houses made in the rock, in such a way as to leave a front wall of solid stone ; and this is done, by hewing away, in the front of the rock, only such places as will be wanted to be open for doors or windows, and so completing the rest of the cavity inside, without removing the front part of the rock, which is, in general, destroyed, because the building up of a wall in its stead is less troublesome than would be the hewing of a wall out of the solid rock itself. The smoke from the fire-places of these houses is conducted through a chimney, which is a hole made up through the rock, lo PROVINCE OF TOURAINE. Ill come out upon the side of the mountain j and, on that part of the steep which forms the root of the house and place for the outward part of the outlet of the chimney, there is, very frequently, a turf, with a growth of high trees and bram- bles to surmount and ornament the whole. The stables, cart-houses, and other offices be- longing to these dwellings, are all made, in a like manner, out of the rock. The vines grow exceedingly well in the ground about these houses ; and, from the form of the mountain, in many instances, the vines might be as well cultivated upon the roofs of the houses, as they are in the gardens on the level ground be- neath. 149. Between this place and Chatillon sur Indre, I saw several women spreading dung with their hands ! I have, in many instances, in this part of France, seen the hands of the softer sex employed in this unbecoming labour : some of the women spreading the dung upon the land, while others of them were carrying it upon their backs in baskets into the fields ! Many of my readers, even the most credulous among them, will, very probably, give me credit for a little romancing, when I publish such a relation as this. It is, however, no- thing more than is strictly true : it is, in many 112 A RIDE IN FRANCE. places, as common a thing for women to be thus employed, as it is for almost any kind of work to be going on upon a farm. I cannot see this, in France, without being reminded of "La Politesse Franchise" the boasted polite- ness of the French. I have heard that the Ger- mans treat their wives with great want of kindness and respect ; that they even make them clean their horses, and black their shoes. But, the Germans are not at all famed for their elegance of manners, while Monsieur has made us believe that he is the very pattern of polite- ness. 1 have asked Frenchmen the reason why women, for whose favour they sue in terms so flattering and refined, to whom they pay their compliments the least dissembling, and make the lowest of their most inimitable bows ; how it is that women, who, in France, are the objects of such unqualified professions of attachment and respect, arc obliged to ren- der services so improper to the character of their sex. It is said, by way of excuse, that a great part of the men are engaged abroad; that they are soldiers, or belong to the navy, or to maritime trade ; that they are not, in hort, at home, and, consequently, that the men that are left upon the land have not suf- ficient strength to cultivate it. This is an ex- cuse which does no honour to the makers of PROVINCE OP TOURA1NK. 118 it ; it is, indeed, ho excuse at all ; for, if it were admitted as such, Englishmen would have a right to exact from their wives and daughters just as much as Frenchmen do from theirs ; and, yet, they do not, though there must be a larger portion of Englishmen abroad than there is of any nation in the world. It is also said, that it is more agreeable to na- ture, and more healthful, for women to be at this kind of work, than it would be for them to live idle. Such an excuse is equally fri- volous and false. What is contrary to nature cannot be generally healthful, and, it is quite enough to see these women in France, to be convinced that Monsieur gives them a vast deal more to do than nature and the prevention of idleness can require. They are round-shoul- dered ; they walk with a step as heavy as that of the most awkward of our plough-boys ', their faces are very much sun-burned, and their features are so hard that they scarcely look like women : the muscular form of their bare and brown arms, in particular, shows, that the oppressive sway to which they are obliged to submit, is such as effectually to de- grade them, and such as must imply unman- liness as it touches the character of those who bear that sway. I ought not to pass over this subject without doing justice to the 114 A RIDE TN FRANCB. Americans, amongst whom I lately resided. My father has remarked, somewhere in his writings, that, in proportion as men are really brave, they are tender of imposing laborious or degrading duties upon women. The Americans, I must say, are a very great evidence in sup- port of this assertion. When I was in Ame- rica I lived (in order to learn to speak French) a good while among French people. They were very polite, and, generally, good-tem- pered and obliging; but they used, I re- member, to ridicule the Americans very much on account of what they termed their grossierete' ; that is to say,- the want of polite- ness, the rudeness of manner, of the Americans, and, particularly, as connected with their at- tentions to the ladies. Now, though I have too great an opinion of Jonathan's courage to think that he would voluntarily yield any thing honourable that attaches to his name ; yet, if his politeness were a matter of question, Jonathan would, I am sure, rather give up all pretensions to that, than he would see his fair country-women spreading dung with their hands, and would rather bear all the burden of Monsieur's ridicule and sneer, than suffer their backs to bear that of a basket full of dung! PROVINCE OF TOURA1NE. 115 TOURS" — PROVINCE OF TOURAINE. (Five leagues from Cormery.) Thursday Noon, 6 Nov. 150. The country, from Chateauroux to Tours, particularly on the approach to this latter place, is more interesting than that on the other side of Chateauroux. There is a good deal of open land, without any fences ; but, fences are not, here, of much use, except- ing as boundary marks; for, there are no animals, of any kind, allowed to run loose, either upon a farm or upon the roads. There is no danger of trespass, even on the part of a flock of turkeys, for these birds, as well as all roving animals, about a farm, have con- stantly a person to mind them. 151. At about a mile before you enter Tours, on the right hand side of the road, coming from Comery, there is a fine old place, called Gramont. Tours is an archbishoprick; and the house at Gramont, is a palace, which was built by a former archbishop, and was put into other hands at the time of the Revo- lution. The estate now belongs to some one who lives at Tours, but who has allowed his purchase to become much wanting in repair. 116 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 152. Tours is the finest city, by far, that I have yet been in in France, excepting Paris, with which, of course, no other is to be com- pared. It is beautifully situated in a valley, with the Loire running along on one side of it, and the Cher on the other. The river Cher is a branch of the Loire ; it joins the Loire at some distance below Tours, and runs, from Tours, about thirty leagues to the south. On entering Tours I cross the Cher. There is a large space of rich meadow along side of the river; and here I saw a flock of sheep, the best stock of that kind that I have seen in this country. The common sheep, and the merinos, that I have seen in France, do not weigh more than from 10 to 13 pounds a quarter ; but the sheep which I see on this meadow would weigh, I should think, as much as 20 or 25 pounds. They are handsomely formed, as well as of a good size, and are not unlike our New Leicesters. They are rather short than long legged. Their fleeces are white, and pretty heavy. Their faces and legs of a dingy red colour, like those of the South Downs in England. Mr. Arthur Young, in speaking, a good many years ago, of the sheep of France, says, that, in general, these sheep are bad ; or, at any rate, that they are quite inferior sheep compared to our own; PROVINCE OF TOURAINE. 11/ and I think, from what I have seen, that the French have very little improved in this ar- ticle of stock. 153. I have seen many herds of goats, grazing along with the cows, as I came from Chateauroux. The goats are, I am informed, used for their milk, of which there is a good deal of cheese made in this country. 154. I cross Loire, again, at Tours, and then leave that river, for good, on my way to Rouen. The Loire runs close by the edge of the city, and is, at Tours, wider, I think, than the Thames is at London. 155. As soon as I arrived at Tours, I went to look at the cathedral. It is not to be com- pared with the cathedrals of Bourges or Amiens. It is, however, the finest building that now remains in this city ; but the despoil- ing fingers of the Revolution have left their traces upon even this. Friday Night, 7 Nov. 156. 1 have stayed at Tours this day, in order that I might go to see some vines, which 118 A RIDE IN FRANCE. belong to the landlord of the inn where I lodge. 157. 1 dined, yesterday at the Table d'Hote. I got into conversation with my landlord, who was one of the company, and whom I had not seen before. After talking with this gentle- man some time, I made bold to ask him what he was, when I found that he was my host. He told me, amongst other things, that there were a great many English people at Tours ; or, at least, that there had been of late, many of them, even families who had settled there, having left the place on account of the Spanish war, from the result of which they entertained apprehensions of danger to themselves. He told me that there was an English nobleman, living in a fine house near Tours, who expended much money in the neighbourhood. I asked him if the lords in his country were as rich as those in my country. He said he did not ex- actly understand me, for, that there were no persons in France of the name of Lord. There were Nobles, he said, but no " Mi Lords." But, said I, if you have no noblemen that you call Mi Lord, you have noblemen that you call Mon Seigneur, which means the same thing. We could not understand one another, for some time. He could not conceive how it I PROVINCE OF TOURA1NE. 119 was, that My Lord and Mon Seigneur were two titles that had but one common meaning : and I laughed when I heard him explain his idea of the difference between the two titles. The French people write the words My Lord, Mi Lord, which makes the orthography of the phrase somewhat more correspondent with that of their own language. Our word thou- sands, is written, in French, milles. And my host had always supposed, he said, that the word 31i, which preceded the name of Lord 3 was, correctly speaking, only[an abbreviation of the word milles, which, in French, means thou- sands. So, that, if the title of an English noblemen were written at full, it would be, Milles-Lord, or, Lord of thousands: a Lord worth a great many francs a year. He said that, according to this notion of his, he could not suppose that " Mi Lord " meant the same as " Mon Seigneur ;" for, said he, our Nobles, whom we call " Mon Seigneur," are not, some- times, worth a sou. He was quite astonished when I told him that the title of Mi Lord } as he called it, was, as well as that of Mon Seig- neur, capable of existing along with the want of pecuniary means. The French call a man that is enormously rich, a millionaire, which is an extravagant term, meaning, a man of millions: and this (however erroneous it might 120 A RIDE IN FRANCE. be) was my landlord's idea of an English Lord. 158. The neighbourhood of Tours is a great place for vines, and for the making of fine wine. I went along with my landlord to-day to see his vineyard, which is at about half a league from the city. The vintage of the black grapes is not quite finished; here, and that of the white grapes is not begun. In this part of France they let the white grapes hang as long as possible, before they gather them, because, they say, it makes the wine stronger and of better flavour. The snow is, they tell me, sometimes upon the ground before the grapes are gathered. I saw a great many acres of vineyard to day. The vines look beautiful at this time, with all their leaves off, and loads of ripe grapes hanging upon them. The vines, which are planted in cuttings, or slips (just as gooseberries and currants are) of the last year's wood, begin to bear when about four or five years old. An acre of vineyard, of the best sort of vines, in full bearing, is worth, at Tours, about 3000 francs ; or 125/. of our money. This year, they say, the vines will yield from 10 to 12 barrels of wine to the acre : barrels of 250 bottles each ; or, as was before observed, of about 80 English wine- PROVINCE OF TOURAINB. 121 gallons each. Good wine may be bought at Tours, by the single bottle, for 10 sous, or 5d. English, the bottle. The barrel, or piece 9 of this year's wine, will bring from 50 to 60 francs, at this place. But the wine of this year will not be of the best quality, on account of the grapes not having ripened quickly, which they should do to make very good wine. Some of the vines are very old : some of them forty, some fifty years old. The land round Tours is hilly; uncommonly good strong land, and stoney, which is just the character of land to suit the vine. There is muoh rock in the hills, here, as at Loches ; and the wine- makers have caves, hewed out of the rocks, under the brows of the hills, in which to de- posit the wine, and to carry on the process of making it. Some of the vines in this part of the country are cultivated in the espalier fashion. This is not, however, generally the case, where there is any considerable quantity of vineyard together. The common way is, to stick one stake, about four feet high, up to each vine. The stakes are pulled up, at this time of the year, when no longer wanted, and placed away in a stack, just as hop-poles are in England. The stakes are, as I said before, made of coppice-wood, hazel, ash, and other kinds. They do not last above a couple of 122 A HIDE IN FRANCE. years ; for, if used longer, they become rotten, and are easily broken by the wind. I was, when at Chateauroux, informed, that, further to the South, the cultivators of the vine make use of stakes of Locust, which, they say, grow in coppices, and last a great number of years. The Locust is, in France, generally called Ro- binia ; but in the vineyards the stakes of it are called, bois de fer ; or, iron-wood ; a name which the Locust very well deserves. 159. There is a kind of grape, which I saw on some vines here, made use of to give a co- lour to the red wine. When this grape is squeezed, the juice is of a fine dark colour., a mixture of purple and red. It is made use of in giving a colour to all red wine, which could not have the fine colour that we see in it, but tor the use of this sort of grape. The vintage of the white grapes begins, this year, at about this time, the 7th of November. 160. As I went along towards the vineyard of my landlord, I saw the ruins of a. very an- cient convent of the order of St. Benedict. This convent used to be, in its time, a great place of assemblage for the monks belonging to the order of St. Benedict, who used to come there from all parts of the kingdom. The PROVINCE OF TOUttAINE. 123 stable, for the accommodation of the horses of such visitors, contained upwards of a hun- dred stalls. The window places, my landlord informed me, were, in the dwelling part of the convent alone, five hundred and sixty. Very little, however, of this part of the building is now in existence. The remaining part of it, which is still enough to make a good dwell- ing-house, is occupied by the brother-in-law of my host, who rents it of a gentleman by whom all the confiscated estate has been pur- chased. I see that the walls, which used to enclose the gardens of this fine convent, re- main untouched ; they are built of very solid materials, and are not less than three feet in thickness. 161. The church of St. Martin, which used, in former times, to be the richest church in Tours, is almost entirely destroyed. Nothing but the tower of it remains; and that is now used as a shot-tower, 162. Tours is an important manufacturing place. Its manufactures are very various. The most considerable articles are, silks of different kinds, woollen cloths, leather, and porcelaine, or china. The china which is ma- nufactured in France, is of very fine quality, g2 124 A RIDE IN FRANCE. and of great beauty in its way. The journey- men employed in the cloth and silk manufac- tories, here, get from 1 to 3, and, some of them, 4 francs a-day. The wages of men servants, such as grooms, or footmen, may be stated at about 300 francs (or 12/. a-year) be- sides their board and lodging. A maid ser- vant, a housemaid, gets from 150 to 200 francs. A cook (a valuable servant among the French) about 300 or 350 francs. I speak of these as the servants of gentlemen, or persons of for- tune. 163. The city of Tours, which is the ca- pital of this Province, is an extensive place. Its population amounts to 21,000 inhabitants. LA ROUE PROVINCE OF TOURAINE. (Five leagues from Tours.) Saturday Night, 8 Nov. 164. Before I set off from Tours this morn- ing, I went, as I had been directed by the Commissioner of Police, to the Hotel de Ville, which is the place for transacting all the pub- lic business of the city. Here is the office of the Mayor. It was necessary for me to go to PROVINCE OP TOURA.INE. 125 this office, in order to have my passport r or England signed. With regard to my pass- port, I have found no sort of difficulty in tra- velling. I got it, in the first place, from the French * Ambassador, in London, at whose office it was signed for Paris. On quitting Paris, I had it signed for Tours ; that is to say, the officer who signed it stated, upon the pass- port, that I was permitted to go as far as that place. As soon as any stranger arrives at an inn, in France, although it may be his inten- tion to lodge there but for one night, the people of the house are obliged to make a re- port of him to the police j whereupon, it is the duty of some officer (a gens d'arme) to come to the inn and examine your passport, to see whether you be travelling according to its terms. An innkeeper is also obliged, when you leave his house, to inform the police of your departure. But these regulations are not always strictly observed on the part of the innkeepers, for 1 have lodged at several places at which the people made no report of me at all. It is, however, very proper for a traveller to be careful how he act with regard to such matters ; for, if I, for instance, were to proceed on my road from Tours to Rouen, without there being any certificate of my having the permission of the government to proceed in 126 A RIX»; IN FRANCE. that direction, I should, if a gens d'arme were to demand a look at my credentials, stand a chance of being escorted by him back again to Tours ! I might, to be sure, go alfl the way, without being subjected to so unpleasant an adventure ; but, the possibility of being so subjected is a sufficient inducement to a traveller to mind what he is about. 165. I went, therefore, to get my passport signed in such a way as to allow me to go to England by the way of Calais. I had to wait, for some time, in the police office. While I sat there, a woman, amongst other persons, came into the office, and, upon being asked by one of the clerks what she wanted, approached towards him, holding out a little book. The clerk took hold of the book, and leaned back in his chair to read. It did not strike me what could be the meaning of this ; but I ob- served that the woman eyed him with great anxiety. The clerk looked through the book for some time without saying any thing ; but, by-and-by, all of a sudden, giving a start, and darting an indignant look at the woman, he exclaimed : " What, Madam ! Hope for per- mission to publish a book like this ! Polities in love-songs ! " " Tenez," said he, to the mor- tified applicant ; " Tenez : emportez votre PROVINCE OF TOURAINE. Y2"J jivre! Chantez, Madame, de V amour, autant que vous voudriez ; mais, de la politique 11 rite faut pas chanter ! " * The case appeared to be tliis : the woman sold song-books, and came, in compliance with that part of the laws of France which guards against the " licenti- ousness of the press," to have the song-book in question examined, previous to her beginning to publish it ; and, it was the discovery of some rhyme which made rather too free with a forbidden subject that caused this officer (conciliating as are the songs of love) to in- dulge in those vehemently loyal expressions^ which terrified the poor woman, and which gave me a much more correct idea than I had before of the state of tfw press in France, 166. La Roue is but a village. Theite is another village, quite a small one, btit a pretty place, called Membreurl, between this ajid Tours. 167. The market of Tours, which I went to look at this morning, is one of very general traffic. Cattle and horses, besides all sorts or vegetables, fruits, and coarse manufactures, * Eere, Madam, take away your book. Sing oflove, Madam, as much as you please; but, of politic-.; you must not sin? ! 128 A RIDE IN FRANCE. are brought there, every Saturday, for sale. A good stout cart-horse, at this market, is worth from 300 to 400 francs (from 12Z. to 16/. our money) and upwards ; a cow, from 60 to 100 francs (from 2L 10s. to 41) The corn market is held in an old gothic chapel. The price of wheat, at Tours, is from 13 to 15 francs the sack of 148 French pounds weight. Rather cheaper than at Briarre. At Chateau- roux wheat was \vorth, at the time 1 passed, about 12 francs the sack. Bread at Tours, the very best bread, sells for three sous the pound : that is rather less than 6d. for the weight of our quartern loaf. When I speak, in paragraph 48, of a loaf of bread, the size of our quar- tern loaf, selling for 5 sous, I must be under- stood to be making a comparison with regard to bulk only ; for, the loaf for 5 sous was not, most likely, more than about 2 lbs. in weight. All kinds of meat are nearly of one price : beef, mutton, veal, lamb, and pork, are all sold here at 8 sous (or 4d. our money) the lb. 1 ate some bread at Tours, which was, I think, the best bread I ever tasted. The bread that the country people eat is made, in great part, of rye ; and that sells, of course, for less than the finest of the wheat bread. It sells for about one sou and a half, or two sous ; but, it is more wholesome food than the whitest oi PROVINCE OF MAINE. 129 our baker's bread in England. Two sous a pound is about4(/. for the weight of a quartern loaf. There are no drugs put into the bread in France, neither in the towns nor in the coun- try places, as far as I can find out. My land- lord at Tours had been, he told me, a baker; but, I could not make him understand what alum was, and he did not seem to perceive at all how the making of bread bad should be a source of profit to a baker. LE MANS PROVINCE OF MAINE. (Fifteen leagues from La Roue, through Chateau du Loir and Ecommoy.) Sunday Night, 9 Nov. 168. Chateau du Loir is a little town, situ- ated at the confluence of the two little rivers Loir and Ive. The population of this place is between 2 and 3000. There are some manu- factories in the town, of cotton stuffs. Ecommoy is a small village, at about half w T ay between Chateau du Loir and Le Mans. 169. The road to Le Mans, from Tours, is over the most beautiful, the richest, and the best cultivated country that I have, for any extent together, yet seen in France. The g 5 130 A RIDE IN FRANCE, land is more divided by hedges and ditches. Quick-set and black-thorn hedges are as com- mon, in many places, as they are in England. The views are very fine, in different places, along the road ; nevertheless, I do not see any thing to equal the beauty of Fromenteau and Essonne. About Ecommoy, and from that place towards Le Mans, there is a great deal of forest of pine timber. Some of the pines have been planted by hand. In general, they appear to have sprung up from seed scattered by the wind. The soil of the forest is the lightest and most sandy that I have met with ; and I see some heath growing here, in the bare places, which 1 have not seen any where else in France. 170» Between Ecommoy and Le Mans I perceived, from the stalks that were remaining in some of the fields, that Indian corn is a pro- duct of this part of France. This corns grows well, they tell me, here. It yields about 1G0 bushels on ground nearly equal to an English acre, that is to say, bushels which, of wheat, weigh from 18 to 20 lbs., and it sells for about the same price as wheat. The people here use It only in the fatting of pigs, for which purpose it is considered here, as it is in America, to be the best of all food. It is planted on ridges PROVINCE Otf MAINE. 13] which are about five feet apart ; fovo rows of the corn upon every ridge. The plants are from a foot to eighteen inches apart in the row, and the rows are about the same distance iyom each other. Supposing the Indian corn to weigh 58 lbs. a bushel, the above crop is about 31 English bushels ; and this is, indeed, a very good crop ; it is four English quarters to the acre, and that is much beyond the average of our crops of wheat. 171. I met a" man, to-day, upon the road, who told me that he was a manufacturer of linen cloth. He said that he earned, by the loom which he worked in his own house, about one franc a day. The labouring people, he told me, dress and spin the hemp and flax, which they raise in their own gardens, or little farms, and carry them, in the shape of yarn, to the markets, where country manufacturers, such as my informant himself was, buy the yarn, and sell it again to the labourers in the shape of linen. The stuff for making a la- bourer's shirt, strong, well bleached j and made in this way, costs about two francs ; that is to say, 20 pence English. I) 132 A RIDE IN FRANCE. Monday, 10 Nov, 172. The city of Le Mans, which contains 18,500 inhabitants, is the capital of the Pro- vince of Maine, and is situated on the river called the Sarthe, which is a branch of the Loire. This city is about the same size as that of Tours, and is just such an agreeable place. The environs of it are, like those of Tours, very pleasant. There are a great many gar- dens, and vineyards, kept in the best order. 173. The finest building in Le Mans is the cathedral ; it is a very large and ancient build- ing, but not one of any uncommon beauty. The manufactures of Le Mans are, linens, coarse cottons, bomhasins, cotton handkerchiefs, lace, soap, and wax for candles, 174. There is, at this time, a fair going on in Le Mans. It continues for eight days ; and this day is the last of its duration. This fair, which takes place four times in the year, is very much the same as our fairs in England are. Horses, cows, pigs, and other farming stock, are sold at the beginning of the fair ; and, after the sale of these, comes that of all the varietiefe of manufacture, and of things of PROVINCE OP MAINE. 133 taste, such as belong to one of our great fairs in England. 175. I got a sample of Indian corn, of a seedsman, to-day. This sample was very good corn. There was no difference between it and the Indian corn I have seen in America. The corn was not of the largest size ; but it was perfect, in all respects, and well ripened. Mr. Arthur Young says, that Indian corn will not grow, in France, forasmuch as nearly fifty leagues south of Le Mans, 176. All the way from Chateauroux to this place I have had fine weather. Though rather cold in the mornings and evenings, it has been warm enough, sometimes, in the day time, to make the flies very troublesome about my horse. To-day is a clear cold day, which puts one in mind of winter. 177. Yesterday, when I arrived at this place, the landlady of the inn asked me, upon my telling her that I wanted dinner, if I would have some potatoes, I could not conceive why she should ask me such a question, knowing, as I did, that potatoes are no great favourites 111 this country. I had, however, a great curiosity to see how the potatoes would be 134 A RIDE !N FRANCE. cooked, and what quantity of them wouk. given to me ; and I answered her question, therefore, and with some eagerness, in the affirmative. She caused to be boiled, on my account, more than half a gallon of potatoes, which was a greater quantity than 1 had ever g een at one time, on a French table, before, and she seemed to think, when she placed this dish before me, that I had obtained the food of all others that I liked to eat. She laughed at me, and exclaimed, " Oh ! que les Anglois sont fort pour les poynmes de terre ! " This saying is scarcely translateable into English ; but it means, as near as can be, Oh ! how fond Englishmen are of potatoes ! I am sure she did not mean to insidt me, though she must have pitied my taste. She was soon convinced, that there are Englishmen who have little relish for this insipid root. The price of potatoes here is one franc and a half for a measure, which is rather larger than half an English bushel. An English bushel of them would be worth about 2 francs and a half, or, 2s. Id. which is about twice the price of potatoes in England, PROVINCE OF MAINE. LV. BEAUMONT PROVINCE OF MAIN It. {Seven leagues from Le Mans, through La Bazochc. | Tuesday Night, U Nov. 178. Beaumont is a little town, containing two or three thousand inhabitants, on the left bank of the river Sarthe. There is a good deal of wine made here 5 but, the people tell me, that the vines have, within a few years past, failed to produce as much wine as they for- merly did; in consequence of which, there are not so many vines cultivated at this place now, as there used to be. — The neighbour- hood of Beaumont is somewhat famous for its breeding of, and dealings in cattle ; and, in the town, there are some manufactories of cotton, and of some other articles. 179. I find some lucerne hay for- my horse in most parts of the country. The French think the hay of lucerne the best of any ; and my horse seems, from the manner in which he deals with this sort of fodder, to be exactly of the same opinion. There is but little differ- ence between the price of the hay of lucerne and that of common hay. Hay, at Beaumont, sells for 25 francs the thousand pounds weight; and straw, which is dear at this time, brings 136 A RIDE IN FRANCE. nearly as much as the hay. The hay is at very low price, compared with the hay in any part of England. The 1000 lbs. French weight make 1 125 lbs. English weight, and this is 5 lbs. more than half an English ton. So that here is half a ton of hay, and of fine hay too, for 20^. and lOd. or, at the rate of 41 s. and 8d. an English ton of twenty hundred weight, 112 lbs. to the hundred. ALANCON— PROVINCE OP NORMANDY. (Five leagues from Beaumont, through La Hutte.) Wednesday Night, 12 Nov. 180. The city of Alancon, the population of which amounts to 13,500, is a place of con- siderable importance. It stands upon the river Sarthe, and is in the province of Nor- mandy, though close upon the borders of that of Maine. There are several good churches in this city, the most important of which is the cathedral. The cathedral, though but a small one, is ancient, like all the churches, indeed, that I have seen in France. The oldest build- ings in England are always the most beautiful ; and, so I find it with the buildings in this country. I have not seen such a thing as a PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 13/ new church in France, any where ; nor any church that has not apparently heen built for several centuries. Thursday, 13 Nov. 181. The manufactures of Alancon are pretty large. The lace which is made here is celebrated for its superior fineness. Near this place there are some iron-mines, quarries of red lead, and quarries containing a fine sort of stone, fit for the making of mill-stones. 182. Thursday is the market-day at Alan- con. The corn-market here is held in a spa- cious piazza, which is appropriated to the purpose. The measures for corn in France are' very various, in respect to dimensions, in dif- ferent parts of the kingdom. I have met with something called a boissean (bushel) in all parts of the country ; but, then, the bushel is not every where of the same dimensions. The standard of corn measure, legally established, is, as far as I can find, what they call the hec- tolitre. The hectolitre I saw in the market of Alancon, where this measure of wheat, weighing, upon an average, from 36 to 38 pounds, sold for 4 francs ; which is just the price at which I found wheat at Briarre. 138 A RIDK IN "FRANCE. where, as the reader will remember, 148 pounds sold for 16 francs. At Alan^on the hectolitre is considered as the bushel, while, at Briarre, it is the Decametre, that is, just one half the hectolitre. At Briarre it requires eight bushels to make a sack : at Alancon, where the bushel. is twice the weight of the bushel of Briarre, it requires only four bushels to make a sack. Further in the interior of Normandy, there is a bushel of from 72 to 76 pounds weight of wheat; that is, of double the size of the hectolitre, and four times the size of the bushel at Briarre ; nevertheless, in those places where this large bushel is found, the sack of wheat is not of less than four bushels. It does not seem altogether unaccountable why the sack of wheat in Normandy should be, comparatively, so very heavy; for, the men of this province are considered, in France, to be nearly tw T ice as strong as those of any of the middle or southern provinces. 1 have, my- self, observed a great difference btween the people about Briarre and Chateauroux, and the people I have seen since I crossed the borders of the province of Normandy. 183. The French perch, in the measuring of land, consists of 22 square feet; and a French foot measure is exactly eleven-twelfths PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 139 of an English inch more than an Eng- lish foot measure ; that is to say, thirteen English inches, all but the eleventh of an English inch. In this part of France there is the Ar- pent, of 100 perches, the Acre de Normandie, of 160 perches, the Acre Ordinaire, of 120 perches, and the Journal, of 80 perches. The Arpent is, I believe, the most common measure throughout all France; but, in this Province, the land is generally purchased or rented by the Acre de Normandie. 184. The best land, hereabouts, is worth from 800 to 1200 francs the Acre de Norman- die. That is to say, the best arable land ; for, meadow land is worth more than land under the plough. Good meadow land is worth as much as from 1600 to 2400 francs. The arable land is reckoned to yield from 40 to 80 hecto- litres of wheat to the Acre de Normandie, and the meadows to yield from 5000 to 8000 pounds of hay. 185. Let us see, then, how these prices stand in comparison with English prices of the same things. But, first, we must reduce the French measure to English measure. The price of land, for the Acre de Normandie is, arable, 1000 francs, on an average ; meadow. 140 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 2000 francs on an average; that is to say, arable, 411. 13s. 4d.; meadow, 83/. 6s. Sd. These would be very high English prices, if it were the English acre that I am speaking of. But, though there are 160 rods, or perches, in our Statute acre as well as in the Acre de Normandie, the latter contains nearly twice as much land as the former. For, in the first place, our rod is of only 16k feet, while that of Normandy is of 22 feet. Our rod contains 272 square feet ; the Norman rod 484 square feet. Then the Norman foot contains 166 of our square inches, while our foot contains 144 of those same inches. So that (leaving aside unimportant fractions), one Norman rod con- tains 525 English square feet; and two English rods contain but 5 44 English square feet. One Norman acre contains 308 (and nearly 309) English square rods, or perches; and two English acres contain but 320 English square rods, or perches. Thus, then, the arable land in Normandy is worth (casting aside fractions) 201. the English acre ; and the meadow land 40/. the English acre. This is now, I believe, the price of very good land in England ; and, I am here speaking of very good land in France ; land that bears from 30 to 40 hectolitres of wheat, or about 26 English bushels to the acre on an average / and of meadow land PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 141 that yields more than an English ton and ahalf of hay ; that is to say, 30 hundred weight, at 112 lbs. to the hundred. 186. Timber is sold here by a measure which is called the marque. The timber is measured either while it is standing, or after it is cut into logs. The marque is a measure of 3 feet long, 10 inches over, and 10 inches deep. The best oak timber is worth about 2 francs and 10 sous the marque. The best cor de-wood is worth from 24 to 30 francs the corde ; and the corde, here, is a measure of 8 feet long and 4 feet high, the wood being 3 feet and a half in length. Inferior corde-wood, such as is tit for the making of charcoal, sells at from 5 to 7 francs the corde. This corde is not much greater in dimensions than our corde. The wood is full as dear as wood is in England. 187- House-rent is not high in France. At Alancon you may rent a comfortable house, consisting of six or seven good rooms, for 300 francs a year ; that is to say, for 12Z. ster- ling, or thereabouts ; and, let it be remarked, that this is in a very fine and fashionable place. 188. At this place I have ascertained some particulars relating to the education, or school- 142 A RfDE IX FRANCE. ing, of young people. I am informed that, for the schooling of a young man in the Col- lege which belongs to this city, it does not cost, boarding and lodging included, more than 500 francs, or 20/. 16s. 8d. a year. From 400 to 900 francs (16/. to 36/.) is quite as much as the schooling of a young person, either male or female, will cost in the best boarding-schools and colleges in France. The colleges are all under the direction of the go- vernment ; and there are a great many more of these institutions in France than there are in England. Every town of importance ap- pears to have a college belonging to it. At these colleges, and at the boarding-schools which ram supposing, the scholars are taught the w-hole of what is called the classics, com- prehending the sciences of logic and rhetoric. In country places, farmers and country people send their children to day-scliools ; just as it is common to do in England, while the chil- dren are quite young. At these country day- schools, for 100 or 200 francs a year (41 to SI.), the students obtain, generally, a smattering of the learned languages ; of Latin, at all events ; as well as those who go to schools of a more costly degree. The teaching of Latin to farm- ers' and tradesmen's sons is very common in France. PttOVINCE OF NORMANDY. 143 189. I hare, in different places, made in- quiries about the price of pension, as the French call it, or boarding and lodging, which seems to be pretty nearly the same in all parts of the country. At St. Omer's I could board and lodge (washing included) in the inn at which 1 was, for 12 francs and a half a week : I mean without my horse. At Cosne it would cost, at an inn, from 13 to 14 francs. At Le Mans, 15 francs. At Tours, the same as at Le Mans. At this place, Alancon, from 10 to 15 francs. A young man may board and lodge in a respectable private family for about the same money, unless he require uncom- monly good fare, or a great deal of waiting upon, in which case it might cost him, per- haps, 20 francs a week. All this is very cheap, compared with England and the United States. The lowest (10 francs) is 8s. 4d., and the highest (20 francs) 16s. Sd. For fare and en- tertainment as good as the French, you must pay, 1 suppose, nearly three times the sum in England ; and in New York (in which prices are not higher than in other good towns of the Union), the price of board and lodging is from 5 to 10 dollars a week, that is, from 11. 2s. 6d. to 21. 5s. The five dollar enter- tainment is by no means of a luxurious kind. Pltenty of meat always in America, and, in- 144 A RIDE IN FRANCE. deed, plenty of every thing to eat. But, no private sitting-room. Bed-rooms, most fre- quently, with more than one bed in each. A common table for meals. Very little selection as to the state of life of the boarders. So that, if you compare the entertainment as well as the prices, France is nearly two-thirds cheaper than America. 190. The words modesty and delicacy, as applied to matters relating to the fair sex, have, as all travellers in this country must per- ceive, a very different signification in French from what they have in our language. To- day, as I stood looking out of the window of the dining-room at the inn, in front of which is a large open square, surrounded on every side by houses, 1 saw a public conveyance, a sort of diligence, drive up, with three women in it, who had come from Falaise, and who ap- peared, all of them, from their dress, to be respectable farmers' wives. The carriage was drawn up in a most conspicuous place ; and the driver, after having assisted the passen- gers to alight, began to unbuckle the har- ness of his horses. It was in this situation, one so completely public as the open square, and not five yards from the driver of the coach which they had just stepped out of, that I, who PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 145 remained at the dining-room window, could not help observing, with regard to these ladies, something which, while it was unattended by any thing like retirement on their part, was so indelicate, in our sense of the word, that, if it were not for the sake of contrasting the man- ners of the two people, the French and the English, I could hardly, with strict propriety, make even an allusion to it. NONANT — PROVINCE OP NORMANDY. (Eight leagues from Alancon, through Seez.) Friday Night, 14 Nov; 191. The country, all the w r ay from Le Mans to this place, like that between Le Mans and Tours, is uncommonly beautiful and rich. The fields are very small, and closely enclosed by live hedges, and ditches, exactly as our fields are in England. 192. There is little now doing onthefarms,ex- cept theputting in of winter crops. The grain is here sowed on land ploughed, as I before de- scribed, into ridges. The casting of the seed grain upon the ground is not, however, always done in H 146 A RIDE IN FRANCE. one fashion. About this neighbourhood the seed is cast into the furrow, which is left open by the plough as it passes through the ground to form the ridges ; so that the wheat, or other grain sowed, comes up in drills ; and, as the ridges are, most frequently, four bout ridges, there are four drills upon each ridge. There appears to be very little care taken as to the straightness of the ploughing : it is curious, that in this Province, where the land is the finest and most highly cultivated, and where the fields are very small, the ridges of newly sowed grain are very crooked and slovenly looking. The sowing, wherever I see it going on, is performed by women, who follow the plough, and strew the grain along in the fur- row as fast as the plough turns out the earth. In order to insure the well covering over of the seed, a man or woman comes after the plough, and makes the surface of the ridge smooth with an instrument, which is simply a piece of slight wood, about eighteen inches long, through the middle of which is stuck one end of the handle held by the person who does the work. 193. At Se£z there is a cathedral, close at the back of which is the palace of the Bishop of Alancon, whose place of residence is at u PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 147 See*z. A part of the Bishop's dwelling is con- verted into a college for the education of per- sons who are to become jrriests, the whole bur- den of which class of the community is, in this country, supported out of the public taxes, and at no great expense. The priests, here, appear to be a very gentle and amiable sort of men, I always pull off my hat to any of them that I meet, and they always return the salu- tation with great politeness and even humility. They dress, not only while at church, but at all times, in a long sort of coat-gown, called a soutane, made of black cloth, and wear the old fashioned cocked-hat. You cannot mistake the country priest in France for any thing other than he is. His devout manner, and the simple and sacred habiliment that he always appears in, make you acquainted with his pro- fession at once. This is not the case with the divines of our country. In the famishing curate we do, to be sure, very often see an example of piety and mildness ; but the reli- gious character of the beneficed clergyman is not, at all times, to be recognized in his man- ners or in his personal appearance : he, though quite as sincere, no doubt, as these meeker priests In France, is very often admired as the most venturesome rider in the fervour of a fox- ckase ; as being a " good shot ;" as the best h2 148 A RIDE IN FRANCE. hand at a " rubber of whist ;" or, the most good-humoured companion, and maker of the hest joke, over a bottle of wine ! I cannot behold the sober and serious deportment of these priests without thinking of a pamphlet, published in London last Spring, and written by an Irish 'Squire, giving an account of an Irish Protestant Parson's sending a pair of garters to a female of his flock, with a motto which very few men except Irish 'Squires would venture to put into print. 194. The town of Seez has 5600 inhabit- ants -, and here are some manufactures, of lace, muslins, of various sorts, and woollen stockings, 195. Nonant is only a village, but it is as nice a little place as any I have seen in France. After I arrived here, I had time enough, in the course of the afternoon, to go about two leagues across the country, to see an establish- ment which is called Harasdupin. It is a place for the keeping of a stud of horses which belong to the King. I had a great curiosity to see some of the finest horses of France, which are to be seen at Harasdupin. The establishment is a very fine one, both as re- gards the buildings and fte care that is taken PROVINCE OF NORMAN OY 149 of the horses belonging to it. The house which has been built here as a residence for the overseer of the stables, is quite a palace. The land which surrounds it, for some extent, belongs to the King, and consists in fine mea- dows to turn the cattle out into, besides a large forest, called the Forest of Alancon. Over all this land there is a view, from the house and stables, which makes the situation uncom- monly beautiful. Some of the horses that I saw here were fine animals. The stud of carriage- horses, brought from the neighbourhood of Caen were very handsome; but, I do not think France can show much in horses of a higher breed. In Normandy, and particularly in the neighbourhood of Caen, the finest car- riage-horses are to be found. The Province of Limosin is famed for possessing the horses of more blood. I saw some horses here which came from that Province. They were very light, and very pretty in their shape ; but, they did not display much of what we should call a thorough bred horse. There were two or three fine horses in these stables, brought from Arabia; and some blood-horses, which, the people told me, were purchased at a high price in England. The presence of the true English racers was very humiliating to the horses of Normandy and Limosin ; for, after 15U A RIDE IN FRANCE. having seen the former, the latter were, I must say, scarcely worth looking at. ST. GAUBURGE — PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. (Four leagues from Nonant, through Melro.) Saturday Noon, 15 Nov. 196. I have had fine weather ever since I left Le Mans, till to-day ; the nights frosty, and the days clear and pleasant. To-day has heen foggy and chilly ; a kind of weather too Unpleasant for travelling over so pleasant a country as this. — St. Gauburge and Melro are both villages, but Melro a good deal the largest of the two. CONCHES- — PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. (Tivclve leagues from St. Gauburge, through Oble, L'Aigle, Chande, ThaU % Boure, and Breteuil.) Sunday Night, 1G Nov. 197. Oble is a small village, on the road to L'Aigle. L'Aigle is a manufacturing town on the river Rilie. Its manufactures are, lace, ribbons, cotton-stuffs, paper, pins, ironmongery, leather for book-binding, and ivire. There is a manufactory of needles here, which belongs to PROVINCE OP NORMANDY. 151 an Englishman. The houses in this place, unlike those of any town I have before seen in France, are almost all built of brick. Po- pulation of I/Aigle, 5600. 198. The road which I intended to take, from L'Aigle to Conches, goes through a small place called Lire ; and, upon this road, you are led, all the way, through a forest, which they call the Forest of Conches. It is a forest of oaks, which extends for six or seven leagues square, and is the property of an Aus- trian Prince, who comes to Conches some- times, to go a hunting in the Forest, where there is a good deal of game, and great num- bers of foxes, wolves, wild-boars, and deer. On leaving L'Aigle, I took a wrong road, and found myself at a little place called Chande, which is on the road to Paris. From Chande I passed, across the country and over a bad road, through the hamlets of Boure and Thael, to Breteuil, a town of about 4000 inhabitants. From Breteuil to Conches I had a better road to go upon ; but it did not, however, turn out so good in the end; for my horse cut his foot so badly, upon a flint stone, that he could hardly hobble on as far as this place. From Nonant to L'Aigle it is just the same delightful country as that from Le Mans to 152 A RIDE IN FRANCE. Nonant. Between this and L'Aigle the country is different. Some woodland ; but, mostly,, open plains of good arable land, in great part covered by apple and pear-trees, the fruits of which are used in making cider and perry. The best cider in France, is, I believe, made in this Province. But, no cider that I have tasted here lias been good. The cider is sour, and is made of such apples, that it can seldom be otherwise than bad. They gave me some cider at Le Mans which was tolerable, but that was considered to be the very best, and sold for eight sous a bottle, which is as much as the price of good wine in some parts of France. Monday, 17 Nov. 199. I staid at Conches to-day, my horse being so lame that I was afraid to take him Upon the road. 200. All round this place there is a great deal of iron-mine. There are forges of iron and blast-furnaces, at Conches, as well as at Breteuil, and many other places within a few leagues of this. The iron ore used at Conches is brought out of the forest ; and the iron is, they tell me, very good. The price of the PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 153 best wrought-iron is about 30 francs (or 1 1. 5s.) for a hundred pounds weight. A blacksmith told me that a great deal of English iron had, of late, been sold here; but it was not, he said, so good as the iron of this country, and had found purchasers merely on account of its being rather cheaper than the French iron. — The workmen employed in the iron-works get. according to their worth, from 2 to 4 francs a-day. Some of the men work hy the piece, others by the day. It is not, in this iron business, the custom to regard the Sunday as a day of entire rest. There are always some men to keep the furnaces a going, all day- long of a Sunday. People that keep shops, in France, whether it be in large towns, or in villages, do not shut up their shops during the whole of Sunday. They gene- rally keep them open till about twelve o'clock in the day, that is, till about the time at which high mass begins, and then shut them up till after church service, when they are again opened. There are some trades-people, indeed, who do not sell at all of a Sunday; but, then, these are such as can better afford to have a clear holiday in every week than the generality of trades- people can. They do not abstain from open- ing their shops from any religious scruples, h5 154 A RIDE IN FRANCE. nor on account of any law or regulation that would forbid them to sell of a Sunday ; if a French shopkeeper does not open his shop on a Sunday, it is either from disinclination to work, or a persuasion that his affairs are such as to admit of a holiday. Sunday is a very merry day in France. One great complaint that the French make against the English is, that our Sundays are so dull. In France, Sunday is the great day for going to theatres, for dancing and singing, and playing at bil- liards, dominos, cards, and other kinds of fri- volous games, to which the French (French men, at least,) are very much addicted. 201. The French are universally spoken of as a lively, gay people. In this respect, I cannot help observing a great difference be- tween the men and the women of France. Frenchmen are certainly more gay than En- glishmen, but, I have been surprised tosee the countenances of the women, in this country, so serious, so full of anxiety and care. The truth, however, is, as I have pretty well exem- plified in paragraph 149, that " Madame" has more work to do than Monsieur's reputation for gallantry would induce one to suppose. In all sorts of shop-keeping, in France, it is the women who attend to the business, and PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 155 the men have, comparatively, not much to do with it. The keeping of accounts, even, in many a tradesman's counting-house, is the task of the tradesman's wife or of his daughter. The selling of goods in the shops is principally done by the women ; the labour, in short, of the whole concern is performed by * Ma- dame;" and, it is natural enough to ask what Monsieur himself is about ? a question which may be too often determined by looking into the cafe (coffee-house), where the trifling amusements of billiards, cards, and dominos, are everlastingly kept alive. 202. I see more good sheep in this province, than 1 have seen elsewhere through France. Sheep, in this country, are uncommonly do- cile. They are accustomed to be treated with so much gentleness by those who look after them, that the dogs even jump about and play with them without their being at all worried. 203. Conches is a little town, on the left bank of the river Iton. Population, 2000. At Nonancourt, a place near this, there are several Englishmen, who have been settled there for some years, and who have manufac- tories, in iron, cotton, and other articles. — 156 A RIDE IN FRANCE. The farm labourer here gets, at this time of the year, about a franc and a half a-day (if he be boarded and lodged) besides his boarding and lodging. LOUVIERS — PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. (Nine leagues from Conches, through La Bonne- ville and Evreux.) Tuesday Night, 18 Nov. 204. The blacksmith at Conches made a sort of shoe, this morning, for my horse; it is a very ingenious contrivance, and has enabled my horse, though yet lame, to get on without hurting his ailing foot, which was cut at the bottom, or in the frog. 205. The road to Evreux from Conches, is through a country not so rich, apparently, as what I have come through further back in Normandy. This road must, however, be a very interesting one to travel up in summer, for the views from it are beautiful and of great variety ; but, I am rather too late in the sea^ son to see this fine country in its perfection. 206. The city of Evreux with a population of 9300 inhabitants, is situated on the banks PROVINCE OP NORMANDY. 157 of the Iton ; and that river runs, alongside of the road, all the way from Conchee to Evreux, through fme water meadows, which lie in a valley below high hills, or mountains, of lime- stone, chalk, and flint. Evreux is a bishopric. Its manufactures, are, icoollen cloths, siamoise cloth, cotton velvet, cotton clotlis, and leather ; and a good deal of bleaching is carried on in this place. 207. The woods, of oak and birch timber, are very extensive along the lops and sides of the hills, which continue from Evreux to Louviers. The arable land, from Evreux to Louviers, is an open plain, with a vast quan- tity of apple and pear trees, here and there, planted upon it. 208. Louviers is, in size, about the same as Evreux. It is one of the greatest manufactur- ing towns in France; particularly in the article of woollen cloth, which is manufactured here in great quantity. The other articles of manufacture are various : muslins, cotton and woollen yarn, siamoise cloth, and nankins ; be- sides the dying and bleaching of cloth. The woollen cloth made here is said to be of the very finest and softest quality. A great part of the wool that is used in its manufacture, 158 A RIDE IN FRANCE." comes, I understand, from Segovia, in Spain. A coat of superfine cloth, the best of such as are worn by gentlemen in England, costs, in Normandy, about 70 or 80 francs, or, from 21. 18s. Ad. to 37. 6s. 8d. Wearing apparel, in general, is cheap. A good strong jacket, for the use of a farmer, or a workman upon a farm, made of woollen cloth, does not cost above 9 or 10 francs, or Js, or 8s. Hats, shoes, and boots^ are very cheap in France. A pair of strong shoes for 6 francs, or 5s. j boots, such as cost 30s. in England, may be bought here for 18 francs, or, 15s. a pair ; and a hat, worth 25s. with us, they get here for as little as 15 francs, or 12s. 6d. 209. On my road from La Bonneville, which is a little village, towards Evreux, a saw a wo- man washing clothes in a little rill, or brook of water, that ran through a meadow. This is the manner in which most of the washing is done in France. At Andres and St. Omers I saw them washing in tubs, just as the women wash in England ; but I have very seldom seen washing in doors practised, except at those two places. In passing through a town or village, in the vicinity of which there has been any stream of water, I have almost always seen some women, kneeling at the waters edge, PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 159 washing clothes. They make use of soap, but do not rub the clothes between the knuckles, as the women do with us : they put the wet clothes upon a solid piece of wood, or upon a large stone, and slap them hard with a little piece of board, about 8 inches square, which has a handle to it, and is made for the express purpose. 210. Some people that have been travellers in this country, exclaim, " how many beggars there are in France!" There are, to be sure, a good many beggars here ; but, I have not seen more of them in the country parts of France, than I should have seen in England, had I been travelling in England along the same distance of high road. I certainly did not see so many beggars in Paris as I have seen in London; and, there is this important difference between the individual appearance of the beggars in France, and that of English beggars : a very large portion of our beggars are persons neither aged nor infirm, while, in France, there is scarcely any object of this de- scription that is not old, or, in some way, in- capable of earning a living. The greater part of the beggars in England beg, because they cannot get employment; and the beggars in France beg because they are not fit to be em- 160 A RIDK IN FRANCE. ployed. It is the state of society in England which causes the beggar, while, in France, it is his inability to render society any service which causes him to beg. I do not mean to say, that there are no objects of charity in France except those who are bodily infirm ; for, there must, in all countries, be some per- sons, who, although capable of exertion, have, owing to peculiar circumstances, no means of existence at their command. There are, of course, some persons of this description in France ; but, the sturdy beggar is not common in this country. The provision which, hy law, is made for the poor in France, consists in an institution called L' Hotel- Dieu. That is, God's House of hospitality . It is an hospital, or house of charity, for the reception and entertainment of indigent persons, those who, from age or other causes of infirmity, may have become destitute of the necessaries of life. This insti- tution is not, however, any thing of a burden upon the people ; the expenses of it are, in- deed, in great part, supported by voluntary contributions, that is to say, sums of money, which are given by charitable persons during their life-time, or bequeathed by them at their decease. It is the custom with us, as well as with the French, to give or bequeath money to charitable institutions; but, then, we have, PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 161 besides charitable institutions, the institution of the work- house, towards the support of which charity is never depended upon at all, and which would certainly not be supported if that feeling" alone were appealed to in its behalf. The French have no work -houses, nothing which answers the purpose of a work-house, except the Hotel-Dieu. The Hotel-Dieu is not, like the work- house, to be met with very frequently. There is a place of this kind in every town of consequenee, but, you do not meet with it all over the country, as you do with the work-house in England. The H6tel-I>ieu seems to be an institution of very ancient date. As a building, it has always the appearance of great antiquity. Ic is generally situated in some conspicuous part of the town ; and the words " Hotel-Dieu " are written over its door-way. The work-houses in England, un- like the Hotel-Dieu, are by no means antique. A great part of them are either new buildings, erected expressly for the purpose, or, old farm- houses, formerly the habitations of happiness and plenty, and now converted into asylums for misery and want. The poor people that have to be provided for in the Hotel-Dieu are few in number, compared with those who move about and subsist upon what they get by begging ; and this is because people are, 162 A RIDE IN FRANCE. in France, much more inclined to give trifles of money to beggars than we are in England. The French do not so often refuse the petition of a beggar, because it does not remind them that they have been taxed in heavy poor-rates to maintain him ; and, the beggar himself is less likely to demand relief from the public funds when his immediate wants are supplied by the charity of individuals. In short, there is not that dreadful state of pauperism, in France, which there is in England. All poor people in France are free; they have the right of moving from one place to another, as much as people have that are rich ; they have a right to beg, and, unless they commit some overt act of an unlawful kind, no one molests or hinders them, How far would such toleration, with- out any poor-rates, agree with the gravity of our " Vagrant Act," and the number of our paupers ? 211, The Hotel- Dieu is, also, a place for the taking care of poor children, of orphans, and of illegitimate children who have been aban- doned by their parents. They are here fed and clothed, and taught, until pretty well grown up, and are then placed out in situations where, for the future, they may provide for them- selves. . PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 163 ROUEN — PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. (Seven leagues from Loiwiers, through Pont de VArche.) Wednesday Night, 19 Nov. 212. My horse, last evening, at about a league before I entered Louviers, was seized with a fit of the^ref, (cholic) so severe, that he wanted to lie down upon the road : I managed to get him on to the stable, and, owing to the skill and activity of a French horse-doctor, he was ready for the road again this morning. 213. Between this place and Louviers, the arable part of the land is generally bare of fences. There are a great many apple trees to be seen, here, in every direction. The fruit of these trees is just of the same quality as that of all the apple trees I have seen growing in this way. Near Louviers there is a good deal of birch and oak wood ; and the cultivated part of the land, as a plain, is very agreeable. 214. At Pont de l'Arche, a dirty little place, I cross the Seine, over a fine long bridge. Just after leaving this place, I have to go over a high hill, from the opposite side of which is 164 A RIDE IN FRANCE. presented a very beautiful view of the city of Rouen, (the capital of this fine province) and of the river Seine, which winds along, with a great many turnings, from Pont de l'Arche to this place, and through water-meadows and osier-beds as pretty as any that I ever saw. The road, after descending from the hill, is bounded, on one side, by the flat meadows, and, on the other side, by a range of very high and steep mountains, which are composed of chalk, flint, and limestone. 215. Kouen is a noble city. It is situated on one edge of a most delightful valley, and close on the Seine, which river may, indeed, be said to pass through the city, for, on the bank of the river, which is opposite to that on which stands the original city, there is a good deal of building, and much business done in the way of trade. On entering Rouen there appears to be as much life and stir as there is in Paris ; the city is just such another place, excepting in respect to size. The looks of the people, here, as well as throughout the country parts of Normandy, constitute the most important circumstance in favour of this province. Normandy, excepting in the par- ticular of climate only, says much more for France than all the rest of the country that I PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 165 have seen. The land is by far the richest, and the best cultivated ; the houses (farm-houses, as well as others) are more solid, more clean, in the insides of them, and kept in better general order. The people here, and those belonging to any other province through which I have passed, are as much unlike each other as though they belonged to two different nations. The men, in Normandy, are larger, better made, and fresher looking. The women are much the prettiest I have seen in France. They wear a cap (amongst the peasantry) that is quite a pattern of neatness. This cap is, in some parts of Normandy, very high in its shape, sometimes as much as thirty inches above the head, and it is so curious, in other particulars of its fashion, that I should endea- vour to give a more minute description of it, if I were at all conversant in such matters. It is called in France, le bonnet cauchoix. The fashion belongs peculiarly to the women of ihePays de Canx, which forms one district of the province of Normandy, and which Rouen stands just upon the borders of. The women of this dis- trict, who are called Cauchoises, are univer- sally allowed to be the prettiest in France. On my road from London to Dover, through Kent, I did, however, see more beauty than I 166 A RIDE IN FRANCE. have seen in all the other parts of France put together, Paris included. The women that I have seen before I entered this province were not to be compared with those of Normandy, in point of neatness in their dress and general appearance. The Normandy women have a good deal about them which answers the sense of the word "tidy:" a word which has so much significance in our language, and which the French language is a stranger to, and, in- deed, need be a stranger to, as far as relates to the greater part of the. people whose habits 1 have had an opportunity to observe. The faces that appear under the bonnet cauchouv are very pretty. The cheeks of the Normandy women are quite as rosy, though their com- plexions are not so delicate, as those of Eng- lish women. There are not, I have noticed, so many black eyes, here, as I have seen else- where in France; but (for I must say it, to be just,) there are not sp many dirty faces! 216. The contrast between Normandy and the rest of France, not only as regards the ap- pearance of the people, but as regards that of their houses, the face of their country, the cul- tivation of their farm?, and all that, in short, which strikes the eye of a traveller as he goes PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 167 along the road, is so very remarkable, that one cannot help inquiring the reason why it should be. 217. By some persons (and those apparently not the least intelligent) this striking differ- ence is mainly ascribed to the wide difference between the ancient laics and usages of Nor- mandy and those of the rest of France ; and especially as relating to the laws affecting the disposal and distribution of real property. Before the Revolution the law of primogeniture and of entail appears to have existed in a very exten- sive degree in Normandy, while it did not so exist in the other provinces of the kingdom, except with regard to a comparatively small part of the community. In Normandy the custom was to give all the real property to the sons, if there were sons 5 so that, as to the females, personal beauty was worth more than in countries where a different custom prevails; and it was a natural consequence, that the hand- somest women would find husbands first. At first sight it appears unjust to give all the estates to the sons ; but, these sons must have wives ; these wives must be women ; and, if John's two rich sons take (as they must) James's two pennyless daughters, while John's two penny- less daughters take (as they must) James's 168 A RIDE IN FRANCE. two rich sons; if this is the case, what wrong is done to the women? On the contrary; is it not to do them honour to establish a custom that makes it impossible that they can be mar- ried for their money ? All the pretty girls, at any rate, ought to be, I think, for the custom of Normandy. 218. I mean, that which was the custom of Normandy ; for, as far as positive law can go, the Revolution has destroyed this custom. All is now laid level. The law does, in fact, make a man's will for him; and it divides and sub- divides his property, till, in some cases, a farm of 100 acres is, at the death of the owner, cut up into allotments of six or seven acres! It has been said, that " the law of primogeniture has but one child," and that it devotes all the rest to beggary. On the other hand it is said, that, even if this be admitted, the law of pri- mogeniture has an advantage over the law of scattering, as it may be called; for, that the law of primogeniture has one child, while the other has no child at all; that the law of primogeniture devotes (allowing it to do this) to beggary all but one, while the law of scattering saves not one, but disperses the whole, and makes them all beggars. For, if a man possess an estate, each child is brought up as the child of the PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 169 owner of that estate ; but what is each but a beggar (compared with his father), when each possesses a dozen or two of acres of land ? 219. It is not for me to venture to speak positively upon a subject of such vast ex- tent and vast importance ; but I hear, on all sides, here in Normandy, great lamentations on account of the effects of this revolutionary law. They tell me, that it has dispersed thousands upon thousands of families, who had been on the same spots for centuries ; that it is daily operating in the same way ; that it has, in a great degree, changed the state of the farm- buildings ; that it has caused the land to be worse cultivated ; that it has caused great havoc amongst timber trees ; and, there are persons who do not scruple to assert, that society in France will become degraded in the extreme, unless the law be changed in this respect. 220. It must be confessed, that this law of scattering naturally leads to dilapidation and waste. It is not natural to expect that an owner of a farm, for instance, will have the same regard for, or consider himself bound to take the same care of, the farm which he has purchased of a stranger, as he would of the $70 . A RIDE IN FRANCE. farm upon which he had himself been born and bred up, the farm which his father had tilled, and which he had inherited in his father's name. Nor can it be any more ex- pected, that the father, while he lives, should pay the same attention to the farm which is to be sold away, or cut up into lots sorely against his will, as he would to that which must re- main in the hands of his son after he is gone. If he have to build the farm-house, it is not likely to be built with so much care, or to last so long ; his farm is not likely to be so well enclosed or so much beautified ; he will not take the same pains about making the neat and lasting quick-set hedge round his field, or in planting trees to be the future ornaments of his dwelling, when he reflects that all these sources of welfare, comfort, and good appear- ance, may, in a very short time, become the possessions of some one whom he does not even know, and, consequently, cannot care any thing about. For these reasons, as they tell me, an astonishing alteration has taken place in the province of Normandy, since the begin- ning of the revolution. The farms here, are not, I am assured, in any thing like the same fine condition that they used to be, although they are still the handsomest and best culti- vated in France, The people do not now take PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 171 the same pride in the cultivation and embel- lishment of their farms. In all matters apper- taining to farms, farm-houses, or whatever be- longs to the occupation of farmers and country people, there is less attention paid to charac- ter or appearance, 221. 1 have been assured, that, in many families of owners of land, the several mem- bers have come to an agreement with each other to act acccording to the ancient custom, and thus prevent the parcelling out of their estates and the extinction of their families. This may now-and-then take place, but ge- nerally it cannot ; and it is clear, that if the present law remain, the land must all be cut up into little bits ; that a farm-house must be- come a rare sight ; and that a tree worthy of the name of timber, will scarcely be seen in a whole day's ride. 222. No wonder that the government of France should be anxious to bring the country back to something like the old laws and cus- toms, as to the disposal and distribution of the land. But, it is, 1 am told, by no means cer- tain, that it will succeed in the attempt which it is said to be about to make for the effecting of this purpose. There naturally exists great I 2 172 A RIDE IN FRANCE. jealousy of every proposition which seems to look back with longing eyes towards the feudal system. The law of primogeniture has been so much censured, that, only to talk of it, rouses the resentment of many persons in France. Something, however, must, sooner or later, be done to counteract the law of scattering. There must, for instance, be public forests, or plan- tations, for the rearing of timber ; for the law of primogeniture is as necessary to make ancient trees as it is to make ancient families. This is a subject full of interest, full of im- portant considerations, one that I should like to see ably discussed, but certainly one that I never bestowed a thought on, till I entered this famous province of Normandy. 223. It has been remarked, by some Eng- lishmen who have been in France, that the French farmers have hardly any barns, or other places in which to deposit their corn. This is very much the case ; it is so even in Normandy, though not so much so here as in other parts of the country. The French farm- ers do not make any large ricks of corn, as we do in England. They either put their corn into small stacks, or put it away under the roofs of their cattle sheds, and other out- houses, in which situation it is not seen. It PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 1/3 is, however, the custom with French farmers, to thrash out their corn very soon. A great part of the crop is thrashed out as soon as it is harvested. Buckwheat and oats, and beans also, I believe, are very commonly thrashed in the fields where they are grown. By these means the farmers get their harvest into a smaller compass, and do not require so much room to house it in. This is, as in America, the effect of climate more than of any thing else. Thursday, 20 Nov. 224. The manufactures of Rouen are very extensive and various. This city, although it is situated at not less than thirty leagues from the mouth of the Seine, may almost be said to be a sea-port. The far greater part of the goods of all kinds, which are brought into or exported from the Northern parts of France, pass through the medium of this place. All the merchandize that comes to Paris, from Havre, must go to or past this city. And a large portion of the manufactures, raw mate- rials, and provisions of all kinds, that are sent for exportation to Havre, from various parts of the country, are first brought, by land, to 174 A RIDE IN FRANCE. Rouen, and are then sent down the Seine to Havre. 225. The population of Rouen is about 80,000 inhabitants. The finest of the churches here are those of St. Ouen, St. Maclou, and La Madeleine ; besides which there is a very fine and ancient cathedral. 226. The church called St. Ouen, is one which has been dedicated to Ouen, who was Archbishop of Rouen many centuries ago. Ouen was born in the environs of Soisous, and was elected Archbishop of this city in the year 640. He became celebrated for his men- tal endowments, and obtained great authority in state affairs. The different princes who reigned in France, during the time of Ouen, were at war with one another, and the influ- ence of Ouen established peace again among them. It was upon his return from a nego- tiation for this purpose, that Ouen died, in 689. — He is said to have written the life of St. Eloy, which is in Latin. A voluminous account of the life of St. Ouen, in French, by P. Francois Pommery, was published in 1662. — There is a little place, near Pont de L'Arche, which is called Port de St. Ouen. This place takes its name, no doubt, as well PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 1?5 as the old church, from that of the Archbishop OUEN. 227. It would be somewhat needless for me to describe the forms and ceremonies of Roman Catholic worship. But I cannot help noticing one important particular connected with the going to church in this country. There are no pews allowed to be made in the churches here. The priests have benches, or large chairs, highly decorated, to sit upon ; but the congre- gation flock all together. The stone floors of the churches are entirely open, and the only sort of seats used by those who attend the service are common rush-bottomed chairs, of which there are a great many kept in every church. The chairs are piled up on one side, when there is no service going on in the church, so that the floor of the church is as open as that of an English barn. A trifle of money is paid to an attendant, by the persons who ask for chairs. When people are at church, in this country, there is no sort of distinction made between classes or ranks. People enter the churches at all times, every day in the week, to say their prayers, and to sprinkle them- selves with the holy-water, as they are pass- ing by upon business, or otherwise. There is nothing of that contesting for " the chief 176 A RIDE IN FRANCE. seats' 9 at church, as is too much the case with some of the most constant church-goers in England. There are, indeed, no " chief seats'' to be found in the churches here. In England the church is, by many folks, looked upon as a sort of theatre, or a place to show off in.. The Jlnest pew seems to contain the most pious worshipper. What is there more common, in an English parish, than the quarrels about the " best pew." While the French people are kneeling to expiate their sins upon the stone floors of their churches, we forget our sins, and add to the stock, in a squabble about who shall have the gaudiest seat or cushion, upon which to sit or kneel down to protest that we are deeply impressed with feelings of humility. 228. To-day I saw the statue of Joan of Arc (La Pucelle d f Orleans), who was burned alive in this city by the English, in the year 1430. The statue stands in a little square, and upon the very spot where she was burned. The figure is represented as a woman dressed in military uniform, and holding a sword in her hand. PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. 177 NEDFCHATEL— ^PROVINCE OF NORMANDY. (Ten leagues from Rouen, through Le Vert de Gal- lant and Boissiers.) Friday Night, 21 Nov. 229. Le Vert de Gallant consists in nothing more than a house of posting, a Poste mix Chevauo;, upon the road ; and Boissiers is but a little hamlet, of about a dozen houses. 280. The country here is open, and rather flat, excepting a chain of hill which runs across at Boissiers. Little of wood-land, but a great many apple-trees of the same kind that I have before noticed. On my road to- day, I see the land ploughed in a manner dif- ferent from almost any ploughing that I have seen since I got into the neighbourhood of Briarre. All the way from that place, to Neufchatel, or hereabouts, the land is, in ge- neral, ploughed in the manner described in paragraph 94. Here they plough the land, as we do in most parts of England, into wide lands; and although the farms are nothing like so beautiful as those in the interior of Normandy, the ploughing upon them is much better done. 231. The implements of husbandry in France 178 A RIDE IN* FRANCE. are, as well as those with us, of great variety. The principal difference between the ploughs, carts, wagons, harrows, and the like, in France, and such implements in England, is, that these things seem to be, in this country, on account of their comparative rudeness of fashion, about the same as I should suppose must have been used in England a great many years, perhaps a century, ago. The farming implements here are not, generally, so heavy as ours. They are nothing like so neatly made,, but answer their purpose pretty nearly as well as those of English farmers. Some of the ploughs made use of in the neighbourhood of Briarre, and in other places where the land is light, and the climate warmer than it is here, have scarcely any thing of a mould-board attached to them. The land is hardly turned over at all. The ploughshare gives it a shallow stir; and the farmer (unlike the far- mer in England) seems to place more reliance on the climate than he does on the depth of the ploughing which his land receives. — The wi?mowing machine is the most complicated piece of machinery that I see used by the French farmers; and this is not common among them. 232. I cannot convey a more correct idea PROVINCE OP NORMANDY. 179 of French farming, as far as taste or fashion goes, than by a description of a kind of gate, which is very common upon farms, through- out the country. The curious part of this gate is the upper bar of it, which is formed out of the stem of a good sized tree, that has been felled, without cutting off any more than just the fibrous parts of its root ; so that the stool- moor remains in its rough state; and the piece of timber attached to it, after being reduced to the size and shape required^ is placed, so as precisely to balance itself, across one of the gate-posts^ upon which it swings by means of an iron pivot, driven into the top of the post. All the minor bars, and cross-bars, are fas- tened to this principal part of the gate; and the whole is balanced by the stool-moor, the counteracting weight of which, at the oppo\- site side of the gate-post, keeps all the rest of the gate in its place. 233. There are some manufactories of cot- ton yarn, and of muslin, at this place. The men employed in the factories earn from 25 sous to 3 francs a-day, which, considering the price of food and raiment, is very high pay. Neufchatel is celebrated, throughout all France, for a kind of cheese which is made here, and which is by far the best that I have 180 A RIDE IN FRANCE. found in any part of this country. It is made of cream ; and the cheeses, which are very small, sell, at market, by the dozen. A dozen of the best of these cheeses, weighing, gene- rally, about 3 lbs. the dozen, sells for 3 francs, or nearly that ; making the cheese to be 1 franc, or 10& English, a pound. 234. The hay in this part of France is very fine. Lucerne, sainfoin, and meadow hay, are all worth, at retail, about 10 sous the botte, allowing the botte to weigh 12 lbs. This is dear for France. It is at the rate of about 3L 12«. an English ton. Much dearer than the corn in France. However, this is the re- tail price; ABBEVILLE — PROVINCE OF PICARDY. (Twelve leagues from Neufchatel, through Foucar- mont, Blangy, and Huppuy. Saturday Night, 22 Nov. 235. The country I have passed over to- day is more interesting. The land, on the other side of Blangy, which is but a small vil- lage, as well as Fou cannon t and Huppuy, abounds in hills of stone and -chalk* From PROVINCE OP PICARDY. 181 Blangy to this place the prospect is not so fine. Blangy, situated in a rich valley, which lies open for some extent, is sourrounded by an immense forest of beech, called Le Forest d'Eau. I am told that this forest extends, in one direction, for as much as thirteen leagues. It formerly belonged to different branches of the Royal Family of the Bourbons ; but the greater part of it, I believe, was so disposed of during the Revolution, that not much of the confiscated property has been regained by its former possessors. The Duchess of Orleans, who was dispossessed of that portion of it which belonged to her, has, by some means, succeeded in getting it back again. — I saw a great number of women and children, in this forest, collecting the leech-nuts, which fall from the trees about this time of the year. They sell the nuts, after collecting a quantity of them together, to people who make oil from them. 236. The town of Abbeville is situated on the river Somme. Its population is 18,000. It is nearly, if not quite, upon a level with Louviers, as a manufacturing place. Some of the manufactories of silks, woollen clotlis, and cottons, are very extensive. The journeymen who work in the manufactories get from 25 182 A RIDE IN FRANCE. sous to 4 francs a-day.— -The machinery for spinning, and the looms, are, almost all of them, propelled by the power of steam. HESDJN PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. (Eight leagues from Abbeville, through Canchy.) Sunday Night, 23 Nov. 237. I can easily perceive that I am among a different sort of people here, from those that I have left in Normandy. I recognise the same kind of countenances that I saw as I went through this province and that of Pi- cardy to Paris. The little children, that run out from the houses here, look cheerful, and comfortably clad, but their faces are a much stronger evidence of inward content, than they are of the external application of soap and water. 238. From Abbeville to this place the country is very much the same as that be- tween St. Omer's and St. Pol. The land is strong and good, but flat, very little enclosed, and without any of that beauty of variety which belongs to Normandy, Maine, and Tou- raine. There are no water meadows here, and very few hedge-rows, and but little wood land, PROVINCE OP ARTOIS. 183 239. Canchy is but a little village. Hesdin, the population of which is about 6000, is the strongest fortified town that I have passed through. The ramparts of the town are very high. The place is so far guarded by the water which flows all round it, that you can- not approach the town without first crossing one of the long bridges that lead to the gate- ways. The wet ditches and the water-mea- dows, by which the town is surrounded, and which contain a great quantity of stagnant water, are said to render this situation un- healthy. 240. The fuel chiefly made use of by the people about here, is that of peat. Peat is much burned in those parts of France in which there is less wood to be gotten, and where water-meadows,or marshy lands, abound. Monday Night, 24 Nov. 241. On leaving Hesdin, I passed through a forest, which belongs to the King, and is of considerable extent. The land here is good. The face of the country is much the same as 184 A RIDE IN FRANCE. that which I had in view from Canchy to Hesdin. 242. The farmers here make great use of chalk. I see the people digging it out of little wells, which they sink in the fields, the foun- dation of the soil of which is, about here, a complete bed of chalk, or marl. They dig a hole, sufficiently large to supply manure for about half an acre of land, and carry out the chalk hi baskets , and lay it, as we do in En- gland, in heaps. Their having to carry all the chalk by hand, induces them to dig many holes, or wells, in the chalking of a large field, for the sake of saving labour. Women, as well as men, are engaged in this sort of work. 243. There are no cottages in France. I mean, by cottages, such dwellings as those which are inhabited by the families of la- bourers in England. If happiness be essential to the existence of these cottages, which have so much interested travellers in our country, and which make us delighted with country life ; these cottages, which form so beautiful a feature in the rural part of our affairs, that even our poets have loved to dwell upon the subject : if happiness in the inmates be indis- PROVINCE OF ART015. 185 pensable to preserve the character of these little dwellings, would not present appearances make us fear that some Frenchman may yet have to tell his countrymen, that there are no cottages in England? I hope, however, that no Frenchman will ever be able, with truth, to say this ; for, of all the subjects upon which I can decide in favour of my own country, after contrasting her with that of the French, there is no one which does her more honour than that which conveys its idea in the name of cottage. The French have no word by which to translate this name. They call a cottage a caban, which means, strictly speak- ing, cabin. What we mean by the word cabin is, in English, something very different from cottage. It has, rather, a miserable mean- ing. We say cabin, when we speak, for in- stance, of the thing which is made as a shelter for themselves by people who have been ship- wrecked upon a desert coast : and, really, the caban of a peasant in Picardy bears more re- semblance to something erected under such circumstances, than it does to the pretty cot- tage of an English labourer, the interior of which seems to court comfort through the medium of cleanliness and care, and in front of the door-way of which you oftener see a really beautiful flower-garden, than (as is the 186 A RIDE IN PRANCE. case with the Frenchman's cahan) the un- seemly sight of a heap of rubbish or manure. 244. The neat, the flower-garden cottage, is, it would seem, peculiar to England; for, I have always heard of the dunghill door- ways of the dwellings of the Scotch and Irish la- bourers ; and I can myself speak as to those of the United States of America, where the farmer very seldom seems to care a great deal about the neatness of his yard and his garden, but, where the mere labourer, though he earn a dollar a-day, and eat meat three times a-day, has, in general, a hole to live in that the poorest of our English labourers would be ashamed of. It is generally a " caban" made of boards, without any garden, or any thing that seems to say, that it is the abode of com- fort, i 245. But, notwithstanding this slovenliness, the American labourer is much better off than ours. And so is the French labourer. His habits are what we call slovenly ; but he has never known the contrary. By the side of the obscurest lanes in England you will see the most beautiful flower-gardens, with little gravel or sand walks, before little, old, cot- tages. These gardens are not intended for PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 187 show. They are seen by nobody but the owners. It is taste ; it is habit ; most admir- able, most meritorious, these are ; but, those to whom they are unknown do not experience the want of them. 246. The French labourer is better fed than the English labourer now is. He is better clothed too. His stock of clothes is greater. His body is not exposed, as the bodies of a large portion of our labourers now are. He is more dirty; but not so ragged; less neat about his dwelling, but he has about three times the quantity of food. 247. I saw, to-day, several men and women digging together, in the open fields, with a spade (the ordinary spade made use of in France), which had a long handle, and was very much like the narroAV spade which is made use of in draining in England. The women dug uncommonly well : they stuck the spade into the ground, without putting their foot upon it at all, and threw over the full spits of this heavy soil, as quick, and with as much apparent ease to themselves, as the men did who worked alongside of them. The ground that these people were digging was a little plat, which, in exchange for services 188 A RIDE IN PRANCE. rendered to the land-owner, or a part of the money paid them for such services, they were enabled to rent. It is a common thing, here, for a labourer to be the renter of a little piece of land, in this way. Instead of being em- ployed iu such toilsome labour, the women, if they had been the wives or daughters of En- glish labourers, would have been at home, at- tending to the state of their cottages, and preserving that general system of neatness and order, which makes so great a difference be- tween the Englishman's cottage and the Frenchman's caban, — Of the food of the French peasant bread is a principal article ; and it is, in France, as it appears natural that it should be, the most abundant article in the way of food. All sorts of vegetables, in this country, give way to bread. A less quantity of meat is requisite to a French labourer, than what labourers (when they can get it) are used to consume in England. The economy in cooking here, is such, that the same quantity of animal food which we eat in England would feed al- most double the number of persons in France. Soup is a food of which the French are so fond, that they can scarcely bear to go with- out it. The best soup they like best; but, they like soup, in general, so much, that even soup maigre is better to them than no soup at PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 189 all. The French do not cook so much meat in large pieces as we do ; they cut it up into small bits, and stew, or fricasee it, most fre- quently. It is this mode of cooking among them, no doubt, which has led to the suppo- sition, which I do not think well founded, that the French are more abstinent with regard to meat than we are. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 25, 26, and 27 Nov. 248. The cause of my remaining so long a time as three days at St. Oraer's has been the discovery of some old friends of my father's, with whom he resided (en pension) about thirty years ago, when he was in this country. I endeavoured to find them as I went through here before, but without success. As soon as I got back here again I made further search, and at last found them out. 249. I have not, till this time, had any op- portunity of being in a French Court of Jus- tice. On Wednesday there was a court sitting, at this place, to try criminals, at which I at- tended. I witnessed one trial, which was that of a young woman, who had been arrested 190 A RIDE IN FRANCE. in the neighbourhood of St. Pol, on the charge of stealing a cow. She pleaded, not guilty ; but it was clearly proved, that she was guilty; and the main circumstance urged in her fa- vour, was, that of her not having stolen the cow during the night, but in the day time. The French law does not punish the crime of theft with so much severity when committed in the day-time, as it does when committed during the night. The law, it appeared, had not specified the exact difference between the time of the day and that of the night. The lawyer who defended, or who wished to miti- gate the punishment of, the woman, argued, that, as she had stolen the cow at three o'clock in the morning, the theft ought to be consi- dered as having been committed in the day- time. But the chief judge interpreted the law differently; and, after consulting with the rest of those who were upon the bench, decided that the cow had been stolen in the night, and sentenced the woman to thirteen month's imprisonment. The prisoner, during the trial, sat between two gens d'armes (who are officers of police, but dressed in complete military uniform), in a situation which was elevated from the floor by a little platform, round which there was an iron railing. On the opposite side of the room sat the jury, PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 191 (twelve men) ; and at one end of the room was the bench, upon which there were, I think, seven judges, all of whom wore black gowns, much like the gowns worn by our lawyers, the president of the court having, besides this, a scarlet scarf over his shoulders, by way, I suppose, of distinction. The lawyers here do not wear wigs. They wear, judges and all, a curious sort of cap, which is high upon their heads, and much wider round at the top of the crown than it is at the bottom, in- creasing gradually in width, as it runs up. It has no brim, like that of a common hat, but, in all other respects, it is very nearly of the same shape as the hats which have, of late, been worn by the dandies of London ; very like a dandy's hat, with the brim cut off. The cap is, ordinarily, made of black cloth, but that of the president is of black velvet, and has a band of gold lace round the lower part of it. 250. Crimes are by no means so frequent in France as in England. According to the accounts which I have received in four of the Departments through which I have passed, there are not half so many prisoners in France as in England alone, though the population of France is about three times that of England ! 192 A RIDE IN FRANCE. This is a melancholy, and, indeed, to us, a disgraceful fact. The truth is, the people of France are well off; and those of England are, for the greater part, constantly suffering from want. Then, there is the fertile cause for im- prisonment in England, the game-code, of which the French do, in reality, know no- thing. Only eight persons have been executed in Paris during the last three years. Alas ! London : the blood of how many has stained your pavement ! 251. This happy state of the people makes the family of Bourbon secure. 1 have now travelled a great distance in France; have been in almost all sorts of company ; have seen no restraint in any company ; and never have heard one expression hostile to the Bourbons. People talk freely, and I have frequently heard them talk about the Spanish war. Generally, however, as a matter of mere news ; and, the impression upon my mind is, that the people in general care very little about what we call politics. They seem to have never known what was before the Revolution ; and, they seem perfectly well satisfied with the result of it. If I had mixed with politicians, at Paris, I might have heard what would have led to a PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 193 different conclusion; but I took the commu- nity as I found it; and I have here set down the result of my observations. 252. I was prepared for some marks of that prejudice, said to exist here against the English. Few persons have, I believe, (at least, I hope,) taken me for any thing but an Englishman ; and, during the whole of my journey, I have met with not a bit more rudeness, neglect, or incivility, than I should have been liable to if I had been travelling in England. 253. I had read Mr. Arthur Young's ac- count of bad rooms, bad beds, nasty servants, and the like. I have met with none of these. Frequently not fine ; but seldom indeed not good. Plenty of good food always, for horse as well as for man ; and never any thing like impatience or ill-temper in the servants. Say others what they please : I say a most civil, agreeable, and honest people. 254. The people seem to me to think very little about the taxes ; and, indeed, it is not very easy to meet with a person who can tell you any thing about them. It is curious, that there is just the same talk of a vast increase of population here that there is in England. K 194 A RIDE IN FRANCE. Every body that you talk to on the subject, seems to take it for granted, that France is much more populous than she was a few years ago. Has England caught this strange whim from France ; or France from England. 255. I have been very much pleased with the state of religious affairs in France. Here appear to be no disputes between the people and the priests ; and, as far as I can perceive, there is but one kind of religion ; which must, I think, be a great advantage to all parties. Which is right and which is wrong of the many kinds of religion in England, I shall not take upon me to decide \ but, I must say, that I here witness the happy effects of there being only one kind. The priests every where seem to be a very modest and unas- suming set of men. They are appointed to their parishes by the Bishops. They do not lead lazy lives. They visit, and diligently visit, every sick person. They are in their churches, on many of the days of every month, soon after daylight. On Sundays they ge- nerally say mass three times. They teach all the children their religious duties. For this purpose they have them assembled in the church itself, on certain days, and mostly at a very early hour in the morning, which must PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 195 have an excellent effect on the morals of the children. There are none of the people too poor to be noticed, and in the kindest manner too, by these priests, who really appear to an- swer to the appellation of pastor. 256. Never, while this is the case, will any thing resembling our Methodist Meetings rise up here. It is certainly a great feather in the cap of the Catholic Church, that France has returned to her with so much unanimity 3 and that, too, without any force, without any attempt at force, and without any possible motive in the mass of the people except that of a belief in the truth of her doctrines. But, as far as I can venture to speak, I must say, that I think, that the gentle, the amiable, the kind, the humble, the truly pious conduct of the priests is the great cause of that strong attachment which the Catholics every where bear to their church. I give, as it becomes me, this opinion with great deference to the judgment of the reader; but, bare justice to these priests compels me to say, that I see them every where held in high esteem, and, that they seem to me not to be esteemed be- yond their merit?. Let the reader suppose an English parson (and there may be such an one in England), abstaining from marriage in K 2 196 A RIDE IN FRANCE. order that he may devote his whole time and affection to his flock ; let the reader suppose him visiting every sick person in his parish, present at every death in it, comforting the dying, consoling the survivors; let the reader suppose such a parson teaching every child in the parish its religious duties, conversing with each almost daily ; let the reader suppose such a parson, and can he suppose that the people of this parish would ever run after a Metho- dist f The great thing is, however, that the people are more sober, honest, and happy in consequence of having this kind and zealous parson. This is the great thing to think of; and, it appears to me that, in this respect, France is, at this time, in a very excellent state. 257. The giving of credit is much less in fashion in France than in England. Indeed the laws of France discourage it : wisely, in my opinion ; but they do it at any rate. Traders must have a licence from the govern- ment to carry on their trades ; but, this is not necessary if they do not deal on credit. If they have not the licence they cannot be sued for debts contracted in their business, and cannot sue for debts contracted with them by others. If, therefore, they choose to deal PROVINCE OF ARTOIS. 197 solely for ready money, they need no licence. The licence operates, therefore, as a tax on giving and taking credit. Several persons, with whom I have conversed in France, think this tax a very wise measure; and 1 have generally found, that there is, in this country, a rooted dislike to adventurous dealings ; or, as the cant term is, speculations. This dislike to gambling trade makes commerce less showy, but much more solid. Adventurous dealings certainly are not quite free from dishonest in- tention. The habit of carrying on such deal- ings tends, I am disposed to think, to wear away whatever it finds of steady industry and honesty. The honesty of the French in all their dealings ; their punctuality in paying their debts ; their great dislike to be in debt : these are acknowledged by all who know them, and who are just : and these make up for many and many little faults. CALAIS — PROVINCE OF ARTOtS. (Ten leagues from St. Omers.) Friday, 28 Nov. 258. Here I am again, with the white cliffs of England once more in my sight, after having 198 A RIDE IN FRANCE. been seven weeks and two days in France, and having travelled over much about eight hundred English miles. Let me, then, look at my purse, and count the cost of this most agreeable and instructive ride. From my landing at this place, on the 9th of October, to my entry into it again this day, my whole expenditure has been 161. 10s. 9Jd. or 396 francs, 18| sous ; or, six shilli7igs and seven- pence a-day for me and my horse ; including, however, nearly a pound sterling on account of my horse's cutting of his foot. I have not tried to be saving. I have lived very well ; always put up at the best inns; eaten and drunk as others did ; have been rather liberal than otherwise to servants ; and have a horse full as fat as when I landed him. These ex- penses, per day, for myself and horse, are not much more than the amount of the day's wages of a labourer at New York. When we look at these expenses, we cannot wonder that so many English people are now in France ; indeed, the wonder is, that thousands more are not here. 259. I cannot look across the Channel without contrasting the stir, the bustle, the energetic motions, and the anxious looks, that I shall there again behold, with the tranquil PROVINCE OP ARTOIS. 199 and happy carelessness of the scenes that I leave behind me. There seems to be more energy, more force, more human power, ex- isting in one mile of England than in all France. The difference is perfectly surpris- ing; but, it by no means follows, that the latter country has not, mile for mile, as much of solid means as the former. France has just shown, that she can send forth immense ar- mies without the effect being felt by, and without the fact being scarcely known to, the mass of the people. The Spanish war seems to have disturbed nobody and nothing. A few years ago it was supposed by many in England, that the energies of France were subdued for ever. Those who thought thus had not seen France ; or, had not, at least, duly estimated her immense resources, I pray to God, that those resources may never make her a match for England; but it is not the part of prudence or of valour, to shut our eyes to danger, or to under-rate that against which we shall, sooner or later, have to contend. 200 A RIDE. IN FRANCE. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE FINANCES OF FRANCE. 260. 1 found it very difficult to get any pub- lications on the Finances ; but, I was, by a gentleman at Paris, assisted in getting at do- cuments to enable me to make the following statement of receipts and expenditures for the year 1822 $ and this statement is, I am satis- tied, correct as to all material points. " 261. The taxes are, 1. A direct tax on land; 2. On persons and moveable property ; 3. On trades; that is to say, licences; 4. Stamp taxes; 5. Customs; 6. Excise. All governments seem to have the same taste as to taxation. The American Congress have not, as yet, come to a settled excise tax; but they have been nibbling at it two or three times. They have been throwing it, as if in sport, over the necks of the people ; and, then, when the people began to look cross, pulled it away again, pretending they were joking ! In case of another war, it will, perhaps, be fastened round their necks for ever. VIEW OF THE FINANCES. 201 RECEIPTS FOR 1822. Francs. From land and landed income 273,000,000. . . Persons and moveables 41,000,000. . . Trades 31,000,000... Stamps 157,000,000. . . Customs and Excise 268,000,000. . . F. 770,000,000 Sterling-: 11,400,000 1,700,000 1,300,000 6,500,000 11,100,000 £32,000,000 EXPENDITURE FOR 1822. Francs. Sterling. Debt (Public) 178,000,000 7,400,000 Royal Family 1. 34,000,000.... 1,400,000 Ministry of Justice ^ 17,000,000 700,000 Pensions in this Department J 325,000. . . . 14,000 Foreign Affairs 6,000,000.... 240,000 Interior (ordinary service) . . l 11,100,000 460,000 Pensions in this Department J 580,000. . . . 24,000 The Church 23,400,000.... 975,000 Public Works, Roads, and Bridges 31,000,000 1,300,000 Charitable Institutions 2,200,000. . . . 91,000 Contingencies 33,500,000 1,390,000 War (active service) 173,200,000 7,200,000 Half Pay 16,000,000 660,000 Marine 52,000,000.... 2,200,000 Ministry of Finance 75,000,000 3,100,000 Charges of Collection and Ma- nagement 116,500,000 4,812,000 F. 769,S05,000 £31,966,000 k5 202 A RIDE IN FRANCE. 262. The reader will please to observe, that, in turning the francs into pounds, I have not carried the calculations further than the first two or three figures towards the right hand. If the calculations had been carried quite out, the totals, under the heads of sterling, would have been a little different from what they now are. This is, however, of no conse- quence. The above is quite nice enough for every useful purpose. 263. This statement offers matter for inte- resting observation, particularly in a compa- rative point of view. The French say, that they have thirty millions of persons from whom to collect this revenue. TheC/iwrc/i,wesee, costs these thirty millions of persons only nine hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds a-year ; while an army, a division of which is fit to invade and over-run Spain, costs but seven millions a-year ; which is not a third more than that singular body in England, which is, with much greater propriety than elegance, much more truth than prudence, called The Dead fFeight. Reflections I must, however, leave to the reader, contenting myself with the hope that the facts which I have brought together may be found to be not wholly destitute of utility. THE END. INDEX. Abbeville, town of paragraph 236 Aicanois, vineyard at 45 Aire, town of 34 Alan^on, city of , 180 Amiens, city of 42 cathedral of 42 Animals, treatment of tame 138, 139 Apple and pear trees 45 Ardres, town of 24 Asses 138 Auron, the river 125 Azincour, village of 37 Beans, kidney (haricdts) » 56 Beans, cultivation and use of 35 Beauvoir, Chateau de 91 Beggars in France 210 Benedict, Convent of St 160 Bertin, St 31 Bertin, Church of St 27. 31 INDEX. Bill of the Author's expenses, at Cosne 117 at Calais 15, 16 at St. Omers 32 at Amiens 43 atDartford 17 at Paris 71 Boarding and lodging, cost of 189 Botte, corruption of the word 17 Boucmaison, village of . 40 Bourbon, Due de 61 Bourges, city of 125 cathedral of , 126 Buonaparte ^ Bread, price of, quality of 48, 1 67 Briarre, village of 89, 91 Buzancois, town of 142 Caen, the horses of 195 Calais, town of 17 Canchy, village of . . , 239 Castles, or country seats 77 Catholic church, the 256 Cauchoises, the women so called 215 Chartreux, Le Convent des 29 Chailly, village of 78 Chantilly, town of 58 Chateauroux, city of 131 Chatillon sur Indre, town of 142 Chestnut-trees 90 Church, going to, in France 227 Cider 45, 198 Clermont, town of 57 Climate 112 Clion, village of 142 INDEX. Clothes, price of 208 Curmnissaire, or commissioner of customs &e 12 Common, or waste land in France 21 Conches, forest of * 193 town of 203 Cooking, French mode of 32 Coppices, price of , . 108 manner of making .... * 109 Corn, measure and price of, at Briarre 100 measure and price of, elsewhere 182 mode of sowing 192 Corn-mills i 53 Cosne, town of 1 13 Cottages 243 Court of Justice, a French 249 Cows, kinds of . 80 price of 80 Cress, cultivation of 35 Crime, state of France with regard to 250 Dagobert, King . . . . . 31 Decametre, the measure called the : 182 Denis, M 29 Diligence, or French coach, at Calais 20 Dunkirk 30 Ecouen, castle at the town of . . . 61 Essonne, village of , 75 Essoudun, town of 133 Evreux, city of 206 Fagots, price of, at Clermont 59 at Briarre 108 Fair at St. Just 52 Farmers, description of French 137 Flax, cultivation of 35 INDEX. Flax, mode of threshing 38 Flers, village of 48 Fontainebleau, town of 79 forest of 78 Forest d'Eau, Le 235 Fromenteau, village of 75 Fruit at St. Qmer's 29 Fuel, price of, in Normandy 186 Game, and « Game-Laws" 103, 104 Garden of plants, the 66 GilBlas 15 Girardot, M., the garden of 70 Goats 153 Grain, mode of sowing 94 Harasdupin 195 Harvest, lateness of the, in Artois 26 Hectolitre, the measure called the 182 Hesdin, the town of 239 Hoggart, Mr 89, 98 Horse, duty and charges on a 10 Horse-doctor, fee of a 28 Horses, description of, and price of the French .... 52, 80 cost of shoeing 23 cost of, at livery 71 the King's stud of 195 Hops, price of, at Beauvoir 1 14 H&tel-Dieu, the institution called 210, 211 House-reut, cost of 187 Implements of husbandry, cost of, &c 85, 231 Indian-corn , 170,175 Inns in France 48, 120, 121 Iron, manufacture of, and price of , 200 Jesuits, church of the, at St. Omers 33 INDEX. Joan of Arc, the statue of, at Rouen 228 Juine, the river 75 Kew garden 66 Knitting and spinning 5 1, 83, 123 Labouring people, state of 243, 105, 145 wages of 203 Dress of 22,35,106 civility of 50 La Charite, town of 118 L'Aigle, town of 197 Laigneville, village of ^ ..... » 58 Lamorlai, village of 58 Land, price of, at Briarre 97, 111 taxes on l . , Ill measure of 97 rent of 98 right of Foreigners to possess 99 measures of, in Normandy 183 price of 184, 185 Laquette, the river 34 La Recousse, village of 26 League, land-league, the distance of 19 Le Mans, city of 172 Limosin, the horses of 195 Lillers, village of 34 Loches, town of 147, 148 Locust-trees 60, 61, 158 Loing, the river 80 Loire, the river , 89, 95 Louviers, town of, manufactures of 208 Lord, a Frenchman's idea of an English 157 Lucerne 5<5 Lucerne, hay made of 93, 179 INDEX. Luxeuil, monastery of 31 Lys, the river 34 Luzarches, town of 58 Manufactures, domestic - 51, 83, 124, 171 Merielle, Mi, garden of 70 Meurice, H6tel de, at Calais 13 at Paris 73 Montargis, town of 80, 96 Montreuil, the fruit cultivated at 70 Montmorency, Due de * . . . . 61 Mules i 138 Nemours, village of 80 Neufchatel, town of * 234 Nogent, town of 89 Nonant, village of 195 Normandy, the people of 215 law and custom of 216 Novain, the river 113 Oise, the river .......; » 57 Omer, St. Bishop of Terouane 31 Orge, the river 75 Ostlers in France 44 Ouen, St. Bishop of Rouen -. . . . 226 Church of St. 226 Oxen, kind of 85, 144 manner of working 137 Paine, Mr. 65 Paris 65 environs of 71 Parsons, English 193 Pauperism • • • 210 Pays de Caux, the women of the 21n Peat, used as fuel 240 INDEX. Pernes, the village of 34 Pigs 145 Pythagoreans, Frenchmen no 129 "Poaching" 105 Pont Sans Pareil, Le 24 Poor, provision made for the 210 Puppies, cultivation and harvest of 36 Potatoes 87, 177 Pouilly, town of 117 Press, state of the, in France 165 Priests, contrast the French and the English 193, 255 Primogeniture, the law of 217, 218 Quick-set hedges 77 Rape, or coleseed, manner of cultivating 26 Real estate, law relating to the disposal of 99 Religion 255, 227 Revolution, the effects of the French \ 2/ '^ fy %\% 27 Richlieu, Cardinal 66 Ris, village of 75 Roads 64 Rosseau, Jean-Jacques 43,58 Rouen, city of 214,215,224 Sabots, or wooden shoes 84 Sansarge, hamlet of 121 Schooling in France, cost of 1 88 Seez, town of 194 Sheep, in Picardy 47 price of, in Gastinois 102 Sheep, in Touraine 152 in Normandy 202 Sheep-fold 55 Shoes, price of , , , . . 208 INDEX. Somerville, Lord, his invention 137 Spanish officers, smoking in bed 127 Spanish-war 251 , 259 St. Just, town of 45 St. Omers, city of 30 origin of the name of 34 Sunday not always a holyday 200 Table d'Hdte, description of a 13 Talmas, village of 45 Taxes 254 Teazles 56 Timber, price of, in Normandy 186 measure of 186 price of, at Briarre 103 Tours, city of 151, 152, 162, 163 Towns and villages, appearance of 34, 88 Turkeys 48,86 Turneps, women hoeing 35 Vegetables, not so much eaten by the French as is sup- posed 32, 43 Villedieu, village of 142 Vintage, the process of the 115 Vines, cultivation of 158 Wages of labourers 48, 81 Washing horses 44 Washing clothes 209 Wheat, at Calais 22 price of 182 Wine, at Briarre, price of 110 process of making 115 at Tours 158 Women, the employment of, in out-door labour 35 threshing wheat and rye 46 INDEX. Women , heavy work imposed upon 149 Women of Normandy, the 215 Work-houses, the English 210 Yevrette, the river 125 Young, Mr. Arthur 175, 253 ERRATUM. In paragraph 120, for Porse aux Chevaux, read Poste mix Chevaux. B. Bmslcy, Boil Court. Fleet Street. tiifc; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 030 227 905 6