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trust his baggage to the common voitures of the country, without any extraordinary precautions.

After a rapid excursion, with my friend Lazowski, to see many things, but too hastily to form any correct idea, spent the evening at his brother's, where I had the pleasure of meeting Mons. de Broussonet, secretary to the royal society of agriculture, and Mons. Desmaret, both of the academy of sciences. As Monsieur Lazowski is well informed in the manufactures of France, in the police of which he enjoys a post of consideration, and as the other gentlemen have paid much attention to agriculture, the conversation was in no slight degree instructive, and I regretted that a very early departure from Paris would not let me promise myself a further enjoyment so congenial with my feelings, as the company of men, whose conversation shewed a marked attention to objects of national importance. On the breaking up of the party, went with count Alexander de la Rouchefoucald post to Versailles, to be present at the fete of the day following (Whitsunday.) Slept at the duke de Liancourt's hotel.

The 27th. Breakfasted with him at his apartments in the palace, which are annexed to his office of grand master of the wardrobe, one of the principal in the court of France. Here I found the duke surrounded by a circle of noblemen, among whom was the duke de la Rouchefoucald, well known for his attention to natural history; I was introced to him, as he is going to Bagnere de Luchon in the Pyrenees, where I am to have the honour of being in his party.

The ceremony of the day was, the king's investing the duke of Berri, son of the count D'Artois, with the cordon blue. The queen's band was in the chapel where the ceremony was performed, but the musical effect was thin and weak. During the service the king was seated between his two brothers, and seemed by his carriage and inattention to wish himself a hunting. He would certainly have been as well employed as in hearing afterwards from his throne a feudal oath of chivalry, I suppose, or some such nonsense, administered to a boy of ten years old. Seeing so much pompous folly I imagined it was the dauphin, and asked a lady of fashion near me; at which she laughed in my face, as if I had been guilty of the most egregious idiotism: nothing could be done in a worse manner; for the stifling of her expression only marked it the more. I applied to Mons. de la Rouchefoucald to learn what gross absurdity I had been guilty of so unwittingly; when, forsooth, it was because dauphin, as all the world knows in France, has the cordon blue put around him as soon as he born. So unpardonable was it for a foreigner to be ignorant of such an important part of French history, as that of giving a babe a blue slobbering bib instead of a white one!

After this ceremony was finished, the king and the knights walked in a sort of procession to a small apartment in which he dined, saluting the queen as they passed.

There appeared to be more ease and familiarity than form in this part of the ceremony; her majesty, who, by the way, is the most beautiful woman I saw to-day, received them with a variety of expression. On some she smiled; to others she talked; a few seemed to have the honour of being more in her intimacy. Her return to some was formal, and to others distant. To the gallant Suffrein it was respectful and benign. The ceremony of the king's dining in public is more odd than splendid. The queen sat by him with a cover before her, but ate nothing; conversing with the duke of Orleans, and the duke of Liancourt, who stood behind her chair. To me it would have been a most uncomfortable meal, and were I a sovereign, I would sweep away three-fourths of these stupid forms; if kings do not dine like other people, they lose much of the pleasure of life; their station is very well calculated to deprive them of much, and they submit to nonsensical customs, the sole tendency of which is to lessen the remainder. The only comfortable or amusing dinner is a table of ten or twelve covers for the people whom they like; travellers tell us that this was the mode of the late king of Prussia, who knew the value of life too well to sacrifice it to empty forms on one hand, or to a monastic reserve on the other.

The palace of Versailles, one of the objects of which report had given me the greatest expectation, is not in the least striking: I view it without emotion; the impression it makes is nothing. What can compensate the want of unity? From whatever point viewed, it appears an assemblage of buildings; a splendid quarter of a town, but not a fine edifice; an objection from which the garden front is not free, though by far the most beautiful. The great gallery is the finest room I have seen; the other apartments are nothing; but the pictures and statues are well known to be a capital collection. The whole palace, except the chapel, seems to be open to all the world; we pushed through an amazing croud of all sorts of people to see the procession, many of them not very well dressed, whence it appears that no questions are asked. But the officers at the door of the apartment in which the king dined, made a distinction, and would not permit all to enter promiscuously.

Travellers speak much, even very late ones, of the remarkable interest the French take in all that personally concerns their king, shewing by the eagerness of their attention not curiosity only, but love. Where, how, and in whom those gentlemen discovered this I know not. It is either misrepresentation, or the people are changed in a few years more than is credible. Dine at Paris, and in the evening the duchess of Liancourt, who seems to be one of the best of women, carried me to the opera at St. Cloud, where also we viewed the palace which the queen is building; it is large, but there is much in the front that does not please me.

20 miles.

The 28th. Finding my mare sufficiently recovered for a journey, a point of importance to a traveller so weak in cavalry as myself, I left Paris, accompanying the count de la Rouchefoucald and my friend Lazowski, and commencing a journey that is to cross the whole kingdom to the Pyrenees. The road to Orleans is one of the greatest that leads from Paris; I expected, therefore, to have my former impression of the little traffic near that city removed; but on the contrary it was confirmed; it is a desert compared with those around London. In ten miles we met not one stage or diligence; only two messageries, and very few chaises; not a tenth of what would have been met had we been leaving London at the same hour. Knowing how great, rich, and important a city Paris is, this circumstance perplexes me much. Should it afterwards be confirmed, conclusions in abundance are to be drawn.

For a few miles the scene is every where scattered with the shafts of quarries, the stone drawn up by lanthorn wheels of a great diameter. The country diversified; and its greatest want to please the eye is a river; woods generally in view; the proportion of the French territory covered by this production for want of coals, must be prodigious, for it has been the same all the way from Calais. At Arpajon, the Marechal duke de Mouchy has a small house, which has nothing to recommend it. 20 miles.

The 29th. To Estamps is partly through a flat country, the beginning of the famous Pays de Beauce. To Toury, flat and disagreeable, only two or three gentlemen's seats in sight. 31 miles.

The 30th. One universal flat, uninclosed, uninteresting, and even tedious, though small towns and villages are every where in sight; the features that might compound a landscape are not brought together. The Pays de Beauce contains, by reputation, the cream of French husbandry; the soil excellent; but the management all fallow. Pass through part of the forest of Orleans belonging to the duke of that name; it is one of the largest in France.

From the steeple of the cathedral at Orleans, the prospect is very fine. The town large, and its suburbs, of single streets, extend near a league. The vast range of country, that spreads on every side, is an unbounded plain, through which the magnificent Loire bends his stately way, in sight for fourteen leagues; the whole scattered with rich meadows, vineyards, gardens, and forests. The population must be very great; for, beside the city, which contains near forty thousand people, the number of smaller towns and villages strewed thickly over the plain is such as to render the whole scene animated. The cathedral, from which we had this noble prospect, is a fine building, the choir raised by Henry IV. The new church is a pleasing edifice; the bridge a noble structure of stone, and the first experiment of the flat arch made in France, where it is now so fashionable. It contains nine, and is four hundred and ten feet long, and forty-five wide. To hear some Englishmen talk, one would suppose there was not a fine bridge in all France; not the first, nor the last error I hope that travelling will remove. There are many barges and boats at the quay, built upon the river in the Bourbonnois, &c. loaded with wood, brandy, wine, and other goods; on arriving at Nantes, the vessels are broken up and sold with the cargo. Great numbers built with spruce fir. A boat goes from hence to that city, when demanded by six passengers, each paying a louis d'or: they lie on shore every night, and reach Nantes in four days and an half. The principal street leading to the bridge is a fine one all busy and alive, for the trade is brisk here. Admire the fine acacias scattered about the town. 20 miles.

The 31st. On leaving it, enter soon the miserable province of Sologne, which the French writers call the triste Sologne. Through all this country they have had severe spring frosts, for the leaves of the walnuts are black and cut off. I should not have expected this unequivocal mark of a bad climate after passing the Loire. To La Ferte Lowendahl, a dead flat of hungry sand gravel, with much heath. The poor people, who cultivate the soil here, are metayers, that is, men who hire the land without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide cattle and seed, and he and his tenant divide the produce; a miserable system, that perpetuates poverty and excludes instruction. At La Ferte is a handsome chateau of the marquis de Coix, with several canals, and a great command of water. To Nonant-le-Fuzelier, a strange mixture of sand and water. Much inclosed, and the houses and cottages of wood filled between the studs with clay or bricks, and covered not with slate but tile, with some barns boarded like those in Suffolk. Rows of pollards in some of the hedges; an excellent road of sand; the general features of a woodland country; and all combined to give a strong resemblance to many parts of England; but the husbandry is so little like that of England, that the least attention to it destroyed every notion of similarity. 27 miles.

June 1. The same wretched country continues to La Loge; the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are of misery. Yet all this country highly improveable, if they knew what to do with it: the property, perhaps, of some of these glittering beings, who figured in the procession the other day at Versailles. Heaven grant me patience while I see a country thus neglected; and forgive me the oaths I swear at the absence and ignorance of the possessors. Enter the generality of Bourges, and soon after a forest of oak belonging to the count d'Artois; the trees are dying at top, before they attain any size. There the miserable Sologne ends; the first view of Verson and its vicinity is fine. A noble vale spreads at your feet, through which the river Cheere leads, seen in several places to the distance of some leagues; a bright sun burnished the water, like a string of lakes amidst the shade of a vast woodland. See Bourges to the left. 18 miles.

The 2d. Pass the rivers Cheere and Lave; the bridges well built; the stream fine, and with the wood, buildings, boats, and adjoining hills, form an animated scene. Several new houses, and buildings of good stone in Verson; the place appears thriving, and doubtless owes much to the navigation. We are now in Berri, a province governed by a provincial assembly, consequently the roads good, and made without corvees. Vatan is a little town that subsists chiefly by spinning. We drank there excellent Sancere wine, of a deep colour, rich flavour, and good body, 20s. the bottle; but in the country ten. An extensive prospect before we arrived at Chateauroux where we viewed the manufactures. 40 miles.

The 3d. Within about three miles of Argenton come upon a fine scene, beautiful, yet with bold features; a narrow vale bounded on every side with hills, covered with wood, all of which are immediately under the eye, without a level acre, except the bottom of the vale, through which a river flows, by an old castle picturesquely situated to the right; and to the left a tower rising out of a wood.

At Argenton, walk up a rock that hangs almost over the town. It is a delicious scene. A natural ledge of perpendicular rock pushes forward abruptly over the vale, which is half a mile broad, and two or three long: at one end closed by hills, and at the other filled by the town with vineyards rising above it: the surrounding scene that hems in the vale is high enough for relief; vineyards, rocks or hills covered with wood. The vale cut into inclosures of a lovely verdure, and a fine river winds through it, with an outline that leaves nothing to wish. The venerable fragments of a castle's ruins, near the point of view, are well adapted to awaken reflections on the triumph of the arts of peace over the barbarous ravages of the feudal ages, when every class of society was involved in commotion, and the lower ranks were worse slaves than at present.

The general face of the country, from Verson to Argenton, is an uninteresting flat with many heaths of ling. No appearance of population, and even towns are thin. The husbandry poor and miserable. By the circumstances to which I could give attention I conceive them to be honest and industrious; they seem clean; are civil, and have good countenances. They appear to me as if they would improve their country, if they formed the part of a system, the principles of which tended to national prosperity.

18 miles.

The 4th. Pass an inclosed country, which would have a better appearance if the oaks had not lost their foliage by insects, whose webs hang over the buds. They are but now coming into leaf again. Cross a stream which separates Berri from La Marche; chesnuts appear at the same time; they are spread over all the fields, and yield the food of the poor. A variety of hill and dale, with fine woods, but little signs of population. Lizards for the first time also. There seems a connection relative to climate between the chesnuts and these harmless animals. They are very numerous, and some of them near a foot long. Sleep at La Ville au Brun. 24 miles.

The 5th. The country improves in beauty greatly; pass a vale, where a causeway stops the water of a small rivulet and swells it into a lake, that forms one feature of a delicious scene. The indented outlines and the swells margined with wood are beautiful; the hills on every side in unison; one now covered with ling the prophetic eye of taste may imagine lawn. Nothing is wanted to render the scene a garden, but to clear awav rubbish.

The general face of the country, for 16 miles, by far the most beautiful I have seen in France; it is thickly inclosed, and full of wood; the umbrageous foliage of the chesnuts gives the same beautiful verdure to the hills, as watered meadows (seen for the first time to day) to the vales. Distant mountainous ridges form the back ground, and make the whole interesting. The declivity of country, as we go down to Bassies, offers a beautiful view; and the approach to the town presents a landscape fancifully grouped of rock, and wood, and water. To Limoge, pass another artificial lake between cultivated hills; beyond are wilder heights, but mixed with pleasant vales; still another lake more beautiful than the former, with a fine accompaniment of wood; across a moun tain of chesnut copse, which commands a scene of a character different from any I have viewed either in France or England, a great range of hill and dale all covered with forest, and bounded by distant mountains. Not a vestige of any human residence; no village; no house or hut, no smoke to raise the idea of a peopled country; an American scene ; wild enough for the tomohawk of the savage. Stop at an execrable auberge, called Maison Rouge, where we intended to sleep; but, on examination, found every appearance so forbidding, and so beggarly an account of a larder, that we passed on to Limoge. The roads through all this country are truly noble, far beyond any thing I have seen in France or elsewhere. 44 miles.

The 6th. View Limoge, and examine its manufactures. It was certainly a Roman station, and some traces of its antiquity are still remaining. It is ill built, with narrow and crooked streets, the houses high and disagreeable. They are raised of granite, or wood with lath and plaster, which saves lime, an expensive article here, being brought from a distance of twelve leagues; the roofs are of pantiles, with projecting eaves, and almost flat; a sure proof we have quitted the region of heavy snows. The best of their public works is a noble fountain, the water conducted three quarters of a league by an arched aqueduct, brought under the bed of a rock 60 feet deep to the highest spot in the town, where it falls into a basin fifteen feet diameter, cut out of one piece of granite; thence the water is let into reservoirs, closed by sluices, which are opened for watering the streets, or in case of fires.

The cathedral is ancient, and the roof of stone; there are some arabesque ornaments cut in stone, as light, airy, and elegant as any modern house can boast, whose decorations are in the same taste.

The present bishop has erected a large and handsome palace, and his garden is the finest object to be seen at Limoge, for it commands a landscape hardly to be equalled for beauty: it would be idle to give any other description than just enough to induce travellers to view it. A river winds through a vale, surrounded by hills that present the gayest and most animated assemblage of villas, farms, vines, hanging meadows, and chesnuts blended so fortunately as to compose a scene truly smiling. This bishop is a friend of the count de la Rouchefoucald's family; he invited us to dine, and gave us a very handsome entertainment. Lord Macartney, when a prisoner in France, after the Grenades were taken, spent some time with him; there was an instance of French politeness shewn to his lordship, that marks the urbanity of this people. The order came from court to sing Te Deum on the very day that lord Macartney was to arrive. Conceiving that the public demonstrations of joy for a victory that brought his noble guest a prisoner, might be personally unpleasant to him, the bishop proposed to the intendant to postpone the ceremony for a few days, in order that he might not meet it so abruptly;

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