MONTAUBAN..... The woollen manufacture here is of some consequence, consisting of common cloths, croisees, half an auln broad, and several sorts of stuffs; they give the epithet royale to one house, but in general the spinning and weaving are carried on both in the town and the country, not only on account of the master manufacturers, but also by private weavers, who make and carry their stuffs to market undressed; the people of the fabric I viewed assert, that they use only Spanish wool, but this is every where in France a common assertion by way of recommending their fabrics, and has been heard in those, known on much better authority to use none at all; another circumstance to be noted is, that the wool of Roussillon goes in common manufacturing language under the denomination of Spanish; I saw their raw wool, and am clear, that if it is Spanish, it is of a very inferior sort; the quality and the price of the cloths speak the same language; they dye the cloth and not the wool previously; they sell their broad cloths, which are ths of an auln wide, at 17 livres the auln (14s. 101⁄2d.) and the croisees at 5 livres 10s. Twelve hundred people are said to be employed by this fabric.

The silk manufacture is also considerable; they work up not only the silk of the environs, but of the upper country also; they make stockings and small stuffs, but the former the chief; it is executed like the woollen fabric, both by master manufacturers and by private looms; a stocking engine costs from 15 to 20 louis, and a workman can earn with it to 3 livres a day.

TOULOUSE..... Has a woollen and a silk fabric; in the first are worked light stuffs, and has about eighty looms, which are in the town; in the other stockings, stuffs, damasks, and other fabrics, worked in flowers; about eighty looms also.

ST. MARTIN..... There are here ten manufacturers' houses, one of which made last year seven hundred pieces of woollen stuffs, each six aulns long; on an average each house five hundred pieces, chiefly bays, says, and other stuffs, the chain of thread; some for home consumption, but chiefly for exportation to Spain. Their best is 4 livres 15s. the canne of eight palms, and ten palms to the auln, half an auln broad. Other stuffs 3 livres 15s. dye in all kinds of colours. There are plenty of spinners of both thread and wool; weavers and spinners are spread over the country, but the combers and carders are at home. They use some Spanish wool from the Navarre hills at 30s. the lb. this year 33s. but very dear.

ST. GAUDENTz..... Manufactures several sorts of stuffs, both wool alone, and wool and thread mixed; the principal fabric is a light stuff called Cadis, the greater part of which is exported to Spain.

BAGNERE DE LUCHON..... At half a league from this place is a manufacture of cobalt; it is said, the only one in the whole kingdom, which was all supplied, before the establishment of this fabric, by a Saxon gentleman, from the works in Saxony; and what is now made here is used at home and exported as Saxon cobalt. The ore is brought from Spain at a very high price, from a mine in the Pyrenees, not more distant in a straight line than six leagues, but the road is so rocky that the ore is brought by the valley of Larbouste, which takes up a day and a half. The ore is not found in veins, but in lumps (rognons) so that it is often lost and found again.

A remarkable circumstance, and hardly credible, is their employing ore also from Styria, which is shipped at Trieste for Bourdeaux, and brought by the Garonne to Toulouse, and hither by land, at the expence of 45s. the quintal. They use also some from Piedmont; of these different ores, that from Styria is the worst, and the Spanish the best; they cost at the manufactory, one with another, 300 livres to 360 livres the quintal : the Spanish ore is the first described by Mons. Fourcroy, the gray or ash coloured; they do not melt these ores separate but mixed together.

The process pursued in this manufactory would be tedious to ninety-nine hundredths of my readers, I shall therefore only give a few heads from the memoranda I made after having viewed it attentively: the reputation of the duc de la Rouchefoucald, as an able chemist, united with his rank, induced the director of the fabric to explain the matter fully; I attended him in viewing the work: they first pound the ore into powder, which is placed in a sort of spoon in a furnace to roast, for the purpose of expelling the arsenic by sublimation; it is received in a canal or chimney, which winds horizontally; by an opening in the wall a man enters for gathering this arsenic; this is an operation very dangerous to the health, yet for 46s. to 3 liv. a day they get men to execute it, who for a preventative of the ill effects swallow some milk, and keep cloths to their mouths and noses dipped in milk, and kept constantly wetted. The cobalt remains after this roasting in a grayish black calx; bismuth is found mixed with it, which is found at the bottom of the spoon. They have another way also, which is that of fusing the cobalt, thus purged of its arsenic, in order to get the regulus; I saw some large pieces of regulus with bismuth adhering, which were in all probability procured in this method; hitherto they have not applied the bismuth to use, nor tried whether it would answer to send it to those places where it is worked.

Having thus obtained the calx of the cobalt, they mix it with pot-ash and roasted flints as a flux, in large crucibles, which are placed six together, in a large long furnace, the upper part of which is arched to an angle, a current of air passing; the furnace is heated with dry beech-wood billets. Some chemists assert, that there should be of flints three to one of the cobalt, but they use sixteen to one, which they say is the Saxon method, and these flints contain some small portion of cobalt: it requires a fierce fire of twelve hours to reduce the calx of cobalt to a glass; when this is nearly in a white fusion (as they term it) they take it out with iron ladles, and throw it into a vessel constantly supplied with fresh water for cooling, from which it is taken to a pounding mill and beat to powder, in which operation they almost always find some drops of regulus, which are taken out; when pounded it is carried to a kind of table three stories high, streams of water are turned on to it, while two men at each table stir it; this is for freeing the cobalt from impurities; it passes with the water into a large tub pierced at different heights, that the water may flow away and leave the cobalt at the bottom; but as this water is in some measure tinctured with this precious material, it is not suffered to run to waste; a large cistern is under the whole room into which it is received, and whence it is drawn off from time to time; the cobalt thus gained is of the worst quality.

The washed cobalt is carried to a mill, which grinds it under a stone, the powder is received in a large vessel of water, which is made by trituration to imbibe the tincture, and is hence drawn off four times into as many vessels, that the water may deposit the material. The powder thus gained is carried to the drying room, where it is dried in long shallow trays, and then reduced to a finer powder by sifting; in which state it is so fine that they water it with a gardener's rose to prevent its being blown away, in which state it is in order to pack into casks for sale.

The motion to the whole machinery is given by two undershot water wheels. Vicinity to the Spanish mine, and cheapness of wood were the inducements to establish this fabric here; they now make pot-ash, which was formerly imported from the Baltic, and cost 40 liv. the quintal, but they can make it here for 12 liv.

NARBONNE..... A manufacture royale of silk stuffs, the master of which is a bankrupt. This is the second of these privileged establishments which I have found in the same situation; Chateauroux the former. It should seem that government never interferes by privileges but to do mischief.

BEZIERS....A small fabric of silk stockings. MONTPELLIER.... Considerable fabrics of blankets, silk handkerchiefs, verdigrise, and many other articles.

NISMES.... This is one of the most considerable manufacturing places in France; they make a great variety of stuffs, in silk, cotton and thread, but the first is the great manufacture; these are said to maintain from ten to fifteen thousand hands; for the intelligence varied between those numbers. Silk stockings are said to employ two thousand; handkerchiefs are a considerable article, printed linens, &c.; in the last there are workmen that earn 7 or 800 liv. a year.

GANGE.... The most noted manufacture of silk stockings in all France; they make them up to 36 liv. a pair.

VIGAN....Silk stockings, and silk and cotton vests.

LODEVE.... The principal manufacture here is cloth for the uniforms of various regiments in the French army; six thousand men are thus employed. They make also silk stockings and vests of cotton, but no cloths for the Levant; sixty quintals of oil are consumed in the town every week in the year.

BEG DE RIEUX.... The manufactures here are the famous cloths called Londrins, which are exported to the Levant; they are made of the wool of Roussillon and Narbonne; also fine cloths of a thicker staple, and silk stockings. The villages in the mountains are all employed in this manufacture.

CARCASONNE.... Londrins the great fabric here also; the master manufacturers give the materials to the weavers, who are paid by the piece, and thus the manufacture spreads into the country both spinning and weaving; they are made of Roussillon and Narbonne wool, which goes by the name of Spanish, forty-six inches wide, the l'aune eight paus. They have also established a small fabric of fine cloths, which they term a facon de Louviers, at ten liv. an auln, but not comparable to the original.

I should observe, that these Londrins, of which at all these towns I took patterns, are a very light, beautiful, well dyed, bright cloth, that have had, and deservedly, from quality and price, the greatest success in the Levant. I saw the wool they are made of, and should not have known it from a good specimen from the South Downs of Sussex.

BAGNERE DE BIGORE... They make here some stockings and woollen stuffs, but not to any amount.

PAU....A considerable manufacture of linen handkerchiefs, with red cotton borders, also of linen for shirts, table-cloths, and napkins; the flax is raised chiefly in the country around; the fabric is spread into the country in every direction; much exported to Spain and to America, by way of Bordeaux. The handkerchiefs are from 36 to 72 liv. the dozen, my specimen at 42s. each, and by the dozen at 42 liv. to 48 liv. the square 3 paus 3 The linen for shirts is of the same breadth, and the price is from 50s. to 6 liv. the auln. A table-cloth and twelve napkins they call a service, and costs from 36 to 150 liv. I examined all, and thought them on the whole very dear, for they make hardly any thing tolerably fine.

ANSPAN....The Pau linen manufacture is here also on a smaller scale.

AIRE.... A small manufacture of Porcelain, or rather earthen-ware, a cup and saucer for 8s. also of linen for the table and shirts.

LEITOUR....There is here a tannery, which was twenty-five years ago not an inconsiderable manufacture, that is, before the excises on leather were laid, but now reduced to less than one fourth of what it was; at that time it used thirty-seven thousand quintals of bark, and dressed eighteen thousand skins, but now only four thousand. The

king's wood near the town, which is extensive, yields the bark, the price 40 to 50s. the quintal; their water-mill grinds one hundred quintals a day; the bark cakes for fuel sell at 6 liv. the thousand. They have one hundred and twenty tan pits, which give employment to about one hundred men. The master of the fabric complains bitterly of the tax, which is 3s. the pound on all sorts of leather, sheep skins excepted, and he is clear that it has destroyed the manufacture. It is paid only when the dressed hides are taken out of the warehouse for sale, by which means the less capital on account of the tax is

necessary.

AGEN..... The chief manufacture here is one of sail-cloth, very much decreased since the war, which, while it lasted, gave it an extraordinary vigour: at that time 320 workmen were employed in the house; now it has only one hundred and fifty in winter. There are now eighteen to twenty combers doing twenty pound of hemp a day, for which they are paid 8 liv. the quintal; in the war there were forty of them; three hundred and sixty pound of hemp per diem is therefore the amount of the fabric. All hemp used is raised on the banks of the Garonne, and spun in the country at the rate of 7s. the pound for the best thread. We viewed an apartment with eighty-four looms (they have one hundred and sixty in the house) that make eleven sorts of sail-cloth for the royal navy, in general of twenty-two or twenty-four inches broad; the first is sold at 44s. the auln, the second at 48; to prepare the hemp for combing, they grind it under a cylindrical stone in a sort of cistern; it is then divided into two sorts for sails, and into a third for ropes. They have many stone cisterns for bleaching one hundred and fifty quintals of thread at a time, of which one man does the whole work by means of pumping the lixivium at once from the copper into all the cisterns. The weavers are paid 51⁄2s. the auln on an average.

Besides this fabric of hemp they have one of cotton, which is stopped at present; one of printed linens, which is brisk, and another of serges and other woollen stuffs, which is carried on by private weavers in their own houses.

CHATEAURAULT..... They have a manufacture of cutlery here, in which there is one circumstance that appears rather singular, which is the fabric being carried on with success almost without a division of labour. Every house in several streets is a cutler's shop, with its little forge, tools, grinding-wheel, &c. and the man, with the assistance of his wife and children, makes knives, scissors, &c. &c. executing the whole process himself, which in a large fabric goes through so many hands. As a foreigner I paid more than the fair price for the specimens I bought, yet they were very cheap, vastly cheaper than I could have believed possible with a manufacture carried on in contradiction to a principle which I had erroneously conceived to be essential to cheapness; they make nails also. Fuel is no where cheap in France (unless it be in the forest of the Lyonnois) yet here are hundreds of little forges burning, to execute what one would perform at a third of the expence.

TOURS..... The principal manufacture in this city is that of silk; they make flowered damasks and plain stuffs; there is a large building called the Manufacture Royale, in which many workmen were once employed, but none at present, as it is found more advantageous to give the silk to the workmen, in order for their weaving it at their own houses, which seems an experiment that ascertains the benefit of these expensive establishments; the whole fabric has however declined exceedingly, and is at present at a very low ebb; nor are the men assured of constant employment, which is the worst circumstance that can attend any fabric. Prices of weaving vary of course with the patterns of flowered silks; one which I saw working, a very full pattern, was paid for at the rate of 7 liv. the auln, the price of the silk 38 liv. the auln, and to make the auln, employed the man, his assistant, and his wife, two days, which earnings may be divided into 40s. a-day for the weaver, 20s. for his assistant, and 10s. for his wife, whose business was only to adjust the chain; the breadth of an auln; the workmanship of this silk is therefore between and of the gross value. I saw others working plain silks, in which the women weavers earned 18 to 24s. a day, and men 30s. They have also a fabric of ribbons, of which I bought specimens, but they are beyond comparison dearer than the ribbons of Coventry. We were told that silk at Tours employed two thousand people, but I believe the number is much exaggerated.

They have some woollen fabrics of no great account.

They have also, as at Chateaurault, many cutlers, who make knives and scissors of a higher price and much better; the specimens I bought appear to be cheap. Nails are an article also which gives employment here; I found that a middling hand would make about one thousand per diem, for which number he was paid 25s. It is to be noted, that a day's work in all fabrics means fifteen or sixteen hours (except the time taken for meals) common labourer 10s. and food.

The woollen manufacture of common stuffs is, by some accounts given us, more considerable than that of silk.

• AMBOISE.....There is a fabric of steel established here by the duke de Choiseul; in it are made axes, hoes, files, &c. They say that two hundred men are employed, but I saw no signs of more than one hundred; they work with charcoal, and also with coals from the vicinity of Nantes. They have also a small manufacture of buttons, another of woollen cloth for clothing the troops, which, however, did not take root; there is at present one of coarse woollen stuffs, for the use of the lower people: these fabrics shew how fostering and powerful is the hand of a prime minister, in fixing what without him would never be fixed at all; had this duke continued in power, Amboise would soon have become a considerable city.

BLOIS..... A fabric of very beautiful gloves, which employs about twenty-five hands ; here is also the same cutlery as at Tours and Chateaurault; and they make liquorice cakes for coughs, &c. as at Pontefract.

BEAUVAIS..... This is one of the manufacturing towns of France that seems the most brisk and active in business. I viewed the tapestry fabric, of which I had seen some fine specimens in the palace at Fontainbleau; their finest works are in silk as well as in worsted; they employ one hundred and fifty hands, and have another fabric connected with this in La Marche.

I viewed the calico printing-house of Messrs. Garnierdans and Co. which is upon such a scale as to employ six hundred hands constantly; there is no difference between this fabric and similar ones in England, and all the patterns I saw were very common, seeming not to aim so much at elegance or nicety of execution, as at the dispatch of a large undertaking, yet Paris is their principal demand; they print a great quantity of Indian calicoes; their madder is from Alsace. There are three other manufactures in the town, and all four employ about one thousand eight hundred hands; but the chief fabric is the woollen, which employs seven or eight thousand hands in the town and the adjacent country. They make, under various denominations, coarse stuffs for the clothing of the country people, for men's jackets and women's petticoats, &c. a truly useful and important fabric, which works only French wool, and in general that of the country. There are also stocking engines at work.

ST. GOBIN.....The fabric of plate glass here is by far the greatest and most celebrated in Europe; the inclosure is great, and the buildings are on a vast scale; one thousand eight hundred men are employed on the works, and in the provision, &c. of wood.