and destroy their healths, and all this upon a pretended principle of religion and devotion, seems to me, I confess, great ingratitude to God the author of it.

Indeed I heartily pitied F. P. an industrious honest man, after his return from the Indies, who was nothing but skin and bone; and yet by the rules of his order he could not eat any thing that was wholesome and proper for his cure; nothing but a little slimy nasty fish and herbs: and though he took, as he told me, hypocochoana five times, it had no effect upon him. It is true, I never heard him complain; but what will not blind prejudice do against all the reason of mankind!

I know some of these men have been useful to mankind by their studies; but the very same men would have been much more, had they staid with their neighbours, and taught the world by their conversation and example; wisdom, and justice, and innocence, and temperance, which they highly pretend to, are not things to be hid in corners, but to be brought forth to instruct and adorn the age we live in: to abandon the world, and all the conveniences of life and health, is (let them say what they please) the height of chagrin, and not religion.

There were some other public libraries I saw, as that of the Grand Augustins, College Mazarin, College Navarre, and a great many more I did not see for want of an opportunity; but there is nothing particular I remember about them.

There is such a passion of setting up for libraries, that books are come to most unreasonable rates.

I paid to Anisson thirty-six livres for Nizoleus; twenty livres for the two small quartos of the memoirs of the Academie de Sciences, that is, as I may say, for two years philosophic transaction; for they began those monthly memoirs in imitation of ours, out of the registers of the academy, but did not think fit to continue them above two years.

As to stamps, I had a mind to have bought a complete set of Melans, that incomparable master; but I was asked 200 livres, and twelve excepted, which might amount to as much more; for some of his gravings in octavo done at Rome, they asked me a pistole a-piece; and for the head of Justinianus a louis; which yet is his master-piece.

I was at an auction of books in the Rue St. Jaques, where were about forty or fifty people, most abbots and monks. The books were sold with a great deal of trifling and delay as with us, and very dear; for Hispania illustrata Aud. Sciotti, of the Frankfort edition, from twenty livres, at which it was set, they bid up by little and little to thirty-six livres; at which it was sold. The next was a catalogue of French books in thin fol. in an old parchment cover by De la Croix de Maine, eight livres. And so I left them to shift it amongst themselves.

After having said so much of the public libraries, I cannot but congratulate their happiness, to have them so well secured from fire; it being one of the perfections of this city to be so built and furnished, as not to have suffered by it these many ages; and, indeed, I cannot see how malice itself could destroy them, for the houses here are all built of stone, walls, floors, staircases and all, some few rooms excepted; no wain. scpt; woollen or silk hangings, which cannot be fired without giving notice by the intolerable stench, and the supply of much fuel. It is well for us in London, that there are very few public libraries, and those small and inconsiderable, and that the great number of books are distributed into a thousand hands (no country in Europe can compare to us for private libraries) for if they were together in such vast quantities as in Paris, learning would run the hazard of daily suffering. Here with us, methinks, every man that goes to bed, when asleep, lies like a dead Roman upon a funeral pile, dreading

some unexpected apotheosis; for all is combustible about him, and the paint of the deal boards may serve for incense, the quicker to burn them to ashes.

In the next place I will account for what I saw, that seemed to me singular and new in the improvement of arts, or wanting in our country.

I saw the pottery of St. Cloud, with which I was marvellously well pleased, for I confess I could not distinguish betwixt the pots made there, and the finest China ware I ever saw. It will, I know, be easily granted me, that the paintings may be better designed and finished (as indeed it was) because our men are far better masters in that art than the Chinese; but the glazing came not in the least behind theirs, not for whiteness, nor the smoothness of running without bubbles; again, the inward substance and matter of the pots was to me the very same, hard and firm as marble, and the self same grain, on this side vitrification. Farther, the transparency of the pots the very

same.

I saw them also in the mould, undried, and before the painting and glazing was applied, they were as white as chalk, and melted upon the tongue like raw tobacco-pipe clay, and felt betwixt the teeth soft like that, and very little gritty; so that I doubt not but they are made of that very clay.

As to the temper of the clay, the man freely owned to me, it was three or four times well beaten and wet, before it was put to work on the wheel; but I believe it must first be melted in fair water, and carefully drawn off, that the heaviest part may first sink; which also may be proper for coarser works.

That it required two, and sometimes three or four fires to bake it, to that height we saw it in the most finished pots; nay some of them had had 11 fires.

I did not expect to have found it in this perfection, but imagined this might have arrived at the Gomron ware; which is indeed little else but a total vitrification; but I found it far otherwise, and very surprising, and which I account part of the felicity of the age to equal, if not surpass, the Chinese in their finest art.

As for the red ware of China, that has been, and is done in England, to a far greater perfection than in China, we having as good materials, viz. the soft hæmatites, and far better artists in pottery. But in this particular we are beholden to two Dutchmen, brothers, who wrought in Staffordshire (as I have been told) and were not long since at

Hammersmith.

They sold these pots at St. Cloud at excessive rates; and for their ordinary chocolate cups asked crowns apiece. They had arrived at the burning on gold in neat chequer works. He had sold some furnitures of tea tables at 400 livres a set.

There was no moulding or model of China ware, which they had not imitated; and had added many fancies of their own, which had their good effects, and appeared very beautiful.

Monsieur Morin in conversation told me, that they kept their sand as a secret to themselves; but this could not be for other purposes than colouring; also he said they used salt of kelp in the composition, and made a thing not unlike frit for glass, to be wrought up with white clay; neither could this be, for I did not taste it in the raw pots.

The ingenious master told me, he had been twenty-five years about the experiment, but had not attained it fully till within these three years. I and other gentlemen brought over of these pots with us.

The glass-house out of the gate of St. Antoine well deserves seeing; but I did lament the foundery was no longer there, but removed to Cherborne in Normandy for cheapness of fuel. It is certainly a most considerable addition to the glass-making. For I saw here one looking-glass foiled and finished, eighty-eight inches long, and forty-eight broad, and yet but one quarter of an inch thick. This I think could never be effected by the blast of any man; but I suppose to be run or cast upon sand, as lead is; which yet, I confess, the toughness of glass metal makes very much against.

There they are polished: which employs daily six hundred men, and they hope in a little time to employ one thousand in several galleries. In the lower they grind the coarse glass with a sand-stone, the very same they pave the streets in Paris; of which broken they have great heaps in the courts of the work-houses: this stone is beat to powder, and sifted through a fine tamis. In the upper gallery, where they polish and give the last hand, they work in three rows, and two men at a plate, with ruddle or powdered hæmatites in water.

The glasses are set fast in white putty, upon flat tables of stone, sawed thin for that purpose. The grinding of the edges and borders is very troublesome, and odious for the horrid grating noise it makes, and which cannot be endured to one that is not used to it; and yet by long custom these fellows are so easy with it, that they discourse together as though nothing were. This is done below, and out of the way of the

rest.

It is very diverting to see the joint labour of so many men upon one subject. This has made glass for coaches very cheap and common; so that even many of the fiacres or hackneys, and all the remises have one large glass before.

Amongst the bioux made at Paris, a great quantity of artificial pearl is to be had, of divers sorts; but the best are those which are made of the scales of bleaks. These bleaks they fish in the river Seine at Paris, and sell them to the pearl-makers for that purpose.

Monsieur Favi, at the Pearl d'Angleterre, told me, that he paid for the fish only of the little river Yier of Ville Neuve St. George, four leagues off of Paris, by the year 110 pistoles. This fish in French is called de la Bellette; sometimes in winter he has had thirty hampers of the fish brought him, for the scales only, which he uses in pearlmaking. He sells some strings for a pistole ; and they have formerly been sold much dearer. This sort is very neat and lasting.

Inquiring of a goldsmith, a great dealer in pearl, about those which were made of the scales of fishes, he told me that it was so; that the scales were beat to powder, and that made into a liquid paste with ising-glass, and cast into the hollow glass beads, and so gave the colour by way of foil from the inside.

I asked him if he had any fresh-water and muscle pearl; and he forthwith shewed me one of twenty-three grains, of a bluish colour or faint carnation, perfectly globular; he told me, he valued it at 4001. for that it would mix or match better with the oriental sea pearl, than the bluish ones. Further, he assured me, he had seen pearl of sixty odd grains of fresh-water muscles; and some pear-fashioned. That in Lorrain, and at Sedan, they fished many pearls in the rivers thereabout.

The formerly so famous a work-house, the Goblins, is miserably fallen to decay; perhaps because the king, having furnished all his palaces, has little more to do for

them.

Here I saw the making marble tables, inlaid with all sorts of coloured stones.

Also the Atteliers or work-houses of two of the famous sculptors Tuby; in which was a Lacoon copied in white marble admirably; also that other of Quoisivox, in which was, amongst other rare pieces, Castor and Pollux, in white marble, exceedingly beautiful and large; a copy also of the antique.

VOL. IV.

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At Hubin's, the eye-maker, I saw drawers full of all sorts of eyes, admirable for the contrivance, to match with great exactness any Iris whatsoever; this being a case where mis-matching is intolerable.

He himself also formerly wrought in false pearl, and affirmed, that the glass pearls were painted within with a paste made of the scales of the bleak only; which he said was a good trade here to the fishermen, who sold the scales for so much the ounce. These necklaces were formerly sold at great prices, two or three pistols a-piece.

I saw the platrerie, or plaster quarries near Montmartre, and the manner of burning of it. It is burnt with open fire set up against it; the hardest stone is burnt enough in two or three hours' time.

The top band or bed is very hard like a free-stone: they distinguish the beds by several names, i. e. 1. Mutton, 2. Lane, 3. Buzier, 4. Clikar, 5. Grosban, 6. Pilliernoir, &c.

That which they call Lane is like Talk, or Selenites transparent, and splits in thin flakes; but there is but little of it, and the beds are small; this seems to be but a fluor to the greater beds of gray-stone. This rock is covered with a kind of gray sand to a great depth; which is not of the nature of plaster.

Though this plaster burnt is never used (that I could learn) to fertilize either cornground or pasture, as our lime-stone is; yet I see no reason why it may not, it being full of nitre, if it has lain long in damp caves.

This is not peculiar to Paris only for I have seen quarries of it near Clifford-Moore in Yorkshire; where it is called hall-plaster.

I cannot omit the mill-stones, which they grind their wheat with at Paris, as upon the river of the Gobelins, out of the gate St. Bernard, where it falls into the Seine, and all throughout Picardy down to Calais, where I have seen great numbers of them.

These mill-stones are very useful, and so sweet, that not the least grit is ever found in their bread: they are mostly made up of pieces, two, three, or more set together by a cement, and hooped round with iron to keep the pieces fast together. They are made of a kind of honey-comb stone, wrought by the petrifaction of water, or stalactites. The very self-same stone I have seen rocks of on the river banks at Knaresborough, at the dropping-well in Yorkshire; therefore I advise my countrymen to put these excellent stones in practice; for certainly no place stands in more need of it; for the bread in the north of England is intolerably gritty, by reason of those sand or moor stones with which they grind their corn.

formed.

These stones are sold at 500 livres a pair; whence they come I forgot to be inIn the next place, we will see how the Parisians eat, drink, and divert themselves.

OF THE FOOD OF THE PARISIANS.

The diet of the Parisians consists chiefly of bread and herbs; it is here as with us, finer and coarser. But the common bread, or pain de gonesse, which is brought twice a week into Paris from a village so called, is purely white, and firm, and light, and made altogether with leaven; mostly in three pound loaves, and 3d. a pound. That which is baked in Paris is coarser and much worse.

As for the fine manchet, or French bread, as we call it, I cannot much commend it ; it is of late, since the quantity of beer that is brewed in Paris, often so bitter, that it is not to be eaten, and we far exceed them now in this particular in London.

The gray salt of France (which there at table is altogether in every thing made use of) is incomparably better and more wholesome, than our white salt. This I the rather mention, because it seems not yet to enter fully into the consideration and knowledge of our people; who are nice in this particular to a fault. But I must take leave to tell them, that our salt spoils every thing that is intended to be preserved by it, be it fish or flesh. For whether boild from the inland salt-pits, or the sea water, it is little less than quicklime, and burns and reeses all it touches; so that it is pity to see so much good fish, as is caught upon the northern line of coast, particularly the cod and ling, and herring, now of little value, which were formerly the most esteemed commodities of England. It is certain, there is no making good salt by fierce and vehement boiling, as is usual; but it must be kerned either by the heat of the sun, as in France; or by a full and over-weighty brine, as at Milthrope in the Washes of Lancashire; for in no other place in England I ever saw it right made; but yet that is not there understood to purpose; for they also boil the brine, which possibly by some slight artifice might be brought to give its salt without stress of fire.

In lent the common people feed much on white kidney beans, and white or pale lentils, of which there are great provisions made in all the markets, and to be had ready boiled. I was well pleased with this lentil; which is a sort of pulse we have none of in England. There are two sorts of white lentils sold here, one small one from Burgundy, by the cut of Briare; and another bigger, as broad again, from Chartres; a third also much larger, is sometimes to be had from Languedoc. Those excepted, our seed shops far exceed theirs, and consequently our gardens, in the pulse-kind for variety; both pea and bean.

The roots differ much from ours. There are here no round turnips, but all long ones and small; but excellently well tasted, and are of a much greater use, being proper for soups also; for which purpose ours are too strong: we have indeed of late got them into England; but our gardeners understand not the managing of them. They sow them here late after midsummer; and at martinmas or sooner, before the frost begin, they dig them up, cut off the tops, and put them into sand in their cellars, where they will keep good till after Easter, nay till Whitsuntide; whereas, if the frost take them, they are quite spoiled; and that piece of ill husbandry makes them to be despised here; having lost their taste, and they soon grow sticky in the ground. The sandy plains of Vaugerard near Paris are famous for this sort of most excellent root. After the same manner they keep their carrots.

After we had been two or three days' journey in France, we found no other turnips, but the navet; and still the nearer Paris the better. These as I said, are small long turnips, not bigger than a knife-haft, and most excellent in soups, and with boiled and stewed mutton. I think it very strange that the seed should so much improve in England, as to produce roots of the same kind six or ten times as big as there; for I make no question but the long turnips, of late only in our markets, are the same.

The potatoe is scarce to be found in their markets, which are so great a relief to the people of England, and very nourishing and wholesome roots; but there are stores of Jerusalem artichokes.

They delight not so much in cabbage as I expected, at least at the season, while we were there, from December to Midsummer. I never saw in all the markets once sprouts, that is, the tender shoots of cabbages; nor in their public gardens any reserves of old stalks. The red cabbage is esteemed here, and the savoy.

But to make amends for this, they abound in vast quantities of large red onions and garlick. And the long and sweet white onion of Languedoc are to be had also here. Also leeks, rockhamboy, and shallots are here in great use.

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