husbandry, paring and burning. I suspect, however, that his homme d'affaire will be too potent for the English traveller. I hope he has received the turnip-seed I sent him. Dine at Viviers, and pass the Rhone. After the wretched inns of the Vivarias, dirt, filth, bugs, and starving, to arrive at the hotel de Monsieur, at Montilimart, a great and excellent inn, was something like the arrival in France from Spain: the contrast is striking; and I seemed to hug myself, that I was again in a christian country, among the Milors Ninchitreas, and my Ladi Bettis, of Mons. Chabot. 23 miles.

The 22d. Having a letter to Mons. Faujas de St. Fond, the celebrated naturalist, who has favoured the world with many important works on volcanoes, aerostation, and various other branches of natural history, I had the satisfaction, on inquiring, to find, that he was at Montilimart; and, waiting on him, perceived that a man of distinguished merit was handsomely lodged, with every thing about him that indicated an easy fortune. He received me with the frank politeness inherent in his character; introduced me, on the spot, to a Mons. l'abbe Berenger, who resided near his country-seat, and was, he said, an excellent cultivator; and likewise to another gentleman, whose taste had taken the same good direction. In the evening Mons. Faujas took me to call on a female friend, who was engaged in the same inquiries, madame Cheinet, whose husband is a member of the national assembly; if he have the good luck to find at Versailles some other lady as agreeable as her he has left at Montilimart, his mission will not be a barren one; and he may perhaps be better employed than in voting regenerations. This lady accompanied us in a walk for viewing the environs of Montilimart; and it gave me no small pleasure to find, that she was an excellent farmeress, practises considerably, and had the goodness to answer many of my inquiries, particularly in the culture of silk. I was so charmed with the naivete of character, and pleasing conversation of this very agreeable lady, that a longer stay here would have been delicious; but the plough!

The 23d. By appointment accompanied Mons. Faujas to his country seat and farm at l'Oriol, fifteen miles north of Montilimart, where he is building a good house. I was pleased to find his farm to amount to two hundred and eighty septeres of land: I should have liked it better, had it not been in the hands of a metayer. Mons. Faujas pleases me much; the liveliness, vivacity, phlogiston of his character, do not run into pertness, foppery, or affectation; he adheres steadily to a subject; and shews, that to clear up any dubious point, by the attrition of different ideas in conversation, gives him pleasure; not through a vain fluency of colloquial powers, but for better understanding a subject. Mons. abbe Berenger, and another gentleman, passed the next day at Mons. Faujas': we walked to the abbe's farm. He is of the good order of beings, and pleases me much; cure of the parish, and president of the permanent council. He is at present warm on a project of re-uniting the protestants to the church; spoke, with great pleasure, of having persuaded them, on occasion of the general thanksgiving for the establishment of liberty, to return thanks to God, and sing the Te Deum in the catholic church, in common, as brethren, which, from confidence in his character, they did. He is firmly persuaded, that, by both parties giving way a little, and softening or retrenching reciprocally somewhat in points that are disagreeable, they may be brought together. The idea is so liberal, that I question it for the multitude, who are never governed by reason, but by trifies and ceremonies; and who are usually attached to their religion, in proportion to the absurdities it abounds with. I have not the least doubt but the mob in England would be much mare scandalized at parting with the creed of St. Athanasius, than the whole bench of bishops, whose illumination would perhaps reflect correctly that of the throne. Mons. l'abbe Berenger has prepared a memorial, which is ready to be presented to the national assembly, proposing and explaining this ideal union of the two religions; and he had the plan of adding a clause, proposing that the clergy should have permission to marry. He was convinced that it would be for the interest of morals, and much for that of the nation, that the clergy should not be an insulated body, but holding by the same interests and connections as other people. He remarked, that the life of a cure, and especially in the country, is melancholy; and, knowing my passion, observed, that a man could never be so good a farmer, on any possession he might have, excluded from being succeeded by his children. He shewed me his memoir, and I was pleased to find that there is at present great harmony between the two religions, which must be ascribed certainly to such good cures. The number of protestants is very considerable in this neighbourhood. I strenuously contended for the insertion of the clause respecting marriage; assured him, that at such a moment as this, it would do all who were concerned in this memorial the greatest credit; and that they ought to consider it as a demand of the rights of humanity, violently, injuriously, and relative to the nation, impolitically with-held. Yester day, in going with Mons. Faujas, we passed a congregation of protestants, assembled, Druid like, under five or six spreading oaks, to offer their thanksgiving to the great Parent of their happiness and hope. In such a climate as this, is it not a worthier temple, built by the great hand they revere, than one of brick and mortar? This was one of the richest days I have enjoyed in France; we had a long and truly farming dinner; drank a l'Anglois success to the plough; and had so much agricultural conversation, that I wished for my farming friends in Suffolk to partake of my satisfaction. If Mons. Faujas de St. Fond come to England, as he gives me hopes, I shall introduce him to them with pleasure. In the evening return to Montilimart. 30 miles.

The 25th. To Chateau Rochemaur, across the Rhone. It is situated on a basaltic rock, nearly perpendicular, with every columnal proof of its volcanic origin. See Mons. Faujas's Recherches. In the afternoon to Piere Latte, through a country steril, uninteresting, and far inferior to the environs of Montilimart. 22 miles.

The 26th. To Orange, the country not much better; a range of mountains to the left: see nothing of the Rhone. At that town there are remains of a large Roman building, seventy or eighty feet high, called a circus, of a triumphal arch, which, though a good deal decayed, manifests, in its remains, no ordinary decoration, and a pavement in the house of a poor person, which is very perfect and beautiful, but much inferior to that of Nismes. The vent de bize has blown strongly for several days, with a clear sky, tempering the heats, which are sometimes sultry and oppressive; it may, for what I know, be wholesome to French constitutions, but it is dreadful to mine; I found my. self very indifferent, and, as if I were going to be ill, a new and unusual sensation over my whole body: never dreaming of the wind, I knew not what to attribute it to, but my complaint coming at the same time, puts it out of doubt; besides, instinct now, much more than reason, makes me guard as much as I can against it. At four or five in the morning it is so cold that no traveller ventures out. It is more penetratingly drying than I had any conception of; other winds stop the cutaneous perspiration: but this piercing through the body seems, by its sensation, to dry up all the interior humidity. 20 miles.

The 27th. To Avignon. Whether it were because I had read much of this town in the history of the middle ages, or because it had been the residence of the popes, or more probably from the still more interesting memoirs which Petrarch has left concerning it, in poems that will last as long as Italian elegance and human feelings shall exist, I know not, but I approached the place with a sort of interest, attention, and expect

ancy, that few towns have kindled. Laura's tomb is in the church of the Cordeliers; it is nothing but a stone in the pavement, with a figure engraven on it partly effaced, surrounded by an inscription in Gothic letters, and another in the wall adjoining, with the armorial of the family of Sade. How incredible is the power of great talents, when employed in delineating passions common to the human race! How many millions of women, fair as Laura, have been beloved as tenderly, but wanting a Petrarch to illus trate the passion, have lived and died in oblivion! whilst his lines, not written to die, conduct thousands under the impulse of feelings, which genius only can excite, to mingle in idea their melancholy sighs with those of the poet who consecrated these remains to immortality! There is a monument of the brave Crillon in the same church; and I saw other churches and pictures, but Petrarch and Laura are predominant at Avignon. 19 miles.

The 28th. Wait upon Pere Brouillony, provincial visitor, who, with great politeness, procured me the information I wished, by introducing me to some gentlemen conversant in agriculture. From the rock of the legate's palace, there is one of the finest views of the windings of the Rhone that is to be seen: it forms two considerable islands, which with the rest of the plain, richly watered, cultivated, and covered with mulberries, olives, and fruit-trees, hath an interesting boundary in the mountains of Provence, Dauphine and Languedoc. The circular road fine. I was struck with the resemblance between the women here and in England. It did not at once occur in what it consisted; but it is their caps; they dress their heads quite different from the French women. A better particularity, is there being no wooden shoes here, nor, as I have seen in Provence.* I have often complained of the stupid ignorance I met with at tables d'hotes. Here, if possible, it has been worse than common. The politeness of the French is proverbial, but it never could arise from the manners of the classes that frequent these tables. Not one time in forty will a foreigner, as such, receive the least mark of attention. The only political idea here is, that if the English should attack France, they have a million of men in arms to receive them; and their ignorance seems to know no distinction between men in arms in their towns and villages, or in action without the kingdom. They conceive, as Sterne observes, much better than they combine: I put some questions to them, but in vain : I asked, if the union of a rusty firelock and a Burgeois made a soldier? I asked them in which of their wars they had wanted men ? I demanded, whether they had ever felt any other want than that of money? and whether the conversion of a million of men into the bearers of musquets would make money more plentiful? I asked if personal service were not a tax? And whether paying the tax of the service of a million of men increased their faculties of paying other and more useful taxes? I begged them to inform me, if the regeneration of the kingdom, which had put arms in the hands of a million of mob, had rendered industry more productive, internal peace more secure, confidence more enlarged, or credit more stable? And lastly, I assured them, that should the English attack them at present, they would probably make the weakest figure they had done from the foundation of their monarchy: but, gentlemen, the English, in spite of the example you set them in the American war, will disdain sucha conduct; they regret the constitution you are forming, because they think it a bad one, but whatever you may establish, you will have no interruption, but many good wishes from your neighbour. It was all in vain ;

* We were, like you, struck with the resemblance of the women at Avignon to those of England, but not for the reason you give; it appeared to us to originate from their complexions being naturally so much better than that of the other French women, more than their head-dress, which differs as much from ours as it does from the French. "Note by a female friend."