The country was not without resources, but its revenues did not enrich the tiller of the soil. From early times the white wines of the Jura were celebrated throughout France. "I have some wine of Arbois in my cellar," wrote the gay Gascon, Henry IV., to the Duke de Mayenne on their reconciliation, "and I send you two bottles which I think you will not dislike."

The pretty little town of Arbois is worth visiting, not only for the sake of tasting its matchless wine, but also for its scenerythe valley of the Cuisance is indeed a corner of Eden. The soil is poor and the land minutely subdivided in the Jura, yet the condition of the peasant is now one of comparative ease and entire independence. Both morally and intellectually these mountaineers rank high among the rural population of France. An excellent notion of the mental capacities of the small land-owners may be obtained by attending a sitting of the Juge de Paix. The skill and readiness with which they state their cause and act the part of their own advocate are remarkable. For the most part the quarrels among neighbours arise from contested boundaries; the judge, after patiently hearing both sides of the question, settles matters for once and for all by visiting the spot, and in person fixing the landmarks.

The villages of the Doubs, especially Ornans, home of the painter Courbet, so picturesquely placed, are also active centres of industry: kirsch, fabricated from cherries of local renown, absinthe, tiles, nails, wire, are largely manufactured, to say nothing of the Gruyère cheese, the staple product of Franche Comté. The Revolution in a few years metamorphosed entire regions. From this period dates the famous watch-making commerce of Besançon. Introduced by the Convention in 1793, it is now carried on so extensively that out of every hundred watches manufactured in France, eighty-six come from the chef-lieu of the Doubs. In 1880 the number of hands thus employed reached a total of 46,000. The Bisontin watchmaker often works on his own account; and here, as at Châteauroux in the Indre, is witnessed a striking example of thrift among the artizan class. Many of these working watchmakers contrive by dint of extreme laboriousness and economy to purchase a vineyard or garden in the suburbs. They build a summer-house, or

even châlet, and with wives and children there spend Sundays and holidays amid their fruit and flowers.

From Franche Comté our traveller reaches Burgundy and the Bourbonnais. In the neighbourhood of Autun (Saône and Loire) he tells us that he looked for fat farmers, and found only starving métayers. The department is neither pre-eminent in the matter of agriculture nor of social advance, yet it is a sight now-a-days to see "the fat farmers" at the September fair of Autun. From early morning they pour into the town, some in gigs or hooded carriages, with wife and children, others on foot, and the greater number driving their cattle-the splendid white oxen known as the Morvan breed. These peasant farmers wear under the blue blouse shining broad cloth, and betake themselves at midday to the first hotel in the place, there to enjoy the table d'hôte breakfast; but no sooner is business over, without losing a moment, untempted by fireworks and other entertainments, all set off homewards. Such experiences enable us to understand the stability and solid wealth of the French farmer. He is not above work, and does not disdain the uniform of labour.

The same strict attention to daily concerns is seen on the occasion of a general election. Just before attending one of these cattle fairs of Autun I happened to be staying at St. Honoré-les-Bains, in the adjoining department of the Nièvre, when an election took place. The peasant farmers, although the day was Sunday, performed their electoral duties with the utmost despatch, and returned to their homes.

Much of the scenery of this part of France has an English look. We see fields set round with lofty hedges, winding lanes, sweeps of gorse and heather, alternately recalling Devonshire and Sussex. Here are found tenant farms, large properties cultivated by their owners, small holdings parcelled out among the peasants and métairies.

It was inevitable that a traveller in Arthur Young's time should miss many objects of striking interest on the way. The first itineraries of France seem to have been inspired by the Englishman's example-I allude to the voluminous works of Millin and Vaysse de Villiers published in the early part of the present century; the departmental system had not as yet created a French map, or, in the strict acceptance of the word, French

geography. Archæology was a dead letter, and very little interest was felt, even by educated people, in the scenery or curiosities of their native land. Thus he halted at Auray, and there was no one to point out the great stone avenues of Carnac and the dolmens of Locmariaker; he passed through Alsace, ignoring the famous shrine and grandiose site of St. Odille, extolled by Goethe in his poetic reminiscences. Arrived at Autun, he was within easy reach of Avallon, so nobly towering over the beautiful valley of the Cousin, and of the abbey church of Vézelay, unique in splendour and of unique renown. Here, too, he was on the threshold of the little Celtic kingdom of the Morvan, where village communism, as existing among patriarchal tribes, remained in force till our own day, and where the stalwart husbandman still throws over his shoulder the Gallic sagum, or short cloak, worn by the contemporaries of Vercingetorix. The last village commune was broken up in 1848. The inhabitants of this most picturesque, but unproductive, country depend largely on industrial earnings, many migrating to Paris and other towns, and there pursuing various trades during part of the year. The curious "flottage à bûches perdues," or floating of loose logs, a speciality of the Morvan, gives work to thousands of men, women, and children at certain seasons.

A wretched village occupied the site of the world-famous ironfoundries of Le Creusot, when Arthur Young journeyed from Autun to Nevers in 1789. These works, now covering a superficies of three hundred acres, and employing ten thousand hands, have developed into a town almost tripling the respective populations of the above-mentioned towns, chefs-lieux of the Saône and Loire and the Nièvre.

From "the mild, healthy, and pleasant plains of the Bourbonnais," he passed into Auvergne, obtaining a glimpse of "the rich Limagne," of which Mr. Barham Zincke has given us an exhaustive account. The Velay is rapidly traversed, and the château of Polignac visited, already deserted by its owners, the thankless protégés of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. From its ruined battlements and prison towers, the tourist now beholds a heart-quickening scene of rural ease and smiling fertility; far and wide the beautifully cultivated plain, with its varied crops, not one inch of land wasted, the whole forming a brilliant patchwork of green fields and yellow corn, whilst dotted here

and there are neat little homesteads and pasturing flocks and herds.

From Le Puy, chef-lieu of the Haute-Loire, in spite of wretched inns and troublous times, Montélimar on the Rhône is reached, at that time belonging to Dauphiné, in our own, cheflieu of the Drôme. Here he describes "mountains covered with chestnuts and various articles of cultivation, which in districts not waste or volcanic, are waste, or in a great measure useless." Until the ravages of the phylloxera, the choicer vineyards of the Drôme sold at the rate of 60,000 francs the hectare; but the manufactures of Crest and Romans now constitute the chief wealth of this department.

Next he visits Avignon and the country of Venaissin, described as 66 one of the richest districts in the kingdom," and followed by a picture of Vaucluse no traveller has as yet surpassed. It was not till two years later, be it remembered, that the Papal state of Avignon and the little Comté Venaissin were incorporated into French territory at the request of the inhabitants, forming, with the principality of Orange and a portion of Provence, the department of Vaucluse. The supersession of madder by chemical dyes, and the phylloxera have of late years greatly diminished the revenues of this wealthy region, which, if visited in summer, almost persuades the stranger that he is in the East. Nothing can be more Oriental than the veteran figtrees, the peach orchards, the olive groves, all veiled with finest white dust beneath a burning blue sky.

Here may be said to end Arthur Young's survey of France on the eve of the Revolution, an enterprise altogether original, and carried out under extraordinary circumstances. We need not feel astonishment at the great popularity enjoyed by his work on the other side of the Channel. Whilst many fairly educated English folk have never so much as heard the author's name, it is familiar to every schoolboy in France. The Suffolk squire's scathing summing-up of the ancien régime, "Whenever you stumble upon a grand seigneur, even one that is worth millions, you are sure to find his property desert," is cited in the elementary histories for public schools approved by the minister of education. Whilst, moreover, English students have been hitherto compelled to resort to the British Museum or wait long and patiently for an expensive copy of these Travels to

turn up at a secondhand bookseller's, unabridged edition after edition has appeared in Paris.1

Arthur Young did not hesitate to tell his French readers some blunt home-truths, apparently taken in excellent temper; his journal must be described, for all that, as one long, graceful acknowledgment of courtesies and hospitalities, recorded in an age when anything like international friendship was rare indeed.

The book has greater claims upon French sympathy. In spite of certain reservations, it is a vindication of peasant property and the Revolution, the two cardinal points of French belief. From the first page to the last, he sets down the abject wretchedness of the people and the stagnant condition of trade and commerce to bad government. But another adage of our "wise and honest traveller," his famous axiom, "The magic of property turns sands to gold," equally with improved administration, must account for the contrasted picture that now meets our view. By the light of after-events he was led to modify his ideas concerning the establishment of a democracy in France. But he had already given his experiences to the world; he could not undo the effect of his published work, and the observations summed up in his final chapter, to quote a great living critic, were a luminous criticism of the most important side of the Revolution, worth a hundred times more than Burke, Paine, and Macintosh all put together. Young afterwards became panic-stricken, but his book remained. There the writer enumerates without trope or invective the intolerable burdens under which the great mass of the French people had for long years been groaning. It was the removal of those burdens that made the very heart's core of the Revolution, and gave to France that new life which so soon astonished and terrified Europe.'

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Into Arthur Young's services to agriculture we have no space

1 Twenty thousand copies were printed by order of the Convention, and distributed gratuitously in every commune. "Ce que," dit le Ministre de l'Intérieur, Garat, "contribua rapidement et sensiblement à métamorphoser les cailloux des collines en vignes fécondes, et les plaines abandonnées à la tourte en gros pâturages."-Garat, Mémoires, sur la Révolution, Paris, 1794.

Burke," by John Morley ("English Men of Letters "), p. 162.