and even, upon the whole, dearer than in England. Being in a post-chaise I travelled to Paris, as other travellers in post-chaises do, knowing little or nothing. The last ten miles I was eagerly on the watch for that throng of carriages which near London impede the traveller. I watched in vain; for the road, quite to the gates, is, on comparison, a perfect desert. So many great roads join here, that I suppose this must be accidental. The entrance has nothing magnificent; ill built and dirty. To get to the Rue de Varenne Faubourg St. Germain, I had the whole city to cross, and passed it by narrow, ugly, and crouded streets.

At the hotel de la Rochefoucauld I found the Duke of Liancourt1 and his sons, the Count de la Rochefoucauld, and the Count Alexander, with my excellent friend Monsieur de Lazowski, all of whom I had the pleasure of knowing in Suffolk. They introduced me to the Duchess d'Estissac, mother of the Duke of Liancourt, and to the Duchess of Liancourt. The agreeable reception and friendly attentions I met with from all this liberal family were well calculated to give me the most favourable impression *** *.-42 miles.

The 26th. So short a time had I passed before in France, that the scene is totally new to me. Till we have been accustomed to travelling we have a propensity to stare at and admire everything-and to be on the search for novelty, even in circumstances in which it is ridiculous to

1 It was the Duke de Liancourt who summoned courage to break to Louis XVI. the fall of the Bastille. "It is a revolt!" said the King. "No, sire," replied the Duke, "it is a revolution!" His leanings were to constitutional monarchy, and he made every effort to reconcile the court and the assembly. Finding the cause of the Revolution, from his point of view, hopeless, he quitted France, and after years of exile quietly ended his days at Liancourt among the country people by whom he was so deservedly beloved. Died 1827, in the Rue St. Honoré, No. 29.

2 Madame Roland gives a painful portrait of this Polish protégé of the Duke. The National Assembly having suppressed his office as inspector of manufactures, he threw himself into sans-culottism, took part in the terrible events of September, 1792, and died soon after. His funeral oration was pronounced by Robespierre. See "Mémoires de Madame Roland." Paris, 1885. See also for Lazowski's services to French agriculture, "L'agriculture in 1785-1787," par MM. Pigeonneau and De Foville. Paris, 1882.

look for it. I have been upon the full silly gape to find out things that I had not found before, as if a street in Paris could be composed of anything but houses, or houses formed of anything but brick or stone- —or that the people in them, not being English, would be walking on their heads. I shall shake off this folly as fast as I can, and bend my attention to mark the character and disposition of the nation. Such views naturally lead us to catch the little circumstances which sometimes express them; not an easy task, but subject to many errors.

I have only one day.to pass at Paris, and that is taken up with buying necessaries. At Calais, my abundant care produced the inconvenience it was meant to avoid; I was afraid of losing my trunk, by leaving it at Dessein's for the diligence; so I sent it to M. Mouron's.-The consequence is, that it is not to be found at Paris, and its contents are to be bought again before I can leave this city on our journey to the Pyrenees. I believe it may be received as a maxim, that a traveller should always 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, spend the evening at his brother's, where I had the pleasure of meeting Mons. de Broussonet,' secretary of the Royal Society of Agriculture, and Mons. Desmarets, both of the Academy of Sciences. As Mons. 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

1 Broussonet, Pierre Auguste, a distinguished naturalist, and no insignificant politician, whose life was a long series of adventures. Proscribed as a Girondin, he crossed to Africa. In 1805 he became member of the corps Législatif. Died 1807.

2 Founded 1761.

An account of the labours of M. Desmarets and his colleagues is given in the work named in note 2, preceding page.

importance. On the breaking up of the party, went with count Alexander de la Rochefoucauld post to Versailles, to be present at the fête 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 Rochefoucauld,1 well known for his attention to natural history; I was introduced 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 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. applied to Mons. de la Rochefoucauld to learn what gross absurdity I had been guilty of so unwittingly; when, forsooth, it was because the dauphin, as all the world knows in France, has the cordon blue put around him as soon as he is 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!

I

Like his kinsman the Duc de Liancourt, one of the public-spirited noblemen who welcomed the Revolution. "La constitution sera faite ou nous ne serons plus" were his words two years later. Of liberal mind and sterling worth the Duke de la Rochefoucauld deserved a better fate. Killed at Gisors, 1794.

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 1 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 the 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 apart

This brave admiral had commanded the French fleets in the East (1773, 1783), coming to sharp encounters with our own off the coasts of Madras and Ceylon. His most brilliant exploit was the capture of Trincomalee, but these successes were not seconded by the weak government at home, and the Treaty of Versailles cut short his career. Died 1788.

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ments are nothing; but the pictures and statues are well known to be a capital clection. 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,1 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 Rochefoucauld 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 everywhere scattered with

1 This château, famous as the scene of Napoleon's Coup d'état of the 18 Brumaire, from which also emanated the ordonnances of Charles X., was destroyed by the Prussian fire in 1870.