sixteen miles; the irrigation is superb. Lille is most agreeably situated. On coming to the verge of it I found fine plantations of elms, with delicious streams, bubbling over pebbles on either side; well dressed people were enjoying the evening at a spot, I had conceived to be only a mountain village. It was a sort of fairy scene to me. Now, thought I, how detestable to leave this fine wood and water, and enter a nasty, beggarly, walled, hot, stinking town; one of the contrasts most offensive to my feelings. What an agreeable surprise, to find the inn without the town, in the midst of the scenery I had admired! and more, a good and civil inn. I walked on the banks of this classic stream for an hour, with the moon gazing on the waters, that will run for ever in mellifluous poetry: retired to sup on the most exquisite trout and craw fish in the world. To-morrow to the famed origin.-16 miles. The 29th. I am delighted with the environs of Lille; beautiful roads, well planted, surround and pass off in different directions, as if from a capital town, umbrageous enough to form promenades against a hot sun, and the river splits and divides into so many streams, and is conducted with so much attention that it has a delicious effect, especially to an eye that recognises all the fertility of irrigation. To the fountain of Vaucluse, which is justly said to be as celebrated almost as that of Helicon. Crossing a plain, which is not so beautiful as one's idea of Tempe; the mountain presents an almost perpendicular rock, at the foot of which is an immense and very fine cavern, half filled with a pool of stagnant, but clear water, this is the famous fountain; at other seasons it fills the whole cavern, and boils over in a vast stream among rocks; its bed now marked by vegetation. At present the water gushes out 200 yards lower down, from beneath masses of rock, and in a very small distance forms a considerable river, which almost immediately receives deviations by art for mills and irrigation. On the summit of a rock above the village, but much below the mountain, is a ruin, called, by the poor people here, the chateau of Petrarch-who tell you it was inhabited by Mons. Petrarch and Madame Laura. The scene is sublime; but what renders it truly interesting to our feelings, is the celebrity which great talents have 256 TRAVELS IN FRANCE. [AUGUST, given it. The power of rocks, and water, and mountains, even in their boldest features, to arrest attention, and fill the bosom with sensations that banish the insipid feelings of common life-holds not of inanimate nature. To give energy to such sensations, it must receive animation from the creative touch of a vivid fancy: described by the poet, or connected with the residence, actions, pursuits, or passions of great geniusses; it lives, as it were, personified by talents, and commands the interest that breathes around whatever is consecrated by fame. To Orgon.1 Quit the Pope's territory, by crossing the Durance; there view the skeleton of the navigation of Boisgelin, the work of the archbishop of Aix, a noble project, and, where finished, perfectly well executed; a hill is pierced by it for a quarter of a mile, a work that rivals the greatest similar exertions. It has, however, stood still many years for want of money. The vent de bize gone, and the heat increased, the wind now S.W. my health better to a moment, which proves how pernicious it is, even in August.-20 miles. The 30th. I forgot to observe that, for a few days past, I have been pestered with all the mob of the country shooting: one would think that every rusty gun in Provence is at work, killing all sorts of birds; the shot has fallen five or six times in my chaise and about my ears. The National Assembly has declared that every man has a right to kill game on his own land; and advancing this maxim so absurd as a declaration, though so wise as a law, without any statute of provision to secure the right of game to the possessor of the soil, according to the tenor of the vote, has, as I am every where informed, filled all the fields of France with sportsmen to an utter nuisance. The same effects have flowed from declarations of right relative to tythes, taxes, feudal rights, &c. In the declarations, conditions and compensations are talked of; but an unruly ungovernable multitude seize the benefit of the abolition, and laugh at the obligations or recompense. Out by daybreak for Salon,2 in order to view the Crau, one of the most singular districts in France for its soil, or rather want of soil, being apparently a region of sea flints, 2 (Bouches du Rhône.) 1 (Bouches du Rhône.) yet feeding great herds of sheep: View the improvement of Monsieur Pasquali, who is doing great things, but roughly: I wished to see and converse with him, but unfortunately he was absent from Salon. At night to St. Canat.'-46 miles. The 31st. To Aix. Many houses without glass windows. The women with men's hats, and no wooden shoes. At Aix waited on Mons. Gibelin, celebrated for his translations of the works of Dr. Priestley, and of the Philosophical Transactions. He received me with that easy and agreeable politeness natural to his character, being apparently a friendly man. He took every method in his power to procure me the information I wanted, and engaged to go with me the next day to Tour D'Aigues' to wait on the baron of that name, president of the parliament of Aix, to whom also I had letters; and whose essays, in the Trimestres of the Paris society of agriculture, are among the most valuable on rural œconomics in that work.-12 miles. SEPTEMBER 1st. Tour d'Aigues is twenty miles north of Aix, on the other side of the Durance, which we crossed at a ferry. The country about the chateau is bold and hilly, and swells in four or five miles into rocky mountains. The president received me in a very friendly manner, with a simplicity of manners that gives a dignity to his character, void of affectation; he is very fond of agriculture and planting. The afternoon was passed in viewing his home-farm, and his noble woods, which are uncommon in this naked province. The chateau of Tour d'Aigues, before much of it was accidentally consumed by fire, must have been one of the most considerable in France; but at present a melancholy spectacle is left. The baron is an enormous sufferer by the revolution; a great extent of country, which belonged in absolute right to his ancestors, has been granted for quit rents, cens, and other feudal payments, so that there is no comparison between the Îands retained and those thus granted by his family. The loss of the droits honorifiques is much more than has been 1 St. Chamas (Bouches du Rhône). 3 Tour d'Aigues (Bouches du Rhône). The château here spoken of is now a ruin. S apparent, and is an utter loss of all influence; it was natural to look for some plain and simple mode of compensation; but the declaration of the National Assembly allows none; and it is feelingly known in this chateau, that the solid payments which the Assembly have declared to be rachetable are every hour falling to nothing, without a shadow of recompense. The people are in arms, and at this moment very unquiet. The situation of the nobility in this country is pitiable; they are under apprehensions that nothing will be left them, but simply such houses as the mob allows to stand unburnt; that the métayers will retain their farms without paying the landlord his half of the produce; and that, in case of such a refusal, there is actually neither law nor authority in the country to prevent it. Here is, however, in this house, a large and an agreeable society, and cheerful to a miracle, considering the times, and what such a great baron is losing, who has inherited from his ancestors immense possessions, now frittering to nothing by the revolution. This chateau, splendid even in ruins, the venerable woods, park, and all the ensigns of family and command, with the fortune, and even the lives of the owners at the mercy, and trampled on by an armed rabble. What a spectacle! The baron has a very fine and well filled library, and one part of it totally with books and tracts on agriculture, in all the languages of Europe. His collection of these is nearly as numerous as my own.-20 miles. The 2d. Mons. Le President dedicated this day for an excursion to his mountain-farm, five miles off, where he has a great range, and one of the finest lakes in Provence, two thousand toises round, and forty feet deep. Directly from it rises a fine mountain, consisting of a mass of shell agglutinated into stone; it is a pity this hill is not planted, as the water wants the immediate accompanyment of wood. Carp rise to 25lb. and eels to 121b. (Note, there are carp in the lake Bourget, in Savoy, of 60lb.) A neighbouring gentleman, Mons. Jouvent, well acquainted with the agriculture of this country, accompanied us, and spent the rest of the day at the castle. I had much valuable information from the baron de Tour d'Aigues, this gentleman, and from Mons. l'Abbé de I forget his name. In the evening I had some conversation on housekeeping with one of the ladies, and found among other articles, that the wages of a gardener are 300 liv. (131. 2s. 6d.); a common man-servant, 150 liv. (71.); a bourgeois cook, 75 to 90 liv. (90 liv. are 31. 18s. 9d.); a house-maid, 60 to 70 liv. (31. 1s. 3d.) Rent of a good house for a Bourgeois 700 or 800 liv. (351.) -10 miles. The 3d. Took my leave of Mons. Tour d'Aigues' hospitable chateau, and returned with Mons. Gibelin to Aix.20 miles. The 4th. The country to Marseilles is all mountainous, but much cultivated with vines and olives; it is, however, naked and uninteresting; and much of the road is left in a scandalous condition, for one of the greatest in France, not wide enough, at places, for two carriages to pass with convenience. What a deceiving painter is the imagination! -I had read I know not what lying exaggerations of the bastides about Marseilles, being counted not by hundreds, but by thousands, with anecdotes of Louis XIV. adding one to the number of a citadel.-I have seen other towns in France, where they are more numerous; and the environs of Montpellier, without external commerce, are as highly decorated as those of Marseilles; yet Montpellier is not singular. The view of Marseilles, in the approach, is not striking. It is well built in the new quarter, but, like all others, in the old, close, ill built, and dirty; the population, if we may judge from the throng in the streets, is very great; I have met with none that exceeds it in this respect. I went in the evening to the theatre, which is new, but not striking; and not in any respect to be named with that of Bourdeaux, or even Nantes; nor is the general magnificence of the town at all equal to Bourdeaux; the new buildings are neither so extensive, nor so good-the number of ships in the port not to be compared, and the port itself is a horse-pond, compared with the Garonne.20 miles. The 5th. Marseilles is absolutely exempt from the reproaches I have so often cast on others for want of newspapers. I breakfasted at the Café d'Acajon amidst many. Deliver my letters, and receive information concerning commerce; but I am disappointed of one I expected for Mons. |