ur. DR RS LA

FRANCE. 43 3

I have given the abstract of a conversation which occurred at intervals during a journey of fifty miles, because I after- wards found the same kind of feeling as this man discovered, generally prevail among the persons[ conversed with. The royal family seemed to interest scarcely any one I conversed with in Erance.

My companion was a farmer as well as a tanner, and was acquainted with the nature of the estates, and the modes of cultivating them. Around Forbach the land is light, but encumbered with many surface stones. It is generally in large open common fields where ancient customs are invariably followed. The rotation is flax, wheat, oats, and rye, by which the land, naturally fertile, is gradually deteriorated. The price of wheat was much below its cost to the grower, viz., nine francs for one hundred and forty pounds.

Not far from Forbach we passed some iron-works, in which both pig and bar iron is made from ore found near them. There is abundance of wood to furnish charcoal, which is alone used, though coals are near at hand. The cottages of the labourers had a miserable appearance, but there was one decent house belonging to the proprietor. We then reached the town of St. Avold, a place of 2,500 inhabitants, with the appearance of antiquity and poverty in every partofit. It was a market-day. The complaints here were the same as I had so frequently before heard, that the farmers got so little for their produce that they were scarcely able to pay the taxes, had no money to expend with the shopkeepers, and that both classes were excessively distressed. Wheat was selling at eight franes, or seven shillings for one hundred and thirty pounds, or about three shillings and four-pence the Winchester bushel; oats, five francs for one hundred and thirty pounds, or little

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