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resting on a moveable cross piece, whose elevation or depres- sion causes the share to enter as deep as the nature of the soil requires. The work is executed by five or six horses, and they plough less than an English acre in a day.

The cultivators are all proprietors. They, or their parents, generally bought the land at the Revolution for paper money; before which, they were bound to their lords in certain feudal services and payments, and were supplied by them with the capital requisite for cultivation. The tithes were abolished at the same period that the feudal claims were annihilated; but the withdrawing of the capital, and the imposition of the heavy tax, called the contribution fonciére, has placed them in a worse situation than before. In the worst parts of Germany, where the soil is poorest, and where the feudal power is still in force, the. peasantry are better clothed, have more furniture in their houses, and display more new and repaired houses than are seen in the district extending from Metz to Verdun. Between those cities, the towns of Gravellotte, Mars-le-Tour, and Har- ville, with the intervening villages, are miserable receptacles of filth and poverty; but in approaching Verdun, the country appeared somewhat better from its being woody, and from the woods advancing nearer to the road.

On the whole way to Verdun, the mountains of Vosges on the left hand, at forty or fifty miles distance, presented them- selves with their tops already covered with snow, and formed a striking contrast with the green of the intervening country.

Verdun, on the river Meuse, is too well known to many of our countrymen, who were detained in it for many years. It is one of the strongest fortified places in France, and from never having been taken, has acquired the name La Pucelle.

It is the capital of the department of the Meuse, contains 3K2