444 FRANCE.

1 was much impressed during the whole journey from Mentz to Paris, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, with the great inferiority of the appearance of France, and of what had been incorporated with France, to any part of Germany that I had lately passed through. The land is certainly as good, perhaps generally better, but the cultivation of it was by no means superior. The towns and cities in France are, perhaps, on a par with those of Germany, or nearly so; but, in Germany, none of them had been without recent improve- ments, and all showed some new buildings, and many old ones repaired and modernized. In France, every thing looked old; no houses seem to have been built since the commencement of the Revolution, and those dilapidated and needing repairs, do not seem to have received them. It was not so much, however, in the towns, as in the villages, that the inferiority of France struck me most forcibly. In every village in Germany, a neat church, ornamented commonly with an elegant tower, is to be seen; a decent house for the pastor, and one better for the bailiff, is universal in the villages where no nobleman resides; and where there is one, the houses ofthe peasantry appear to have copied some portion of neatness from those of their superiors. The houses of the peasants there are superior to the cottages of our English labourers, and very far better than those of the French farmers. The churches in those French villages which I passed through, are miserable hovels, and the dwellings of the inhabitants are all alike dilapidated and filthy.

They have no superiors to improve them by their examples, and the tax-gatherers that collect for the government, reside in the neighbouring towns. The want of a gentry is evident in France, and of course in the villages, much more than in the

towns and cities. 1 remarked too the little intercourse which