FRANCE. A45

the roads in France exhibited. In three hundred miles,[ met but three gentlemen’s carriages, and either two or three dili- wences. Water-conveyance may diminish the number of waggons, but Î met a greater number of waggons loaded with soods, between Naumburg and Weimar, a distance of twenty- four miles, than I saw between Saarbrücke and Meaux, a distance of three hundred. The dress of the rural inhabitants is very miserable, and very much inferior to what I observed in any part of Germany. In every part of Germany, I remarked on the poorsoils many plantations, very extensive, and recently formed. In some instances, these extended over thousands of acres, but after entering France, Ï saw nothing recently planted. The woods appeared to be as ancient as the period when Julius Cæsar described them. At each town in France I inquired for the journals, but at Metz only could I procure the sight of one; except indeed at Meaux, where by accident I got one three or four days old, which I was assured was the latest in the city, though it is only thirty-five miles from Paris. The ignorance of the country people, and the little interest felt by the inbabitants of the provincial cities in public affairs, is very different from the state of Germany, where, as all can read, and as journals are very plentiful and cheap, no one is so completely ignorant, as most appeared to be in France.

If I were to judge of the whole kingdom, by what I observed between Germany and the capital of France, within that city, and on my rapid journey from thence to Calais, I should con- clude that Paris was every thing, and France nothing, in the estimation of the government that now rules, or in that of any that have ruled the country for the last thirty years; I should be disposed to think that France rears soldiers, provides food,

and pays taxes,“and that Paris directs those resources to such 3 L