TRAVELS IN FRANCE,

ADVERTISEMENT.

A Second Edition of the following Work having been demanded by the Booksellers, the Author has availed himself of the opportunity to correct many verbal inaccuracies, to add some general reflections, and to alter materially those parts of it which were most hastily prepared for the press, particularly the Journal in the Second Volume, by retrenching a number of particulars of partial interest, and substituting more general observations on the state of the country, supplied by his own recollection and that of his fellow-travellers.

He has only farther to repeat here, what he stated in the Advertisement to the first Edition, that the whole materials of the Publication were collected in France, partly by himself, during a residence which the state of his health had made adviseable in Provence, and partly by some friends who had preceded him in their visit to France, and were at Paris during the time when it was first occupied by the Allied Armies;—and that he has submitted it to the world, merely in the hope of adding somewhat to the general stock of information regarding the situation, character, and prospects of the French people, which it is so desirable that the English Public should possess.

CONTENTS.

VOLUME FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

JOURNEY TO PARIS.

We passed through Kent in our way to France, on Sunday the first of May 1814. This day's journey was very delightful. The whole scenery around us,—the richness of the fields and woods, then beginning to assume the first colours of spring; the extent and excellence of the cultivation; the thriving condition of the towns, and the smiling aspect of the neat and clean villages through which we passed; the luxuriant bloom of the fruit-trees surrounding them; the number of beautiful villas adapted to the accommodation of the middle ranks of society, the crowds of well-dressed peasantry going to and returning from church; the frank and cheerful countenances of the men, and beauty of the women—all presented a most pleasing spectacle. If we had not proposed to cross the channel, we should have compared all that we now saw with our recollections of Scotland; and the feeling of the difference, although it might have increased our admiration, would perhaps have made us less willing to acknowledge it. But when we were surveying England with a view to a comparison with France, the difference of its individual provinces was overlooked;—we took a pride in the apparent happiness and comfort of a people, of whom we knew nothing more, than that they were our countrymen; and we rejoiced, that the last impression left on our minds by the sight of our own country, was one which we already anticipated that no other could efface.

Our passage to Calais was rendered very interesting, by the number of Frenchmen who accompanied us. Some of these were emigrants, who had spent the best part of their lives in exile; the greater part were prisoners of various ranks, who had been taken at different periods of the war. There was evidently the greatest diversity of character, of prospects, of previous habits, and of political and moral sentiments among