522 BiograjjJdcal Sketch of 



ing up the Rhine four miles, and down stream fourteen miles, 

 an hour. War between Prussia and France was then expected ; 

 Mr. Thompson saw Prussian troops, and speaks highly of them. 

 At Rome he had fever, and, with his horse, a bad fall. From 

 Toulouse, in 1834, he writes that there is much agreeable society ; 

 as it is one of the retreats of the ancienne noblesse. He is working 

 hard at French : all sorts of game abound, and he asks for his 

 English gun. He was introduced to a great French agriculturist. 

 Baron Malaret — a practical man. The shrewd old fellow keeps 

 exact accounts ; credits his working bullocks with their hours 

 of work, and charges them for their food. The Baron is an 

 example of what improved agriculture may do in France : 

 chiefly by introducing the English system, he has tripled the 

 value of the family estate. Thompson observes it is satisfactory 

 to see so wide a field for improveinent, and people regarding it 

 with eyes wide open. The Revolution of 1830, by forcing French 

 landowners to return to their estates, has immensely improved 

 agriculture ; idle hands found congenial rural work, which before 

 was thought below their dignity. The metayer* — half-holder 

 system, the curse of French agriculture — is fast vanishing. Mr. 

 Thompson says, " there is no fear of my becoming restless and 

 unable to settle down to my duties as a future English country 

 gentleman ; the more I know of foreign manners and institutions,, 

 the more I appreciate home : thei'e is no place like home." 



The following letter, interesting in itself, is more curious 

 psychologically, showing how much the young man of twenty- 

 five was influenced in a direction contrary to his hereditary 

 instincts by the great political events of that day — the French 

 Revolution of 1830, and in England Catholic Emancipation,, 

 the Reform Act, and the Abolition of Slavery. There is in this 

 letter evidence of thoughtful independence and originality of 

 mind : — 



" My dear Father, " Pest, October 22, 1834. 



" A faiku-e of water in the Danube compels us to bring to for awhile 

 at Pest, and I seize gladly the opportunity of retrieving my fair fame as a 

 scribbler. I must needs confess that I am certainly anxious to reach Con- 

 stantinople before the winter sets in. As fate has decreed that our journey is 

 to be delayed, it could not have happened more oj^portunely than in the capital 

 of Hungary. 



" The Hungarians are a nation who resemble more than any other in exist- 

 ence what we ourselves were between three and four hundred years ago. 

 And it was with feelings of the liveliest interest that I witnessed the sitting 

 of the Diet now assembled at Presburg : there, on an elevated dais, you 

 observe many a sleek abbot and lordly bishop in his robes of ceremony, 

 looking down with supreme indifference on the comfortable burghers in their 



* An occupier supplied with live and dead stock, for which he renders half the 

 produce. See ' Journal of the Eoyal Agricultural Society,' vol. xxiv., p. 19. 



