STUDY Vil. 105 



peopled, where there is no fuch thing ? It betrays, 

 befides, little acquaintance with the refources of 

 Nature. The more inhabitants any country con- 

 tains, the more produftive it is. France could 

 maintain, perhaps, four times more people than it 

 now contains, were it, like China, parcelled out 

 into a great number of fmall freeholds. We muft 

 not form our judgment of it's fertility from it's 

 immenfe domains. Thefe vafl, deferred diftriâis 

 yield only one crop in two years, or, at moft, two 

 in three. But with how many crops, and how 

 many men, are fmall tenements covered 1 Obferve, 

 in the vicinity even of Paris, the meadow-land of 

 St. Gervais. The foil is, in general, of a middling 

 quality; and, nothwithftanding, there is no fpe- 

 cies of vegetable which our Climate admits of, 

 but what the induftry of cultivation is there ca- 

 pable of producing. You fee at once fields of 

 corn, meadow grounds, kitchen-gardens, flower- 

 plots, fruit-trees, and flately foreft-trees. I have 

 feen there, in the fame field, cherry-trees growing 

 in potatoe-beds ; vines clambering up along the 

 cherry-trees, and lofty walnut-trees riling above 

 the vines ; four crops, one above another, within 

 the earth, upon the earth, and in the air. No 

 hedge is to be feen there, feparating pofTeffion 

 from pofTelîion, but an inter-communication wor- 

 thy of the Golden Age. 



Here 



