Montauban 27 



some want to introduce into England. The vale here is all on a 

 dead level; the road finely made and mended with gravel. 

 Montauban is old^ but not ill built. There are many good houses 

 without forming handsome streets. It is said to be \ery 

 populous, and the eye confirms the intelligence. The cathedral 

 is modern, and pretty well built, but too heavy. The public 

 college, the seminary, the bishop's palace, and the house of the 

 first president of the court of aids are good buildings: the last 

 large with a most showy entrance. The promenade is finely 

 situated; built on the highest part of the rampart, and com- 

 manding that noble vale, or rather plain, one of the richest in 

 Europe, which extends on one side to the sea, and in front to the 

 Pyrenees ; whose towering masses, heaped one upon another in a 

 stupendous manner, and covered with snow, offer a variety of 

 lights and shades from indented forms and the immensity of 

 their projections. This prospect, which contains a semicircle 

 of a hundred miles diameter, has an oceanic vastness, in which 

 the eye loses itself; an almost boundless scene of cultivation; 

 an animated, but confused mass of infinitely varied parts — 

 melting gradually into the distant obscure from which emerges 

 the amazing frame of the PjTenees, rearing their silvered heads 

 far above the clouds. At Montauban I met Captain Plampin, 

 of the royal navy; he was with Major Crew, who has a house 

 and family here, to which he politely carried us; it is sweetly 

 situated on the skirts of the town, commanding a fine view; 

 they were so obliging as to resolve my inquiries upon some 

 points, of which a residence made them complete judges. 

 Living is reckoned cheap here ; a family was named to us whose 

 income was supposed to be about 1500 louis a year, and who 

 lived as handsomely as in England on £5000. The comparative 

 dearness and cheapness of different countries is a subject of 

 considerable importance, but difficult to analyse. As I con- 

 ceive the English to have made far greater ad\'ance3 in the useful 

 arts and in manufactures than the French have done, England 

 ought to be the cheaper country. What we meet with in France 

 is a cheap 7node of living, which is quite another consideration. — 

 30 miles. 



13//?. Pass Grisolles, where are well-built cottages without 

 glass, and some with no other light than the door. Dine at 

 Pompinion, at the Grand Soleil, an uncommonly good inn, 

 where Captain Plampin, who accompanied us thus far, took 

 his leave. Here we had a violent storm of thunder and lightning, 

 with rain much heavier I thought than I had known in England ; 



