52 



Travels in France 



die of despair. Oh, liberty! liberty! — and yet this is the 

 mildest government of any considerable country in Europe, our 

 own excepted. The dispensations of providence seem to have 

 permitted the human race to exist only as the prey of tyrants, 

 as it has made pigeons for the prey of hawks. — 35 miles. 



12/A. Pau is a considerable town, that has a parliament and a 

 linen manufacture; but it is more famous for being the birth- 

 place of Henry IV. I viewed the castle, and was shown, as all 

 travellers are, the room in which that amiable prince was born, 

 and the cradle, the shell of a tortoise, in which he was nursed. 

 What an effect on posterity have great and distinguished 

 talents! This is a considerable town, but I question whether 

 anything would ever carry a stranger to it but its possessing 

 the cradle of a favourite character. 



Take the road to Moneng, and come presently to a scene 

 which was so new to me in France that I could hardly believe 

 my own eyes. A succession of many well built, tight, and 

 COMFORTABLE farming cottages, built of stone and covered 

 with tiles; each having its little garden enclosed by dipt thorn 

 hedges, with plenty of peach and other fruit trees, some fine 

 oaks scattered in the hedges, and young trees nursed up with so 

 much care that nothing but the fostering attention of the owner 

 could effect anything like it. To every house belongs a farm, 

 perfectly well enclosed, with grass borders mown and neatly 

 kept around the cornfields, with gates to pass from one enclosure 

 to another. The men are all dressed with red caps, like the 

 highlanders of Scotland. There are some parts of England 

 (where small yeomen still remain) that resemble this country 

 of Bearne ; but we have very little that is equal to what I have 

 seen in this ride of twelve miles from Pau to Moneng. It is all 

 in the hands of little proprietors without the farms being so 

 small as to occasion a vicious and miserable population. An 

 air of neatness, warmth, and comfort breathes over the whole. 

 It is visible in their new built houses and stables ; in their little 

 gardens; in their hedges; in the courts before their doors; 

 even in the coops for their poultry, and the sties for their hogs. 

 A peasant does not think of rendering his pig comfortable if 

 his own happiness hangs by the thread of a nine years' lease. We 

 are now in Bearne, within a few miles of the cradle of Henry IV. 

 Do they inherit these blessings from that good prince.? The 

 benignant genius of that good monarch seems to reign still 

 over the country; each peasant has the fowl in the pot. — 34 

 miles. 



