62 Travels in France 



ment there is a. strong disposition to English furniture and 

 modes. This pleasing residence belongs at present to the Count 

 d'Argenson. The late count who built it formed with the 

 present Duke of Grafton, in England, the scheme of a very 

 agreeable party. The duke was to go over with his horses and 

 pack of fox-hounds and live here for some months with a 

 number of friends. It originated in the proposal to hunt 

 French wolves with English fox-dogs. Nothing could be better 

 planned than the scheme, for Les Ormes is large enough to have 

 contained a numerous party, but the count's death destroyed the 

 plan. This is a sort of intercourse between the nobihty of two 

 kingdoms which I am surprised does not take place sometimes; 

 it would vary the common scenes of life very agreeably, and be 

 productive of some of the advantages of travelling in the most 

 eligible way. — 23 miles. 



^th. Through a dead flat and unpleasant country, but on the 

 finest road I have seen in France — nor does it seem possible that 

 any should be finer; not arising from great exertions, as in 

 Languedoc, but from being laid flat with admirable materials. 

 Chateaus are scattered everyAvhere in this part of Touraine, but 

 farmhouses and cottages thin till you come in sight of the Loire, 

 the banks of which seem one continued village. The vale, 

 through which that river flows, may be three miles over; a dead 

 level of burnt russet meadow. 



The entrance of Tours is truly magnificent by a new street of 

 large houses, built of hewn white stone with regular fronts. 

 This fine street, which is wide and with foot pavements on each 

 side, is cut in a straight line through the whole city to the new 

 bridge, of fifteen flat arches, each of seventy-five feet span. It 

 is altogether a noble exertion for the decoration of a provincial 

 town. Some houses remain yet to be built, the fronts of which 

 are done; some reverend fathers are satisfied with their old 

 habitations, and do not choose the expense of filling up the 

 elegant design of the Tours projectors; they ought, however, 

 to be unroosted if they will not comply, for fronts without 

 houses behind them have a ridiculous appearance. From the 

 tower of the cathedral there is an extensive view of the adjacent 

 country; but the Loire, for so considerable a river and for being 

 boasted as the most beautiful in Europe, exhibits such a breadth 

 of shoals and sands as to be almost subversive of beauty. In_ 

 the chapel of the old palace of Louis XI-,-Les-Elessis_lesjrours, 

 are three pictures which deserve the traveller's notice ; a holy 

 family, St. Catharine, and the daughter of Herod; they_seem 



