Pays d'Auge 95 



royale of leather. I saw eight or ten Englishmen that are em- 

 ployed here (there are forty in all), and conversed with one from 

 Yorkshire, who told me he had been deceived into coming; for 

 though they are well paid yet they find things very dear instead 

 of very cheap, as they had been given to understand. — 20 miles. 



zc)ih. To Pont I'Eveque, towards which town the country is 

 richer, that is, has more pasturage; the whole has singular 

 features, composed of orchard enclosures with hedges so thick 

 and excellent, though composed of willow with but a sprinkling of 

 thorns, that one can scarcely see through them; chateaus are 

 scattered and some good, yet the road is villainous. Pont 

 I'Eveque is situated in the Pay d'Auge, celebrated for the great 

 fertility of its pastures. To Lisieux, through the same rich 

 district, fences admirably planted and the country thickly 

 enclosed and wooded. — At the hotel d'Angleterre, an excellent 

 inn, new, clean, and well furnished; and I was well served and 

 well fed. — 26 miles. 



20th. To Caen; the road passes on the brow of a hill that 

 commands the rich valley of Corbon, still in the Pays d'Auge, 

 the most fertile of the whole, all is under fine Poictou bullocks 

 and would figure in Leicester or Northampton. — 28 miles. 



21st. The Marquis de Guerchy, whom I had had the pleasure 

 of seeing in Suffolk, being colonel of the regiment of Artois, 

 quartered here, I waited on him; he introduced me to his lady 

 and remarked, that as it was the fair of Guibray and himself 

 going I could not do better than accompany him, since it was 

 the second fair in France. I readily agreed: in our way we 

 called at Bon and dined with the Marquis of Turgot, elder brother 

 of the justly celebrated comptroller-general: this gentleman is 

 author of some memoirs on planting, published in the Trimestrcs 

 of the Royal Society of Paris; he showed and explained to us all 

 his plantations, but chiefly prides himself on the exotics ; and I 

 was sorry to find in proportion, not to their promised utility, but 

 merely to their rarity. I have not found this uncommon in 

 France; and it is far from being so in England. I wished every 

 moment of a long walk to change the conversation from trees to 

 husbandry, and made many efforts, but all in vain. In the 

 evening to the fair play-house — Richard Cceur de Lion ; and I 

 could not but remark an uncommon number of pretty women. 

 Is there no antiquarian that deduces English beauty from the 

 mixture of Norman blood ? or who thinks, with Major Jardine, 

 that nothing improves so much as crossing ; to read his agreeable 

 book of travels one would think none wanting, and yet to look at 



