3 I 6 Travels in France 



from the eminence above it, which is high; the town at your 

 ieet in the bottom; on one side the Seine presents a noble reach, 

 broken by wooded islands, and an immense amphitheatre of 

 hill, covered with a prodigious wood, surrounding the whole. 



^th. To Rouen, where I found the hotel royal, a contrast to 

 that dirty, impertinent, cheating hole the pomnie de pin. In the 

 evening to the theatre, which is not so large I think as that of 

 Nantes, but not comparable in elegance or decoration; it is 

 sombre and dirt\-. Gretty's ^ Caravanne de Caire, the music of 

 which, though too much chorus and noise, has some tender and 

 pleasing passages. I like it better than any other piece I have 

 heard of that celebrated composer. The next morning waited 

 on Monsieur Scanegatty, professeiir de physique dans la Societe 

 Roy ale d'' Agriculture ; he received me with politeness. He has 

 a considerable room furnished with mathematical and philo- 

 sophical instruments and models. He explained some of the 

 latter to me that are of his own invention, particularly one of 

 a furnace for calcining gypsum, which is brought here in large 

 ■quantities from Montmartre. Waited on Messrs. Midy, Roffec 

 -and Co., the most considerable wool merchants in France, who 

 were so kind as to show me a great variety of wools from most 

 of the European countries, and permitted me to take specimens. 

 Tlae next morning I went to Darnetal, where Monsieur Curmer 

 showed me his manufacture. Return to Rouen and dined with 

 Monsieur Portier, directeur general des fermcs, to whom I had 

 brought a letter from the Due de la Rochefoucauld. The con- 

 versation turned, among other subjects, on the want of new 

 ■streets at Rouen, on comparison with Havre, Nantes, and 

 Bourdeaux; at the latter places it was remarked that a mer- 

 chant makes a fortune in ten or fifteen years and builds away, 

 but at Rouen it is a commerce of economy, in which a man is 

 long doing it, and therefore unable with prudence to make the 

 .same exertions. Every person at table agreed in another point 

 which was discussed, that the wine provinces are the poorest in 

 all France: I urged the produce being greater per arpent by 

 far than of other lands ; they adhered to the fact as one generally 

 known and admitted. In the evening at the theatre Madame 

 ■du Fresne entertained me greatly; she is an excellent actress, 

 never overdoes her parts, and makes one feel by feeling herself. 

 The more I see of the French theatre the more I am forced to 

 acknowledge the superiority to our own, in the number of good 

 performers and in the paucity of bad ones ; and in the quantity 



^ Gretry. 



