La Roche Guyon i 19 



Louvois was grandfather to the two duchesses d" An villa and 

 d'Estissac, who inherited all his fortune as well as their own 

 family one of the house of La Rochefoucauld, from which family 

 I conceive, and not from Louvois, they inherited their disposi- 

 tions. From the principal apartment there is a balcony that 

 leads to the walks which serpentine up the mountain. Like all 

 French seats there is a town and a great poiagcr to remove before 

 it would be consonant with English ideas. Bissy, the Due de 

 Penthie\Te's, is just the same; before the chateau there is a 

 gently falling vale with a little stream through it that might be 

 made anytliing of for lawtiing and watering; exactly there, in 

 full front of the house, they have placed a great kitchen-garden 

 with walls enough for a fortress. The houses of the poor people 

 here, as on the Loire in Touraine, are burrowed into the chalk 

 rock and have a singular appearance: here are two streets of 

 them, one above another; they are asserted to be wholesome, 

 warm in winter and cool in summer, but others thought dif- 

 ferently ; and that they were bad for the health of the inhabitants. 

 The Due de la Rochefoucauld had the kindness to order the 

 steward to give me all the information I wanted relative to the 

 agriculture of the country, and to speak to such persons as were 

 necessary on points that he was in doubt about. At an English 

 nobleman's there would have been three or four farmers asked 

 to meet me, who would have dined with the family amongst 

 ladies of the first rank. I do not exaggerate when I say that I 

 have had this at least a hundred times in the first houses of our 

 islands. It is, however, a thing that in the present state of 

 manners in France would not be met with from Calais to 

 Bayonne, except by chance in the house of some great lord that 

 had been much in England,-^ and then not unless it was asked 

 for. The nobility in France have no more idea of practising 

 agriculture and making it an object of conversation, except 

 on the mere theory- as they would speak of a loom or a bowsprit, 

 than of any other object the most remote from their habits and 

 pursuits. I do not so much blame them for this neglect as I do 

 that herd of visionary and absurd writers on agriculture who, 

 from their chambers in cities, have, with an impertinence almost 

 incredible, deluged France with nonsense and theory enough to 

 disgust and ruin the whole nobility of the kingdom. 



12th. Part with regret from a society I had every reason to 

 be pleased with. — 35 miles. 



i2,th. The twenty miles to Rouen the same features. First 

 * I once knew it at the Due de Liancourt's. — Author's note. 



