152 Travels in France 



commended for my attachment to what I thought was liberty ; 

 but answered, that the king of France must have no veto on the 

 will of the nation; and that the army must be in the hands of 

 the provinces, with a hundred ideas equally impracticable and 

 preposterous. Yet these are the sentiments which the court 

 has done all in its power to spread through the kingdom; for, 

 will posterity believe, that while the press has swarmed with 

 inflammatory productions, that tend to prove the blessings of 

 theoretical confusion and speculative licentiousness, not one 

 writer of talent has been employed to refute and confound the 

 fashionable doctrines, nor the least care taken to disseminate 

 works of another complexion? By the way, when the court 

 found that the states could not be assembled on the old plan, 

 and that great innovations must accordingly be made, they 

 ought to have taken the constitution of England for their model; 

 in the mode of assembling, they should have thrown the clergy 

 and nobles into one chamber, with a throne for the king, when 

 present. The commons should have assembled in another, and 

 each chamber have, as in England, verified their powers only to 

 themselves. And when the king held a seance royale, the com- 

 mons should have been sent for to the bar of the lords, where 

 seats should have been provided; and the king, in the edict 

 that constituted the states, should have copied from England 

 enough of the rules and orders of proceeding to prevent those 

 preliminary discussions which in France lost two months and 

 gave time for heated imaginations to work upon the people too 

 much. By taking such steps, security would have been had 

 that, if changes or events unforeseen arose, they would at least 

 be met with in no such dangerous channel as another form and 

 order of arrangement would permit. — 15 miles. 



30/A. My friend's chateau is a considerable one, and much 

 better built than was common in England in the same period, 

 200 3^ears ago; I believe, however, that this superiority was uni- 

 versal in France in all the arts. They were, I apprehend, in 

 the reign of Henry IV. far beyond us in towns, houses, streets, 

 roads, and, in short, in everything. We have since, thanks to 

 liberty, contrived to turn the tables on them. Like all the 

 chateaus I have seen in France, it stands close to the town, 

 indeed joining the end of it; but the back /row/, by some very 

 judicious plantations, has entirely the air of the country, with- 

 out the sight of any buildings. There the present marquis has 

 formed an English lawn, with some agreeable winding walks of 

 gravel, and other decorations to skirt it. In this lawn they are 



