1 66 Travels in France 



Coming out of Phalsbourg, there are some hovels miserable 

 enough, yet have chimneys and windows, but the inhabitants 

 in the lowest poverty. From that town to Savern all a moun- 

 tain of oak timber, the descent steep, and the road winding. In 

 Savern, I found myself to all appearance veritably in Germany; 

 for two days past much tendency to a change, but here not one 

 person in a hundred has a word of French; the rooms are 

 warmed by stoves ; the kitchen-hearth is three or four feet high, 

 and various other trifles show that you are among another 

 people. Looking at a map of France and reading histories of 

 Louis XIV. never threw his conquest or seizure of Aisace into 

 the light which travelling into it did : to cross a great range of 

 mountains; to enter a level plain, inhabited by a people totally 

 distinct and different from France, with manners, language, 

 ideas, prejudices, and habits all different, made an impression 

 of the injustice and ambition of such a conduct much more 

 forcible than ever reading had done: so much more powerful 

 are things than words. — 22 miles. 



2ot}i. To Strasbourg, through one of the richest scenes of 

 soil and cultivation to be met with in France, and rivalled only 

 by Flanders, which, however, exceeds it. I arrived there at a 

 critical moment, which I thought would have broken my neck; 

 a detachment of horse with their trumpets on one side, a party 

 of infantry, with their drums beating on the other, and a great 

 mob hallooing, frightened my French mare; and I could scarcely 

 keep her from trampling on messieurs the tiers etat. On arriving 

 at the inn, hear the interesting news of the revolt of Paris. — 

 The Guardes Francoises joining the people; the little dependence 

 on the rest of the troops ; the taking the Bastile ; and the institu- 

 tion of the rnilice boiirgeoise ; in a word, of the absolute over- 

 throw of the old government. Everything being now decided, 

 and the kingdom absolutely in the hands of the assembly, they 

 have the power to make a new constitution such as they think 

 proper; and it will be a great spectacle for the world to view, 

 in this enlightened age, the representatives of 25,000,000 of 

 people sitting on the construction of a new and better order and 

 fabric of liberty than Europe has yet offered. It will now be 

 seen whether they will copy the constitution of England, freed 

 from its faults, or attempt, from theory, to frame something 

 absolutely speculative: in the former case, they will prove 

 a blessing to their country; in the latter they will probabl)'- 

 involve it in inextricable confusions and civil wars, perhaps not 

 in the present period, but certainly at some future one. I hear 



