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parison had been made in the late king's reign, the circumstances 

 would have been stronger. The King of France had 600.000,000; 

 that is to say, twenty times as much: he could, therefore, with 

 equal proportions, have twenty such palaces, or more exactly a 

 hundred, as there are five in Piedmont; twenty such courts, 

 and an arrny of 600,000 men. But instead of this, the difference 

 between the palaces of the two kings and their courts, their 

 parade and their vanity, is not in the ratio of one-fourth of their 

 revenue; and as to the arm> of the King of Sardinia (proportions 

 preserved) it is six times more powerful than that of the King of 

 France : but the contrast goes further ; for while the debts of this 

 country are inconsiderable, those of France are so great that the 

 deficit alone is more than five times the whole revenue of Sardinia. 



October i. The political state of Piedm^ont at present holds 

 almost entirely of the personal character of the king, who is 

 esteemed an easy good-natured man, too much imposed on by a 

 set of people without merit. The consequence of which is, that 

 talents and all sorts of abilities, instead of being in the posts for 

 which they are qualified, are found only in retirement. I am 

 told that he often takes bank notes in his pocket-book, and at 

 night if he has not given them away he expresses uneasiness ; yet 

 this is with an empty treasury and an incomplete ill-paid army. 

 This conduct is remarkably different from that of the princes his 

 majesty's predecessors, who, as all the world knows, were good 

 economists, and kept themselves so well prepared that they were 

 able to turn opportunities to their notable advantage, which 

 must have passed barren of events under a different system of 

 government. The king's motives, however, are excellent, and 

 no faults are found with his government that do not flow from 

 that sort of goodness of heart which better befits a private 

 station than a throne. Similar errors are not expected from the 

 prince of Piedmont, who is represented as a man of good under- 

 standing, with, however, rather too great a tincture of religion. 

 Nothing can be more regular and decent than the conduct of all 

 the court; no licentious pleasures are here countenanced; and 

 very little that looks like dissipation. How the Count d'Artois 

 passes his time is not easy to conceive ; for a prince who was 

 dying with ennui in the midst of Versailles, for want of pleasures 

 that had not lost their lustre, one would suppose that of all the 

 courts of Europe there was scarcely one to be found less adapted 

 than this to his feelings, whatever it might be to his convenience. 



2nd. To Verceil, by a vetturino; I find but one agreeable cir- 

 cumstance in this way of travelling, which is their going as slow 



