3o6 



Travels in France 



even under an accumulation of charges and duties. We dis- 

 cussed these^ and similar subjects, with that sort of attention and 

 candour that render them interesting to persons who love a 

 liberal conversation upon important points. — Among the objects 

 at Lyons that are worthy of a stranger's curiosity is the point 

 of junction of the two great rivers, the Soanne and the Rhone; 

 Lyons would doubtless be much better situated if it were really 

 at the junction; but there is an unoccupied space sufficient to 

 contain a city half as large as Lyons itself. This space is a 

 modem embankment that cost six millions, and ruined the under- 

 takers. I prefer even Nantes to Lyons. When a city is built 

 at the junction of two great rivers the imagination is apt to sup- 

 pose that those rivers form a part of the magnificence of the 

 scenery. Without broad, clean, and well built quays, what are 

 rivers to a city but a facility to carry coals or tar-barrels ? What 

 in point of beauty has London to do with the Thames, except at 

 the terrace of the Adelphi and the new buildings of Somerset 

 Place, any more than with Fleet Ditch, buried as it is, a common 

 shore? I know nothing in which our expectations are so 

 horribly disappointed as in cities, so very few are built with any 

 general idea of beauty or decoration ! 



2f)th. Early in the morning with Monsieur Frossard to view 

 a large farm near Lyons. Monsieur Frossard is a steady ad- 

 vocate for the new constitution establishing in France. At the 

 same time, all those I have conversed with in the city represent 

 the state of the manufacture as melancholy to the last degree. 

 Twenty thousand people are fed by charity, and consequently 

 very ill fed; and the mass of distress in all kinds among the 

 lower classes is greater than ever was known, — or than anything 

 of which they had an idea. The chief cause of the evil felt here 

 is the stagnation of trade, occasioned by the emigrations of the 

 rich from the kingdom and the general want of confidence in 

 merchants and manufacturers ; whence, of course, bankruptcies 

 are common. At a moment when they are little able to bear 

 additional burthens they raise, by voluntary contributions for 

 the poor, immense sums ; so that, including the revenues of the 

 hospitals, and other charitable foundations, there is not paid at 

 present, for the use of the poor, less than 40,000 louis d'or a year. 

 My fellow-traveller, Mr. Grundy, being desirous to get soon to 

 Paris, persuaded me to travel with him in a post-chaise, a mode 

 of travelling which I detest, but the season urged me to it ; and 

 a still stronger motive was the having of more time to pass in that 

 city for the sake of observing the extraordinary state of things, — 



