4-88 Foreign Notices : — France. 



are scarcely ever covered with manure, as in England, either to protect 

 them from the effects of frost, or to hasten their ripening early in the spring. 

 Green peas were plentiful in the market by the end of April, and I was 

 assured by English persons who had resided many years in Tours, that peas 

 were late this year. In the fruit and flower gardens, the peach and necta- 

 rine trees, against a wall, were in full blossom on the 17th of March; rose 

 trees, even the Banks2«, in leaf; raspberries, trained to a trellis, coming 

 out ; and the filbert hedges generally in leaf. France does not abound in 

 shrubberies, or with gardens in the English style ; yet are there many 

 imitations. In lours, the garden of the Minimes, a conventual house, now 

 become private property, is laid out with taste, and abounds with early- 

 flowering shrubs ; among which, when the height of the bloom of the almond 

 tree was past, the laburnum, the Judas tree, and the cornelian cherry shone 

 conspicuous in the midst of a profusion of roses in beds and in the front of 

 the borders. In the garden of the Minimes there is also a considerable 

 portion of lawn ; but, though mown, it is never rolled, and looked more 

 like a field than what it was called; but it was green. 



The gardens of the peasantry and smaller proprietors are small, but the 

 latter grow many vegetables in their open plots of land, which, in England, 

 are grown in our best cottage gardens. The house, however small, has 

 invariably a vine or apricot tree trained against it, frequently both, and the 

 woodbine and the rose cluster round the door and windows. Having paid 

 some attention to the arguments of political economists on the subject, and 

 anxiously endeavoured to arrive at a true conclusion, both theoretically 

 and practically, as to the consequences of minute division of landed pro- 

 perty in the hands of small proprietors, I lost no opportunity of ascertain- 

 ing on the spot, from personal observation and enquiry, what are the practical 

 effects of the laws of inheritance in France. This is not the place, nor 

 have I time to spare at present, for entering into the discussion of a poli- 

 tical question, of all others perhaps the most important under existing 

 circumstances : yet, as intimately connected with the subject of the im- 

 provement of the condition of the industrious classes, which you, I think, 

 have very laudably and judiciously introduced into your instructive and 

 interesting pages, and which, you know, has for many years occupied a 

 large share of my attention and solicitude, I cannot refrain from adding 

 that the result of all I could see, hear, or in any way learn, has established 

 a firm conviction on my mind, that, on the whole, the division of landed 

 property (minute and extreme as in many cases it may be), which the pre- 

 sent laws of inheritance in France are charged with having a tendency to 

 promote, is calculated to insure, in an eminent degree, the happiness of 

 the great body of the people, and the peace, security, and permanence of 

 good governments * ; and that, so far from having pi'oduced the pauperising 

 effects predicted by Arthur Young in his Travels in France, the multi- 

 plication of small proprietors, since the date of his visit, has, on the con- 



* I say, on the ivhole, the good appears to me greatly to preponderate. 

 That this good is not without its drawbacks, I am as willing as any one to 

 acknowledge; but I am also sanguine enough to believe that, if the exertions 

 of the friends of liberal education in France (at the head of whom must be 

 ranked the enlightened and benevolent Comte de Lasteyrie, a near con- 

 nection of the illustrious La Fayette) succeed according to their deserts, 

 by far the strongest objection to the present laws of inheritance in that 

 country will be gradually obviated. If I siiould find time, on my return to 

 England, to select and arrange the notes from my commoni)lace-book on 

 this and other interesting subjects, particularly that of education in France, 

 I might lay them before the public in some more distinct, enlarged, and 

 tangible shape : but this is not likely to be the case at present. 



