2 Notes and Reflections during a Tour : — 



Highgate and Greenwich. The soil is more favourable around 

 Paris, because it is every where calcareous, and on a dry- 

 bottom. The climate is better adapted for ripening fruits 

 and blossoming fine flowers than that of London ; but, from 

 the heat and dryness of the air in summer, and the severity of 

 the winter, greatly inferior to it in the production of culinary 

 vegetables, and indeed in the growth of plants of nearly every 

 kind throughout the whole year. It is particularly unfavour- 

 able to the culture of herbage grasses ; and hence the diffi- 

 culty, amounting almost to an impossibility, of producing 

 close green turf. In respect to water, as far as landscape- 

 gardening is concerned, London and Paris may be considered 

 on a par ; for, though the Thames is broader than the Seme, 

 the banks of the latter river are more varied in natural cha- 

 racter than those of the Thames. With regard to culture, 

 the climate of London renders watering comparatively un- 

 necessary : in the neighbourhood of Paris, the watering of 

 crops in the open air is one of the principal summer labours 

 of the gardener. The scenery around Paris has an advan- 

 tage over that round London, in possessing a number of 

 natural woods of considerable extent, and a greater proportion 

 of open lands and waste, surrounded by high cultivation ; 

 round London very little of nature remains. Thus much as 

 to the natural circumstances of the vicinity of Paris, coitL- 

 pared with those of the vicinity of London. 



In artificial circumstances the two districts are strikingly 

 different. The vicinity of Paris is all nakedness and long 

 lines ; that of London all clothing and accumulations of houses 

 and trees, with abrupt or circuitous lines. The approaches 

 to Paris on every side are characterised by straight roads, 

 straight rows of trees, straight avenues and alleys, and straight 

 lines in almost every thing. The approaches to London are 

 not characterised by lines ; the roads, fences, trees, and alleys 

 in woods, are irregular, and neither strikingly crooked or 

 curved, nor always straight. In the neighbourhood of Paris 

 every thing bears the marks of legislative influence : the 

 dwellings of every village and every detached house are num- 

 bered ; the city has a marked boundary, is only to be entered 

 through certain public gates, and, on leaving it, you are at 

 once in the country. Round London it is on every side diffi- 

 cult to say where the city ends and the country begins ; the 

 one passing insensibly into the other for miles of distance, and 

 green fields, gardens, villas, streets, and churches blending 

 together, till at last the traveller finds himself in the heart of 

 the city. There is, unquestionably, much more of art round 

 London than round Paris, because there is much more wealth : 



