Environs of Paris. 3 



but round London the art displays itself in a different way ; the 

 exertions of individuals in building and gardening are every 

 where apparent ; but there are no particular evidences of a 

 controlling government or police ; and the different entrances 

 to the metropolis, being unmarked by gates, differ only from 

 the entrances to an English village by being on a larger scale. 

 Every thing in the neighbourhood of London has an air of 

 liberty, even to the indulgence of caprice or whim ; every 

 thing round Paris bears an air of restraint, even to the size 

 of the paving stones in the highways, and of the panes of 

 glass in the windows, and the numerical letters on the houses. 

 In London and its neighbourhood you have streets and roads 

 paved, gravelled, laid with flints, or Macadamised with gra- 

 nite; in Paris and its environs you have either a regular 

 causeway of the same width, curvature, and of the same-sized 

 stones, or the native soil without any artificial covering. In 

 and around London you have Grecian, Roman, Italian, 

 Gothic, Moresque, and Chinese windows of innumerable 

 varieties, and panes of all sizes, from that of the lattice win- 

 dow glazed in lead lap, to the plates of glass in some private 

 dwellings, as Mr. Hope's of Duchess Street, and some shops, 

 as several in Regent Street, Oxford Street, and New Bond 

 Street, of the size of an entire window. In and around Paris 

 there is very little variety in either the size or architectural 

 style of windows, scarcely any Gothic or lattice-work, except 

 in the churches, and the panes of a palace are not much 

 larger than those of a cottage. 



The geometrical character imposed on the roads by the go- 

 vernment has been imitated by the inhabitants in every thing ; 

 and may be recognised in their woods, gardens, divisions of 

 fields, vineyards, and even in the prevalence of the row cul- 

 ture in spade aration ; most certainly in the correctness with 

 which French labourers dig ditches or plant trees in rows 

 by the eye, without the use of a line, which very far surpasses 

 any thing to be met with in England. Among the innumer- 

 able boundaries of plantations and hedge divisions of fields 

 which are seen every where in England, there is not perhaps 

 one line in ten that is straight ; in the same boundaries and 

 hedge lines in France, there certainly is not one line in ten 

 that is crooked. Nothing is crooked or irregular in France ; 

 nothing is left to chance ; every thing is regulated by autho- 

 rity. But a great deal in England being also regulated by 

 authority, how comes it that the result is sameness and uni- 

 formity in the one country, and irregularity and variety in the 

 other ? The authority in France is one, that of the central 



b 2 



