4 Notes and Reflections during a Tour : — 



government : in Britain the authorities are many ; those of 

 the counties, the parishes, and the local commissioners of 

 public works. There seems to be another reason for the pre- 

 valence of geometrical forms and lines in France, and we may 

 say the Continent generally. In France, till lately, all public 

 situations were filled exclusively by the class designated as 

 noble, and which, for the greater part, were educated and 

 instructed more especially in those departments of knowledge, 

 such as geometry, fortification, &c, which tended to fit them 

 for the army. In Britain important situations of every kind 

 are procured more through wealth in the candidate or his 

 friends, than through any other cause ; and wealth, even if it 

 should be accompanied by ignorance, generally enables a man 

 to think for himself, and act accordingly. This is more par- 

 ticularly the case when that wealth happens to have been 

 accumulated by the talent or industry of the individual. 

 Hence we see the business . of one parish, or the laying out 

 and repairs of one line of road, managed on one principle, 

 and another parish and road on a different plan, or perhaps 

 without either plan or principle : one parish employing their 

 poor among the farmers, another employing them on the 

 roads ; one road convex, and another nearly flat, &c. There 

 is this convenience hi adopting geometrical forms, that, when 

 they are objected to, they can always be referred to a definite 

 reason. No man can dispute the fact, that the shortest line 

 between any two points on an even surface will be straight ; 

 but if it were attempted to lay out a curved or irregular line 

 between these two points, as possessing particular local advan- 

 tages, or as being more beautiful, every one might dispute the 

 advantages and the beauty. 



The dry and comparatively clear atmosphere, the dry 

 soil, and the airy open surface of the country, in conse- 

 quence of the almost total absence of hedges as separations 

 or. divisions of property, or enclosures of fields, render the 

 environs of Paris, we should imagine, much more healthy 

 than the environs of London ; but we do not think it is in 

 the nature of the climate and soil to support that deep, luxu- 

 riant, and perpetual green vegetation which abounds every 

 where in the vale of the British metropolis. As a proof of 

 this, we may refer to the vegetation of the remains of natural 

 forests round the two capitals. In those of France there will 

 be found in the winter season few evergreens, and scarcely 

 any green turf: in Windsor Forest we have hollies; on 

 Hounslow Heath the furze ; and on Box Hill the box, the 

 juniper, and the yew. All these shrubs are rare in the native 



