65S Foreign Notices: — France. 



made on travellers in the interior of France. It is probable that some of 

 the banditti, who had been committing depredations on persons and pro- 

 perty in the names of Charles X. and Henry V. in parts of La Vendee, had 

 fled for temporary refuge from the strong arm of justice to the depths of 

 the forest of Bersay, and, as we afterwards heard, to the woody recesses of 

 the Boccage, a well-timbered and beautiful tract of country situated in the 

 department of the Orne, which we subsequently crossed. 



Unlike the country about Tours, which contains a great number of 

 cliateaux and country seats, in general with little land attached to them, 

 and few remaining marks of the feudal tyrannies which the owners of the 

 former exercised only half a century ago, the dwellings of the rich are scat- 

 tered about the departments of Sarthe and Orne but scantilj'. Neat houses 

 of small landed proprietors, however, abound, and in the neighbourhood of 

 some of the towns (Chateau du Loire, for instance) similar habitations for 

 master manufacturers and workmen, and comfortable cottages for labourers. 

 On the sides of the road, nearly all the way to Alengon, as in apparently 

 much more populous parts of England, comfortable dwellings of one or 

 the other of this description of houses were springing up every where, 

 many in the act of being built. None of these were without their gardens^ 

 and some of them had orchards of apple and pear trees. A vine might be 

 frequently seen trained against the front or end of the house, though these 

 are here cultivated for their fruit, rather than for the liquor expressed from 

 it ; the general beverage of the country being cider or perry, but not to 

 the exclusion of the indifFei'ent wines of the neighbouring vine country. 

 None of these dwellings were without gardens filled v/ith vegetables, 

 amongst which were potatoes (now generally cultivated to a great extent 

 in one half the departments of France) the Swedish turnip, the red beet, and 

 different sorts of spring and summer cabbage, peas, &c. It was delightful 

 to see such a vast tract of country without a symptom of distress or poverty ; 

 every thing bespoke ease of circumstances, content, and improvement. 

 The country itself assumed a different aspect; enclosures became common 

 ©n an entrance into the ancient province of Maine, increasing in number 

 till, in Lower Normandy, they were general j the hedges filled with trees, 

 oak, elm, ash, and acacia, which might well vie with the beautiful hedge- 

 rows of England,* The wheat and oats promised every where an abundant 

 crop ; barley they grow very little of in this part of the country. Sari'asin 

 (buckwheat), which is cultivated to a large extent, was not sown tDl the 

 following month, but preparations for the reception of its seed, and for 

 manuring the land for it, were going forward on a large scale. Whilst the 

 winter vetch was being cut, spring vetches were being sown, as well as 

 the turnip-rooted cabbage, haricots, and colza [.ffrassica campestris oleifera 

 Dec.]. 



From Le Mans northward the rich greensward of pastures and meadows, 

 intermixed in fair proportion with the arable lands, remind the English 

 traveller of his own verdant isle; indeed, the whole of the scenery about 

 Le Mans is in the style of the very richest and most beautiful parts of 

 his ov/n country; and, without being conscious of any prejudice against 

 France or its people, I confess my English taste would lead me, in defiance 

 of all the high authorities to the contrary, to call the neighbourhood of 

 Le Mans a garden, in preference even to Touraine ; but it is a garden of 

 a different kind, a landscape rather than a fruit garden. 



Between Alencon and Couterne the road ascends, and finally crosses a 

 lofty ridge of hills, which divides the department of the Sarthe into upper 

 and lower grounds; and the traveller is introduced to a country on a much 

 higher elevation than the one he has left ; a fact, of which he is soon con- 



* When I here speak of beauty in hedgerov.'s, I would be understood 

 not to mean the straight line of trees, but the general effect which stores 

 of t'mbcr thus raised has on the scenerv of a country. 



