Totes. 2i7 



timber are perfectly smooth and sound. Every body knows 

 that this road is bordered by apple trees, chiefly of the russet 

 kind ; many of these were now heavily laden with fruit. 



Totes. — We stopped an hour at this village to refresh the 

 horses, which we had hired to Rouen. It haj)pened to be the 

 market-day ; and, whether we take the houses of clay, red 

 brick, and white limestone, the people, or the articles exposed 

 for sale, the difference, as compared with a village about the 

 same distance from the shore any where in England, was most 

 striking. Though there were some good cottons and cloths, 

 yet the greater part of the manufactures, especially of the 

 earthenware, was of a coarser kind than is to be met with in 

 Britain. The cheese was in soft rolls of half a pound each, 

 and by no means inviting. The samples of wheat and oats 

 were very inferior, and so mixed with the seeds of weeds, that 

 they would not have sold as bread-corn in any part we know 

 of either England or Scotland. Forty or fifty sacks, which 

 were pitched in the market-place, had been brought there on 

 horses' backs, by nearly as many farmers ; the horses were 

 turned loose in an adjoining grove, with their high clumsy sad- 

 dles and bridles, of untanned leather. As characteristic of 

 the great attention paid to economy in minutiae by the French 

 of all ranks, and also of the kind feeling which subsists among 

 them, we may state that there were several female beggars in. 

 the market-house, pursuing their avocation among the buyers 

 and sellers ; and a little child was sweeping up, and collecting 

 in a cup, the few grains which fell from those who had taken 

 samples in their hands. 



The church, a low diminutive structure, is built of flints, 

 with a wooden spire painted red. It has a small churchyard, 

 with only two tombstones in it; one commemorating some 

 former cure, and the other the lord of the manor, as he would 

 be called in England, who was lately deceased. 



The mansion of this lord stands hard by, and is now occu- 

 pied by M. la Comtesse de Malartie, his widow. It is a stately 

 modern building of red brick, faced with grey limestone. A 

 fellow-traveller said it put him in mind of the mansion of Mr. 

 Bankes in Dorsetshire. The ground between it and the village 

 was in a sad state of disorder, such as we scarcely recollect to 

 have seen round any mansion out of Russia. The grounds on 

 the other side contained some woods, walks, and alleys, in the 

 ancient style, and a field with a walk serpentining along two 

 sides of it, and some shrubs carelessly stuck in the grass. 

 The former, the gardener told us, was called the hosquet 

 (wood), the latter the partie Anglaise. There is a kitchen- 

 garden of two or three acres, surrounded by a high, substan- 



R 4 



