Here I took up the "Sentimental Journey," reading to my friend that part of it which in so picturesque a manner delineates the Bourbonnois, and records the most probably imaginative yet truly affecting incidents which preceded Yorick's parting with " Maria" in "the marketplace of Moulins." To the beauty of the country, Sterne has paid no more than a tribute of justice. Yet the inhabitants do not, either in their appearance or their manners, bear out his flattering portrait. At the dilapidated village of Saint Pierre-le-Moutier, we were surrounded, the moment we stopped, by swarms of beggars. The peasantry, dwelling by the road side, have in general a miserable aspect, particularly the women and children. Has the Revolution made this woeful difference? or are we always to take the descriptions of sentimental writers, with grains of allowance in matters of fact?

In this department we found nearly all the crops of grain cut and carried. A two-wheeled wain, drawn by four oxen, serves in this operation as a poor substitute for corn waggons. Two-wheeled vehicles are also exclusively (as in Scotland) employed to carry the heavy goods and merchandize which broad-wheeled waggons convey in England. Nothing can be more preposterous than the protruding form of the hobs of their wheels; which seem to be designed for no purpose but that of bringing them into collision with other carriages. The neat mode however in which the waggoners pack with straw their curiously balanced loads, and the simple contrivance for retarding the progress of their carts down a descent, by the nicely adjusted application of friction from a screw of wood to the tire of the wheels behind, are points worthy of imitation. We frequently met long

strings of this roulage drawn by good horses proceeding towards Paris.

Saint Imbert, and Villeneuve-sur-l'Allier, though honoured, as Relais, with a place in the Livre de Poste, are paltry villages. The approach to Moulins, however, is extremely pretty. On each side of the road is a succession of orchards, small vineyards, and gardens. The town also presents an agreeable appearance, with its fine stone bridge of thirteen arches. The fronts of many of the buildings are stamped with the impress of antiquity; others give an air of municipal consequence to the place, of which we traversed the whole extent from north to south, going through “the market-place," where "greetings and salutations" awaited not us.

After breakfasting at the Hotel de la Poste, we looked into the church of the Carmelites, where a congregation of women, under ghostly direction, was, each with a lighted taper in her hand, burning day-light pro salute anima. The Bourbonnoises wear a straw hat of singular shape, by some affirmed to be becoming; but to me it seems adapted neither to set off nor to protect the female countenance, which, among the peasantry, seldom exhibits even a slight portion of beauty-still more rarely of delicacy. The chapeau de paille peculiar to this province is of the gipsey kind; the hind and fore part rising considerably above the crown, so as to leave

By suffering ourselves to be carried through the town, before we stopped, our opportunities of surveying it became much too circumscribed. We ought to have seen "the Mausoleum erected by the Princess Des Ursins to the memory of Henry of Montmorency, her husband, who was beheaded under Richelieu. It is situated in the Royal College. There is also a rich public library, a pleasant promenade, and a small theatre." (See Reichard.)

the face and back of the neck entirely exposed. And as the lower class of country-women work in the fields quite as hard as the men, and as the farmers' wives and daughters on horseback or on foot come many a weary mile with provisions to large towns, a good complexion is scarcely to be seen amongst them: indeed the skins even of the youngest are for the most part coarse, wrinkled, and sun-burnt.

In contemplating those parts of the environs of Moulins through which we passed, it struck us as somewhat extraordinary, that the Author of the Sentimental Journey should have fixed upon it as a scene of gaiety in the period of the vintage. For the proportion of land in this neighbourhood dedicated to the grape, appears very insignificant compared with the quantity appropriated to its growth in the districts we had just quitted. It is possible, however, that since the period of Sterne's visit to Moulins, an alteration may have taken place in the system of culture, and that corn may have been substituted in many parts formerly occupied by the vine.

Proceeding through Bessay, the road offers little or nothing to engage attention; and would be very dull and monotonous but for the plantings of fine trees, that shew themselves either in lines, or in clumps quite in the stile of English landscape gardening. In the neighbourhood of Varennes we see a few vines again, grown chiefly in small inclosures among fruit trees. At this village we were charged thirty sous for two small porringers of milk! So much for rural simplicity in the centre of France. The road thence runs straight as an arrow for several miles. We afterwards ascended an eminence which commands views of immense extent, bounded

LA PALISSE.-ST. MARTIN D'ESTREAUX.

21

on the right by the mountainous ridge of Fouret.— Descending we reached St. Gerard-le-Puy: hill and valley now kept our little carriage alternately in rapid and in slow motion, through a fertile country, in which I conclude there are wealthy residents, though we have scarcely seen more than four gentlemen's houses in a journey of sixty miles. In every town and hamlet we find ourselves assailed by beggars, and fleeced by extortioners: annoyances more exhausting to the patience of travellers, than are the heat and dust to their bodily frames.

La Palisse contains a large old chateau, belonging to the Marquis de Chabannes, occupied by his homme d'affaires. At Droiturier the way lies for some considerable space thro' scattered masses of rock, resembling the remarkable accumulations of sand-stone in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau. Bulls, Oxen, and Cows are indiscriminately employed in drawing ploughs, waggons, and carts. Flies of extraordinary size and of proportionably vigorous bite are the torment of the horses and cattle: those blood-suckers compelled us too to be on the alert for self-defence against their perpetual attacks.

Grand prospects open themselves on the traveller's sight in approaching Saint Martin d'Estreaux. A handsome chateau of M. Glaivie's is here finely situated. Proceeding to this village down the successive platforms of a most commanding range of hills, we were struck with the vast surface of country; consisting chiefly of arable land, very little pasturage, and no vines.-Pacaudière like the other villages, which I have already named as lying on our route, is a miserably decayed place. The evening ride, through a country whose noble and varied features were lighted up with the glowing blush of a transparent

22

ST. GERMAIN L'ESPINASSE.-ROANNE.

sky, communicated a high degree of enjoyment to us, as mere pilgrims, neither patriotically nor personally concerned in the question of social and domestic deficiencies:

"Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall

"To see the hoard of human bliss so small."

Continuing our course through St. Germain l'Espinasse, we saw to our left a large range of verdant meadows, fine woods and plantations, with dwellings agreeably interspersed on our right a wide plain of stubble bounded by a lofty chain of hills; and before us a seemingly interminable prospect. It was dark, or at least as nearly so as at this season and in this fine climate it can be, when we entered Roanne, a manufacturing and commercial place of some extent. Our choice of the Hotel de la Poste for the night, brought us in contact with the banks of the Loire, and the bridge of stone built over that wide stream during the reign of Napoleon: many of the blocks of granite of which the parapets of this massive structure are formed, measure between fifteen and twenty feet in length.

*

Our hostess by way of recommending the large room assigned to us for parlour and bed-chamber, (as usual on the Continent) stated that "the Emperor himself” had slept in it on his return from Elba.

*“Viewed at a distance (says Reichard) Roanne resembles a great village. It serves as a port for all merchandise that comes from Lyon, from the departments of Languedoc and Provence, as well as from the Levant, and which goes down to Paris by the canal of Briare. In its environs the much-esteemed wines of Renaisson and Saint André are grown.”