thick set with farm-houses, chateaux, and the Bastides of the inhabitants of Lyons. The people live separately, and not in villages. The hill sides are in vine and corn; the plains in corn and pasture. The lands are farmed either for money, or on halfstocks. The rents of the corn lands, farmed for money, are about ten or twelve livres the arpent. A farmer takes, perhaps, about one hundred and fifty arpents, for three, six, or nine years. The first year they are in corn; the second in other small grain, with which he sows red clover. The third is for the clover. The spontaneous pasturage is of green sward, which they call fromenteau. When lands are rented on half-stocks, the cattle, sheep, &c., are furnished by the landlord. They are valued, and must be left of equal value. The increase of these, as well as the produce of the farm, is divided equally. These leases are only from year to year. They have a method of mixing beautifully the culture of vines, trees, and corn. Rows of fruit trees are planted about twenty feet apart. Between the trees, in the row, they plant vines four feet apart, and espalier them. The intervals are sowed alternately in corn, so as to be one year in corn, the next in pasture, the third in corn, the fourth in pasture, &c. One hundred toises of vines in length, yield generally about four pieces of wine. In Dauphiné, I am told, they plant vines only at the roots of the trees, and let them cover the whole trees. But this spoils both the wine and the fruit. Their wine when distilled, yields but one-third its quantity in brandy. The wages of a laboring man here, are five louis; of a woman, one half. The women do not work with the hoe; they only weed the vines, the corn, &c., and spin. They speak a Patois very difficult to understand. I passed some time at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye. Monsieur de Laye has a seignory of about fifteen thousand arpents, in pasture, corn, vines, and wood. He has over this, as is usual, a certain jurisdiction, both criminal and civil. But this extends only to the first crude examination, which is before his judges. The subject is referred for final examination and decision, to the regular judicatures of the country. The Seigneur is keeper of the peace on his domains. He is therefore subject to the expenses of maintaining it. A crimi

nal prosecuted to sentence and execution, costs M. de Laye about five thousand livres. This is so burthensome to the Seigneurs, that they are slack in criminal prosecutions. A good effect from a bad cause. Through all Champagne, Burgundy, and the Beaujolois, the husbandry seems good, except that they manure too little. This proceeds from the shortness of their leases. The people of Burgundy and Beaujolois are well clothed, and have the appearance of being well fed. But they experience all the oppressions which result from the nature of the general government, and from that of their particular tenures, and of the seignorial government to which they are subject. What a cruel reflection, that a rich country cannot long be a free one. M. de Laye has a Diana and Endymion, a very superior morsel of sculpture by Michael Angelo Slodtz, done in 1740.

The wild. gooseberry is in leaf; the wild pear and sweet briar in bud.

Lyons. There are some feeble remains here, of an amphitheatre of two hundred feet diameter, and of an aqueduct in brick. The Pont d'Ainay has nine arches of forty feet from The piers are of six feet. The almond is in

centre to centre. bloom.

DAUPHINE. From St. Fond to Mornas. March 15, 16, 17, 18. The Rhone makes extensive plains, which lie chiefly on the eastern side, and are often in two stages. Those of Montelimart are three or four miles wide, and rather good. Sometimes, as in the neighborhood of Vienne, the hills come in precipices to the river, resembling then very much our Susquehanna and its hills, except that the Susquehanna is ten times as wide as the Rhone. The highlands are often very level. The soil, both of hill and plain, where there is soil, is generally tinged, more or less, with red. The hills are sometimes mere masses of rock, sometimes a mixture of loose stone and earth. The plains are always stony, and, as often as otherwise, covered perfectly with a coat of round stones, of the size of the fist, so as to resemble the remains of inundations, from which all the soil has been carried away. Sometimes they are middling good, sometimes barren. In the neighborhood of Lyons, there is more corn than wine. Towards Tains, more wine than corn. From

thence, the plains, where best, are in corn, clover, almonds, mulberries, walnuts; where there is still some earth, they are in corn, almonds, and oaks. The hills are in vines. There is a good deal of forest-wood near Lyons, but not much afterwards. Scarcely any inclosures. There are a few small sheep before we reach Tains; there the number increases.

Yet has the hand of

Nature never formed a country of more savage aspect, than that on both sides the Rhone. A huge torrent, rushes like an arrow between high precipices, often of massive rock, at other times of loose stone, with but little earth. man subdued this savage scene, by planting corn where there is a little fertility, trees where there is still less, and vines where there is none. On the whole, it assumes a romantic, picturesque, and pleasing air. The hills on the opposite side of the river, being high, steep, and laid up in terraces, are of a singular appearance. Where the hills are quite in waste, they are covered with broom, whins, box, and some clusters of small pines. The high mountains of Dauphiné and Languedoc are now covered with snow. The almond is in general bloom, and the willow putting out its leaf. There were formerly olives at Pains; but a great cold, some years ago, killed them, and they have not been replanted. I am told at Montelimart, that an almond tree yields about three livres profit a year. Supposing them three toises apart, there will be one hundred to the arpent, which gives three hundred livres a year, besides the corn growing on the same ground. A league below Vienne, on the opposite side. of the river, is Cote Rotie. It is a string of broken hills, extending a league on the river, from the village of Ampuys to the town of Condrieux. The soil is white, tinged a little, sometimes, with yellow, sometimes with red, stony, poor, and laid up in terraces. Those parts of the hills only, which look to the sun at mid-day, or the earlier hours of the afternoon, produce wines of the first quality. Seven hundred vines, three feet apart, yield a feuillette, which is about two and a half pieces, to the arpent. The best red wine is produced at the upper end, in the neighborhood of Ampuys; the best white, next to Condrieux. They sell of the first quality and last vintage, at one

hundred and fifty livres the piece, equal to twelve sous the bottle. Transportation to Paris is sixty livres, and the bottle four sous; so it may be delivered at Paris in bottles, at twenty sous. When old, it costs ten or eleven louis the piece. There is a quality which keeps well, bears transportation, and cannot be drunk under four years. Another must be drunk at a year old. They are equal in flavor and price.

The wine called Hermitage is made on the hills impending over the village of Tains; on one of which is the hermitage, which gives name to the hills for about two miles, and to the wine made on them. There are but three of those hills which produce wine of the first quality, and of these, the middle regions only. They are about three hundred feet perpendicular height, three-quarters of a mile in length, and have a southern aspect. The soil is scarcely tinged red, consists of small rotten stone, and is, where the best wine is made, without any perceptible mixture of earth. It is in sloping terraces. They use a little dung. An homme de vignes, which consists of seven hundred plants, three feet apart, yields generally about three quarters of a piece, which is nearly four pieces to the arpent. When new, the piece is sold at about two hundred and twentyfive livres; when old, at three hundred. It cannot be drunk under four years, and improves fastest in a hot situation. There is so little white made in proportion to the red, that it is difficult to buy it separate. They make the white sell the red. If bought separately, it is from fifteen to sixteen louis the piece, new, and three livres the bottle, old. To give quality to the red, they mix one eighth of white grapes. Portage to Paris is seventy-two livres the piece, weighing six hundred pounds. There are but about one thousand pieces of both red and white, of the first quality, made annually. Vineyards are never rented here, nor are laborers in the vineyard hired by the year. They leave buds proportioned to the strength of the vine; sometimes as much as fifteen inches. The last hermit died in 1751.

In the neighborhood of Montelimart, and below that, they plant vines in rows, six, eight, or ten feet apart, and two feet asunder in the row, filling the intervals with corn. Sometimes

the vines are in double rows, two feet apart. I saw single asses in ploughs proportioned to their strength. There are few chateaux in this province. The people, too, are mostly gathered into villages. There are, however, some scattering farm houses. These are made either of mud, or of round stone and mud. They make inclosures also, in both those ways. Day laborers receive sixteen or eighteen sous the day, and feed themselves. Those by the year receive, men three louis, women half that, and are fed. They rarely eat meat; a single hog salted, being the year's stock for a family. But they have plenty of cheese, eggs, potatoes and other vegetables, and walnut oil with their salad. It is a trade here, to gather dung along the road for their vines. This proves they have few cattle. I have seen neither hares nor partridges since I left Paris, nor wild fowl on any of the rivers. The roads from Lyons to St. Rambert, are neither paved nor gravelled. After that, they are coated with broken flint. The ferry boats on the Rhone and the Isere, are moved by the stream, and very rapidly. On each side of the river is a moveable stage, one end of which is on an axle and two wheels, which, according to the tide, can be advanced or withdrawn, so as to apply to the gunwale of the boat. The Prætorian palace at Vienne is forty-four feet wide, of the Corinthian order, four columns in front, and four in flank. It was begun in the year 400, and finished by Charlemagne. The Sepulchral pyramid, a little way out of the town, has an order for its basement, the pedestal of which, from point to point of its cap, is twenty-four feet one inch. At each angle, is a column, engaged one fourth in the wall. The circumference of the three fourths disengaged, is four feet four inches; consequently, the diameter is twenty-three inches. The base of the column indicates it to be Ionic, but the capitals are not formed. The cornice, too, is a bastard Ionic, without modillions or dentils. Between the columns, on each side, is an arch of eight feet four inches, opening with a pilaster on each side of it. On the top of the basement is a zocle, in the plane of the frieze below. On that is the pyramid, its base in the plane of the col