ises from the contemplation of the various
monuments of by-gone days, some slowly mouldering into dust, others
still proudly defying the assaults of the great destroyer. The mind
dwells upon them with a species of pensive delight, and that peculiar
charm which their association with the fictions and annals of times past
inspires. It would seem, that France should be especially rich in the
relics of that feudalism of which for a long time it was the chief seat,
but a reason for their scantiness may be found in the policy which
caused Louis XI., and which was subsequently pursued by Richelieu, and
completed by Louis le Grand, to call the nobles from their estates,
where they exercised almost sovereign authority, to the capital, and
convert them into mere hangers on of the court--in the destructive
hostilities which have almost incessantly desolated the kingdom--and
especially in the determined war that was made upon castles by the
patriots of the Revolution. These, at all events, are the causes which
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk," assigns for
the circumstance we are lamenting. The first one of them had also been
previously intimated by that worthy personage, the father of Tristram
Shandy,--"Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen's seats, (he would
ask with some emotion, as he walked across the room,) throughout so many
delicious provinces in France? Whence is it that the few remaining
_chateaux_ amongst them are so dismantled, so unfurnished, and in so
ruinous and desolate a condition?--Because, sir, (he would say,) in that
kingdom no man has any country-interest to support:--the little interest
of any kind which any man has anywhere in it, is concentrated in the
court, and the looks of the Grand Monarch; by the sunshine of whose
countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every Frenchman lives
or dies." This, however, is certainly not the case with Frenchmen of the
present day.

But the principal drawback upon the pleasure of travelling in France, is
decidedly the multitude of mendicants by whom you are continually
annoyed, and whose miserable appearance offends the eye, while it
sickens the heart. Scarcely ever does the vehicle stop without being
immediately surrounded by the most distressing objects that the mind can
conceive, in such numbers as to render it impossible for any one except
the possessor of Fortunatus's or Rothschild's purse, to bestow alms,
however inconsiderable, upo