the
revolution, this improvement must be in the details of the operations,
and in the extent of land under tillage, not in the principles of the
art. The most striking to the eye of a stranger are the want of
enclosures, the want of pasture lands and of green crops, and the
consequent number of bare fallows, on many of which a few sheep and
long-legged lean hogs are turned out to pick up a miserable subsistence.
The common rotation appears to be a three year's one; fallow, wheat, and
oats or barley. On this part of the road, the ground is almost all under
tillage, but the soil is poor; there is very little wood, and the
general appearance of the country is therefore very bleak. In the
immediate neighbourhood of Boulogne, it is better clothed, and varied
by some pasture fields and gardens. The ploughs go with wheels. They are
drawn by only two horses, but are clumsily made, and evidently inferior
to the Scotch ploughs. They, as well as the carts, are made generally of
green unpeeled wood, like those in the Scotch Highlands, and are never
painted. This absence of all attempt to give an air of neatness or
smartness to any part of their property--this indifference as to its
appearance, is a striking characteristic of the French people over a
great part of the country.

It is likewise seen, as before observed, in the dress of the lower
orders; but here it is often combined with a fantastic and ludicrous
display of finery. An English dairy-maid or chamber-maid, ploughman or
groom, shopkeeper or mechanic, has each a dress consistent in its parts,
and adapted to the situation and employment of the wearer. But a country
girl in France, whose bed-gown and petticoat are of the coarsest
materials, and scantiest dimensions, has a pair of long dangling
ear-rings, worth from 30 to 40 francs. A carter wears an opera hat, and
a ballad-singer struts about in long military boots; and a blacksmith,
whose features are obscured by the smoke and dirt which have been
gathering on them for weeks, and whose clothes hang about him in
tatters, has his hair newly frizzled and powdered, and his long queue
plaited on each side, all down his back, with the most scrupulous
nicety.

Akin to this shew of finery in some parts of their dress, utterly
inconsistent with the other parts of it, and with their general
condition, is the disposition of the lower orders in France, even in
their intercourse with one another, to ape the manners of their
superior