d their dress bears the
appearance of considerable wealth. The cultivation in the open country
still continues, in general, to be wheat, barley, clover, and fallow;
but the approach to French Flanders is very obvious, both from the
increased quantity of rye under cultivation, from the occasional fields
of beans which are to be met with, and from the numbers of potatoes and
other vegetables which are to be discerned round the immediate vicinity
of the villages. In these villages the houses are white-washed,
surrounded by gardens, and have a smiling aspect.

La Fere is a small town, surrounded with trifling fortifications,
containing a considerable arsenal of artillery. We were much amused,
while there, with the spectacle which the market exhibited. A great
concourse of people had been collected from all quarters, to purchase a
number of artillery horses which the government had exposed at a low
price, to indemnify the people for the losses they had sustained during
the continuance of the war. The crowds of grotesque figures which
thronged the streets, the picturesque appearance of the horses that were
exposed to sale, and the fierce martial aspect of the grenadiers of the
old guard, a detachment of whom were quartered in the town, rendered
this scene truly characteristic of the French people.

St Quentin is a neat, clean, and thriving town, resembling, both in the
forms of the houses, and the opulence of the middling classes, the
better sort of the country towns in England. It is the seat of
considerable manufactures, which throve amazingly under the imperial
government, in consequence of the exclusion of the English commodities
during the revolutionary wars. The linen manufacture is the staple
branch of industry, and affords employment to the peasantry in their own
houses, in every direction in the surrounding country, which is probably
the cause of the thriving prosperous appearance by which they are
distinguished. The great church of St Quentin, though not built in fine
proportions, is striking, from the coloured glass of its windows, and
its great dimensions.

The French cultivation continues without any other change than the
increased quantity of rye in the fields, and vegetables round the
cottages, to the frontier of French Flanders. Still the country exhibits
one unbroken sheet of corn and fallow; no inclosures are to be seen, and
little wood varies the uniformity of the prospect. In crossing a high
ridge which