o form a wrong estimate of the French
character, which now, whatever it might be, is decidedly religious. But
the Roman Catholics have ever considered Sunday as at once a day of
festivity and a holiday; they have no scruple, therefore, to sing and
dance, and to hold their markets on this day; all they abstain from is
the heavier kind of work--labour in the fields and warehouses. A French
town, therefore, is never so gay as on a Sunday. I inquired the prices
of provisions. Beef and mutton are about 2_d._ per pound; a fowl 5_d._;
and turkies, when in season, from 18_d._ to 2_s_.; bread is about
1-1/2_d._ a pound; and vegetables, greens, &c. cheap to a degree. A good
house in Angers about six Louis per year, and a mansion fit for a prince
(for there are some of them, but without inhabitants) from forty to
fifty Louis, including from thirty to forty acres of land without the
walls. I have no doubt but that any one might live at Angers on 250
Louis per annum, as well as in England for four times the amount. And
were I to live in France, I know no place I should prefer to the
environs of this town. The climate, in this part of France, is
delightful beyond description. The high vault of heaven is clad in
ethereal blue, and the sun sets with a glory which is inconceivable to
those who have only lived in more northerly regions; for week after week
this weather never varies, the rains come on at once, and then cease
till the following season. The tempests which raise the fogs from the
ocean have no influence here, and they are strangers likewise to that
hot moisture which produces the pestilential fevers in England and
America. There are sometimes indeed heavy thunder storms, when the
clouds burst, and pour down torrents of rain: but the storm ceases in a
few minutes, and the heavens, under the influence of a powerful sun,
resume their beauty and serenity.

The soil in the neighbourhood of Angers (I speak still with reference to
its aptitude for the residence of a foreigner, for I confess this dream
hung very strongly on my imagination) is fertile to a degree, and as far
as I could understand, is very cheap. Every house, as I have before
said, without the walls, has its garden, and all kind of fruits and
vegetables were in the greatest plenty. The fences around the gardens of
the villages were very fantastically interwoven with the wreaths of the
vine, which would sometimes creep up the trunk of a tree, and sometimes
hang over th