very agreeable appearance. The river, and the
beautiful scenery around it, compensate for its disagreeable interior;
and some trees being intermixed with the buildings of the town give an
air of gaiety and the picturesque to the town itself.

The market-place is only worthy of mention as introducing the price of
provisions. Moulins is as cheap as Tours: beef, and mutton, and veal,
are plentiful; vegetables scarcely cost any thing, and fuel is very
moderate. Fruit is so cheap as scarcely to be sold, and very good; eggs
two dozen for an English sixpence; poultry abundant, and about sixpence
a fowl. A good house, such a one as is usually inhabited by the lawyer,
the apothecary, or a gentleman of five or six hundred per annum, in the
country towns in England, is at Moulins from twelve to fourteen pounds
per year, including garden and paddock.

Our inn at Moulins, however, was horrible: our beds would have
frightened any one but an experienced traveller.

CHAP. XVII.

_Country between Moulins and Rouane--Bresle--Account of the
Provinces of the Nivernois and Bourbonnois--Climate--Face
of the Country--Soil--Natural Produce--Agricultural
Produce--Kitchen Garden--French Yeomen--Landlords--Price
of Land--Leases--General Character of the French Provincial
Farmers._

ON the following day we left Moulins for Lyons. The distance between the
two places exceeds an hundred miles; we distributed, therefore, our
journey into three days, making Rouane on the Loire, and Bresle, our
intermediate sleeping places.

Between Moulins and Rouane, that is to say, during the whole of our
first day's journey, the country is a succession of hills and valleys,
of open and inclosed, of fields and of woodland, which render it to the
eyes of a northern traveller the most lovely country in the world. In
proportion, however, as the country becomes mere fertile, the roads
become worse. We had got now into roads comparatively very bad, but
still not so bad as in England and America. The beauty of the scenery,
however, compensated for this defect of the roads. We met many waggons,
the hind wheels of which were higher than those in front. This is one of
the few things in which the French farmers exhibit more knowledge than
the English. These wheels of the waggons were shod with wood instead of
iron. We passed several vineyards, in which the vines were trained by
maples, and festooned from tree to tree. They looked fanciful and
picturesque. The