the reasons why agriculture has remained where it now is for these
four or five last centuries. The common course of the crops is wheat,
barley, fallow; or beans, barley, and wheat, and fallow. In some of the
provinces, it is wheat, fallow, and wheat, fallow, in endless
succession.

I do not understand enough of the vine culture to give any opinion as to
the French vineyards, but by all that I have observed, I must fully
assent to the generally received opinion, that the vine is better
understood in France than in Portugal, and that wines are, in fact, the
natural staple in France. It is the peculiar excellence of the vine,
that it does not require fertile land. It will most flourish where
nothing but itself will take root. How happy therefore is it for France,
that she can thus turn her barrens into this most productive culture,
and make her mountains, as it were, smile.

If an Englishman or an American were inclined to give a trial to a
settlement in France, I would certainly advise them to fix on one of
these central departments. They will find a soil and climate such as I
have described, and which I think has not its equal in the world. They
will find land cheap; and as it may be improved, and even the cheap
price is rated according to its present rent, they will find this
cheapness to be actually ten times as cheap as it appears. They will
find, moreover, cheerful neighbours, a people polished in their manners
from the lowest to the highest, and naturally gay and benevolent.

CHAP. XVIII.

_Lyons--Town-Hall-Hotel de Dieu--Manufactories--Price of
Provisions--State of Society--Hospitality to Strangers--Manners--Mode of
Living--Departure--Vienne--French Lovers._

WE reached Lyons in the evening of the third day after we left Moulins.
We remained there two days, and employed nearly the whole of the time in
walks over the city and environs. I adopted this practice as the
invariable rule on the whole course of my tour--to have certain points
where we might repose, and thence take a view both of the place itself,
and a retrospect of what we had passed.

Nothing can be more delightful to the eye than the situation of Lyons.
Situated on the confluence of two of the most lovely rivers in the
world, the Rhone and the Saone, and distributed, as it were, on hills
and dales, with lawn, corn-fields, woods and vineyards interposed, and
gardens, trees, &c. intermixed with the houses, it has a liveliness, an
animatio