this important interest were left to the sole management of dealers.  A theory will not feed a starving multitude, and hunger plays the deuce with argument.  In short, free-trade, as its warmest votaries now carry out their doctrines, approaches suspiciously near a state of nature:  a condition which might do well enough, if trade were a principal, instead of a mere incident of life.  With some men, however, it is a principal—­an all in all—­and this is the reason we frequently find those who are notoriously the advocates of exclusion and privileges in government, maintaining the doctrine, as warmly as those who carry their liberalism, in other matters, to extremes.

There was a small picture, in the manner of Watteau, in this inn, which the landlady told me had been bought at a sale of the effects of a neighbouring chateau.  It is curious to discover these relics, in the shape of furniture, pictures, porcelain, &c., scattered all over France, though most of it has found its way to Paris.  I offered to purchase the picture, but the good woman held it to be above price.

We left this place immediately after breakfast, and soon quitted the great route to strike across the country.  The chemins vicinaux, or cross-roads of France, are pretty much in a state of nature; the public, I believe, as little liking to work them, as it does at home.  Previously to the revolution, all this was done by means of the corvee; a right which empowered the seigneur to oblige his tenants to perform a certain amount of labour, without distinction, on the highways of his estate.  Thus, whenever M. le Marquis felt disposed to visit the chateau, there was a general muster, to enable him and his friends to reach the house in safety, and to amuse themselves during their residence; after which the whole again reverted to the control of nature and accident.  To be frank, one sometimes meets with by-roads in this old country, which are positively as bad as the very worst of our own, in the newest settlements.  Last year I actually travelled post for twenty miles on one of these trackless ways.

We were more fortunate, however, on the present occasion; the road we took being what is called a route departementale, and little, if any, inferior to the one we had left.  Our drive was through a slightly undulating country that was prettily wooded, and in very good agriculture.  In all but the wheel-track, the traveller gains by quitting the great routes in France, for nothing can be more fatiguing to the eye than their straight undeviating monotony.  They are worse than any of our own air-line turnpikes; for in America the constant recurrence of small isolated bits of wood greatly relieves the scenery.