T RAV

16 TRAVELS IN EUROPE.the event may have been the cause of this custom ceasing; but as itthrows light upon the sy~tem of French jurisprudence, it is somewhatpertinent to the views of him who goes abroad in quest ofinformation.Perhaps too it may be difficult to say what ought to be done totheauthor of such a catastrophe. Any one who has ever so little advertedto French legislative proceedings, will have no scruple to conclude thatthey decided wrong.The wretch was broken alive on the wheel withhorrid torments, as if the evil could in any degree he mollified by hissufferings, or as if the criple required a· formidable example to be infiictedas a warning to prevent its repetition.Fuel, tllat desideratum in the Horth of France, where the rousing of ahand~ullof embers into glow every half hour by a blaze of brush~wood,cannot be sustained through the twelve hours at a less expense than offive or six livres, is here both in plenty and conveniently at hand. Whatan Englishman deeros, very justly, cOlllfort, the honses, the windows,and indeed the habits of the French, (for shu'tting of doors is a practicelittle known here) aH militate against; and throw the comparative balanceofa winter sojournrnentconsiderably on the other side.In regard to woodlands, a considerable proportion whereof is seen onthe left of the l'oad to, and south of LYONS, although this importantbranch of statistics does not hereappear to have occupied the nationalmind duly, and aIl is public property; some things in their system arevery weB worthy of adverting to, and principally amongst them that ofbarking the bulky timber for the navy while standing, the branches ormain head being left on.Il thus remains for some years, and requiresits seasoning in a manner which isso different from the ordinary procedure,and so superior, that its advantages upon the timber cannot butbe important.' In fact it be~omesso hard that the axe seems hardlyable to bite into the white coat or sap-wood. It is weIl know~ that a