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STATE OF AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE. 17Britisbship isahvays outsailed by a French one, nay, that one blIi1tupon a FrÇcftch model in our docks is still outsailed by the other. Maynot tbis. hitherto unaccountable circumstance he thus explained? Verysufficient judgment appears in the due distance at which their standardtrees are leift; but so much herein depends on exposure, prevalent winds.and climate, thatno criterioncan be formed equally adapted to aU.To revert to the situation of this town, it iis perhaps unique in point ofselection.lts connexion with Switzerland, and even with Lower Germany,with the Mediterranean, with the vineyards and silk groves of theSo.uth and corn-tracts of the North, with the fertile pastures immediatelyàdjoining it, forms a combination of advantages hardly elsewheretohemet·.witb.-Whatmight it not be?these part~,On the state of agriculture inof which a tolerable estimate may be formed hy the timethat the tra,rel1er reaches Lyons, and which the route here laid outenables him to survey, under every disadvantage which exists in it, hemay now combine, and indeed close his observations, for what remainsof thejourney.His verypla~nthat the progress of improvement in France i8checked, in every point save literature, by something.What tl1atsomething is, lies far heyond the eye of a cursory observer, though probablynot oneever existed who did not flatter himself he had discoveredit,and sorne indeed have communicatcd their exultations to the world inhaving done sO. Be thi8 a8it ma)', certainly it continues asyet unrecti.fied.The clergy, the land proprietors, the king's mistresses, have ailcome in for their shares of inculpation.A stranger has no right to bevery sanguine in his hopes of ducidation on this point; for althouO'h o _ apeople feel the ~rievance, it by no means fûllows that the)' see it. Hemust therefotehecontented with chiefly ministering unto himself.a mischief to he of such extensi"e operation, it must be political.DForThe