d to meet
me, who would have dined with the family amongst the ladies of the first
rank. I do not exaggerate when I say that I have had this at least an
hundred times in the first houses of our islands. It is, however, a
thing that in the present style of manners in France would not be met
with from Calais to Bayonne except, by chance, in the house of some
great lord that had been much in England, and then not unless it was
asked for. The nobility in France have no more idea of practicing
agriculture, and making it a subject of conversation, except on the mere
theory, as they would speak of a loom or a bowsprit, than of any
other object the most remote from their habits and pursuits." Through
tradition, fashion and deliberation, they are, and wish only to be,
people of society; their sole concern is to talk and to hunt. Never have
the leaders of men so unlearned the art of leading men; the art which
consists of marching along the same pathway with them, but at the
head, and directing their labor by sharing in it.--Our Englishman,
an eye-witness and competent, again writes: "Thus it is whenever you
stumble on a grand seignior, even one that was worth millions, you are
sure to find his property desert. Those of the Duc de Bouillon and of
the Prince de Soubise are two of the greatest properties in France;
and all the signs I have yet seen of their greatness are heaths, moors,
deserts, and brackens. Go to their residence, wherever it may be, and
you would probably find them in the midst of a forest very well peopled
with deer, wild boars and wolves." "The great proprietors," says another
contemporary,[1340] "attracted to and kept in our cities by luxurious
enjoyments know nothing of their estates," save "of their agents
whom they harass for the support of a ruinous ostentation. How can
ameliorations be looked for from those who even refuse to keep things up
and make indispensable repairs?" A sure proof that their absence is the
cause of the evil is found in the visible difference between the domain
worked under absent abbe-commendatory and a domain superintended by
monks living on the spot "The intelligent traveler recognizes it"
at first sight by the state of cultivation. "If he finds fields well
enclosed by ditches, carefully planted, and covered with rich crops,
these fields, he says to himself; belong to the monks. Almost always,
alongside of these fertile plains, is an area of ground badly tilled and
almost barren, pres