well as the produce of the farm is divided equally.
These leases are only from year to year. They have a method of mixing
beautifully the culture of vines, trees, and corn. Rows of fruit-trees
are planted about twenty feet apart. Between the trees, in the row, they
plant vines four feet apart, and espalier them. The intervals are sowed
alternately in corn, so as to be one year in corn, the next in pasture,
the third in corn, the fourth in pasture, &c. One hundred toises of
vines in length, yield generally about four pieces of wine. In Dauphine,
I am told, they plant vines only at the roots of the trees, and let
them cover the whole trees. But this spoils both the wine and the fruit.
Their wine, when distilled, yields but one-third its quantity in brandy.
The wages of a laboring man here are five louis; of a woman, one half.
The women do not work with the hoe: they only weed the vines, the corn,
&c, and spin. They speak a patois very difficult to understand. I
passed some time at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye. Monsieur de Laye has a
seignory of about fifteen thousand arpents, in pasture, corn, vines,
and wood. He has over this, as is usual, a certain jurisdiction,
both criminal and civil. But this extends only to the first crude
examination, which is before his judges. The subject is referred,
for final examination and decision, to the regular judicatures of the
country. The Seigneur is keeper of the peace on his domains. He
is therefore subject to the expenses of maintaining it. A criminal
prosecuted to sentence and execution costs M. de Laye about five
thousand livres. This is so burthensome to the Seigneurs, that they are
slack in criminal prosecutions. A good effect from a bad cause. Through
all Champagne, Burgundy, and the Beaujolois, the husbandry seems good,
except that they manure too little. This proceeds from the shortness of
their leases. The people of Burgundy and Beaujolois are well clothed,
and have the appearance of being well fed. But they experience all the
oppressions which result from the nature of the general government, and
from that of their particular tenures, and of the seignorial government
to which they are subject. What a cruel reflection, that a rich country
cannot long be a free one. M. de Laye has a Diana and Endymion, a very
superior morsel of sculpture by Michael Angelo Slodtz, done in 1740. The
wild gooseberry is in leaf; the wild pear and sweet-briar in bud.

_Lyons_. There are some feeble