nce may
occasionally be seen plodding along, freighted with villagers bound
for some local market; but the roads are, for the most part, as silent
as the desert.

Such being the case, the traveller in the valleys must be prepared to
"rough it" a little. I was directed to bring with me only a light
knapsack, a pair of stout hob-nailed shoes, a large stock of patience,
and a small parcel of insect powder. The knapsack and the shoes I
found exceedingly useful, indeed indispensable; but I had very little
occasion to draw upon either my stock of patience or insect powder.
The French are a tidy people, and though their beds, stuffed with
maize chaff, may be hard, they are tolerably clean. The food provided
in the auberges is doubtless very different from what one is
accustomed to at home; but with the help of cheerfulness and a good
digestion that difficulty too may be got over.

Indeed, among the things that most strikes a traveller through France,
as characteristic of the people, is the skill with which persons of
even the poorest classes prepare and serve up food. The French women
are careful economists and excellent cooks. Nothing is wasted. The
_pot au feu_ is always kept simmering on the hob, and, with the help
of a hunch of bread, a good meal may at any time be made from it. Even
in the humblest auberge, in the least frequented district, the dinner
served up is of a quality such as can very rarely be had in any
English public-house, or even in most of our country inns. Cooking
seems to be one of the lost arts of England, if indeed it ever
possessed it; and our people are in the habit, through want of
knowledge, of probably _wasting_ more food than would sustain many
another nation. But in the great system of National Education that is
to be, no one dreams of including as a branch of it skill in the
preparation and economy in the use of human food.

There is another thing that the traveller through France may always
depend upon, and that is civility. The politeness of even the French
poor to each other is charming. They respect themselves, and they
respect each other. I have seen in France what I have not yet seen in
England--young working men walking out their aged mothers arm in arm
in the evening, to hear the band play in the "Place," or to take a
turn on the public promenade. But the French are equally polite to
strangers. A stranger lady may travel all through the rural districts
of France, and never encounter