eeting or overtaking every species of vehicle. The
imagination of a traveller, if as susceptible as a traveller's
imagination should be, has thus a constant food for its exercise; it
accompanies these several groups to their home or destination, and calls
before its view the busy market, the quiet village, the blazing hearth,
the returning husband, and the welcoming wife. No man is fit for a
traveller who cannot while away his time in such creations of his
fancy. I pity the traveller from my heart, who in a barren or uniform
road, has no other occupation but to count the mile-stones, and find
every mile as long as the three preceding. Let such men become drivers
to stage-coaches, but let them not degrade the name of travellers by
assuming it to themselves.

On a French road, there is more necessity than objects for this exercise
of the imagination. A French road is like a garden in the old French
style. It is seldom either more or less than a straight line ruled from
one end of the kingdom to the other. There are no angles, no curvatures,
no hedges; one league is the exact counterpart of another; instead of
hedges, are railings, and which are generally in a condition to give the
country not only a naked, but even a slovenly, ruinous appearance.
Imagine a road made over an heath, and each side of it fenced off by a
railing of old hurdles, and you will have no imperfect idea of a French
great road. Within a mile, indeed, of the neighbourhood of a principal
town, the prospect usually varies and improves. The road is then planted
on each side, and becomes a beautiful avenue through lofty and shady
trees. This description, however, will only apply to the great roads.
Some of the cross and country roads, as I shall hereafter have occasion
to mention, not only equal, but greatly exceed, even the English roads,
in natural beauty and scenery.

In the course of the road between Amiens and Clermont, I had again too
frequent opportunity to remark the slovenly management of the French
farmers, as compared with those of England, and even with those of
America. In America, the farmers are not without a very sufficient
excuse. The scarcity of hands, the impossibility of procuring labourers
at any price, compel an American farmer to get in his harvest as he can,
to collect the crop of one field hastily, and then fly to another. In
France there is no such excuse, and therefore there should be no such
slovenly waste. Yet in some of the h