agricultural
methods and instruments in use throughout this department: the open
drains have practically disappeared, the country has become more
wholesome, as well as more fertile, and the farmers in general are
admittedly much better off, despite the crisis. This increasing
prosperity is given as an explanation of the decreasing average number
of children.

But French Flanders is nevertheless one of the densely populated parts
of France, showing a population of 267 to the square league. It is
proper to say, however, that this is chiefly due to the growth of
certain great manufacturing centres. In the rural regions the population
is much less dense, and the population of Valenciennes is actually
declining. It fell from 23,291 in 1881 to 22,919 in 1886. The
explanation is that people are moving out from Valenciennes into the new
suburbs. Anzin, Thiers, Denain, and St.-Amand are increasing with the
development of the manufactories which are growing up here around the
great coal-fields.

While I was at Valenciennes, there was a terrible commotion in the Paris
newspapers over a certain colonel in the army, who, being in the service
of a well-known arms factory, loudly protested against the alleged sale
of that factory to the Germans, and the threatened consequent closing of
its works near Paris.

After much journalistic and parliamentary gunpowder had been burned, it
came to light that the proprietors were simply making up their minds to
transfer their works to the vicinity of Valenciennes as a necessary
measure of economy.

Notwithstanding the slovenly 'edility' of Valenciennes, I found it a
very interesting place. The Hotel du Commerce there is a very well-kept
old-fashioned hostelry, installed in a stately and spacious house, long
the residence of a considerable family. Indeed, one of my friends in
Valenciennes was quite severe in his comments upon the indifference of
the head of this family, still a man of large property, to this
conversion of the ancestral mansion into an inn. With its fine gateway,
its porter's lodge on either hand, its large courtyard shaded with
well-grown old trees, and its well-proportioned apartments, it is
certainly a specimen worth preserving of such a house as King Louis need
not have disdained to enter, when he made Valenciennes and French
Flanders definitely French in 1677.

'We have a noisy, ignorant set of people in power here now,' said my
friend, 'who pulled down, not long ago,