d scarcely any light; but
they have earth chimneys.

Sept. 21. Came to an improvement in the midst of sombre country. Four
good houses of stone and slate, and a few acres run to wretched grass,
which have been tilled, but all savage, and become almost as rough as
the rest. I was afterwards informed that this improvement, as it is
called, was wrought by Englishmen, at the expense of a gentleman they
ruined as well as themselves. I demanded how it had been done? Pare and
burn, and sow wheat, then rye, and then oats. Thus it is for ever and
ever! The same follies, blundering, and ignorance; and then all the
fools in the country said as they do now, that these wastes are good for
nothing. To my amazement I find that they reach within three miles of
the great commercial city of Nantes.

The 22nd. At Nantes, a town which has that sign of prosperity of new
buildings that never deceives. The quarter of the Comedie is
magnificent, all the streets at right angles and of white stone. Messrs.
Epivent had the goodness to attend me in a water expedition, to view the
establishment of Mr. Wilkinson, for boring cannon, in an island on the
Loire, below Nantes. Until that well-known English manufacturer arrived,
the French knew nothing of the art of casting cannon solid, and then
boring them.

Nantes is as _enflamme_ in the cause of liberty as any town in France
can be. The conversations I have witnessed here prove how great a change
is effected in the mind of the French, nor do I believe it will be
possible for the present government to last half a century longer. The
American revolution has laid the foundation of another in France, if
government does not take care of itself. On the 23rd one of the twelve
prisoners from the Bastille arrived here--he was the most violent of
them all--and his imprisonment has not silenced him.

[AUTHOR'S NOTE.--It wanted no great spirit of prophecy to foretell this
revolution; but later events have shown that I was very wide of the mark
when I talked of fifty years. The twelve gentlemen of Bretagne deputed
to Versailles, mentioned above, were sent with a denunciation of the
ministers for their suspension of provincial parliaments. They were at
once sent to the Bastille. It was this war of the king and the
parliaments that brought about the assembly of the States General, the
step being decided on by the assembly of Grenoble, July 21, 1788.]

_III.--Third Journey, 1789_

June 5. Passage to Calais;