is predicament, there is a material improvement at Rouen, since
I was last here: nothing could be worse than the inns of the year 1815;
but four years of peace have effected a wonderful alteration, and
nothing can now be better than the Hotel de Normandie, where we have
fixed our quarters. Objection may, indeed, be made to its situation, as
to that of every other hotel in the city; but this is of little moment
in a town, where every house, whatever street or place it may front,
opens into a court-yard, so that its views are confined to what passes
within its own quadrangle; and, for excellence of accommodations,
elegance of furniture, skill in cookery, civility of attendance, nay,
even for what is more rare, neatness, our host, M. Trimolet, may
challenge competition with almost any establishment in Europe. For the
rent of the house, which is one of the most spacious in Rouen, he pays
three thousand francs a year; and, as house-rent is one of the main
standards of the value of the circulating medium, I will add, that our
friend, M. Rondeau, for his, which is not only among the largest but
among the most elegant and the best placed for business, pays but five
hundred francs more. This, then, may be considered as the _maximum_ at
Rouen. Yet Rouen is far from being the place which should be selected by
an Englishman, who retires to France for the purpose of economizing:
living in general is scarcely one-fourth cheaper than in our own
country. At Caen it is considerably more reasonable; on the banks of the
Loire the expences of a family do not amount to one-half of the English
cost; and still farther south a yet more sensible reduction takes place,
the necessaries of life being cheaper by half than they are in Normandy,
and house-rent by full four-fifths.

A foreigner can glean but little useful information respecting the
actual state of a country through which he journeys with as much
rapidity as I have done. And still less is he able to secern the truth
from the falsehood, or to weigh the probabilities of conflicting
testimony. I therefore originally intended to be silent on this subject.
There is a story told, I believe, of Voltaire, at least it may be as
well told of Voltaire as of any other wit, that, being once in company
with a very talkative empty Frenchman, and a very _glum_ and silent
Englishman, he afterwards characterized them by saying, "l'un ne dit que
des riens, et l'autre ne dit rien." Fearing that my politica