e11
Hotel de Vouille-
mont. Rue de Champs
Elysées July 22^d.Friday.
From Calais to Paris is
a journey of 230 miles We made it in
eight hours and a half. The country is gene-
rally flat and monotonous. No stately mansions
no farmhouses, no dwellings, no fences of any kind
appear by the wood side. Generally the woods are scarce
and thin and the trees with their lower limbs cut
and made to appear unnatural and uninteresting.
Every where villages appear more on less distant from
the road, but they are low mean and miserable in their
appearance. The roads better than ours are nevertheless in-
infinitely worse than those in England– The soil generally is
good and every foot of it is covered with a fine rich
crop– It seems a land of indefinite plenty. The crops
are wheat rye oats, beets, barley, beans peas, poppies
and flax. There are some apple orchards, but I saw not
one vineyard nor even one vine. Occasionally you see
windmills in groups of from five to fifty. Water power is
hardly known, and coal is wanting. Still manufactories
appear occasionally and new ones are rising often around
you. France has been fifty years enjoying a
subdivision of lands like America, but as
yet she has no rural interests.
The men and women seem -
and peaceful,
just as you might
suppose

12
when the tenant
of the throne at
Paris be he who he may,
can at any day call out
one from every household to fill
up the armiesy, thinned by contests for
empire in Africa or glory in Italy. We
passed through the towns of Leille which is a place
of importance, also Dovay, famous for its
College and its English Catholic translation of the Bible.
Even by night I could see how Paris had been changed and
improved since I was here a quarter of a century ago– Wider streets
and lighter architecture presented themselves on all sides. The Boulevards
now filled – the road way with equipages, and the space between the
side walk and the dwellings with people sitting conversing and drinking
cooling draughts– I should have known that this was Paris had I been
dropped into it blindfolded– It has just extorted from the world its
needed tribute of admiration for its chivalry, now it amuses itself
and all this world. It gives freedom to Italy and it wishes
for femancipation to all nations, but it makes the Army
not the Press the Minister of Liberty. This
morning I have awakened to the sounds of
minstrelsy under my windows and
seductions to pleasures are
all around me–