well as virtues belonging to such a character. In no part of France is military service so popular; in fact, the cavalry of the kingdom is at this day chiefly recruited from these departments; and the trade of plying as substitutes for the conscription--by which a prudent man may save 12 or 1500 francs in four or five years-is one commonly pursued by Alsatians and Lorrainers. Political excitement is very powerful; it is well known that the strongest partisans of the Imperial Government were to be found in this part of France, selected on that account by young Bonaparte as the scene of his abortive experiment in 1836; but the prevailing feeling at the present day is republican. Population increases rapidly; education is more general than in any district of equal extent; and, especially in Alsace, industry is highly developed. It is painful to be obliged to add, that Alsace is also one of the regions of France in which crime is most rife; for which it has in great measure to thank its custom-house lines and the economical wisdom of the Chambers. Domestic morality is also very indifferent: the exposure of children, however, is very rare in all these parts, and generally, as we have said, wherever education prevails.

The eastern parts of Burgundy and Franche Comté (the side of France nearest the Swiss frontier) have another very distinct race of inhabitants, and one possessed of many valuable qualities. Here there is not much of wealth or industry on a great scale; but the people are sober and active; they are uncommonly robust, and exempt from defects of constitution: one department of Franche Comté (Jura) ranks next to that du Nord in respect of the stature of its inhabitants. Education is here at its maximum; in Doubs and Jura only 170 out of 1000 recruits are unable to read and write ;-the average number in France being 486 out of 1000. Crime is about of average frequency; the state of morals, on the whole satisfactory, especially with respect to the exposure of children, which is almost unknown; religious feeling (according to M. d'Angeville's test) strong; which shows that it is not incompatible in France with a high degree of education.

Britanny, notwithstanding its latitude, lies to the south, or rather south-west of the great line of division of which we have spoken so often; and its characteristics offer the strongest possible contrast to those of northern France in general. Here industry is very little developed; crime extremely rare; morality, in all the points touched by this statistical enquiry, very good-and yet instruction in the most backward state. The department of Finisterre, the extreme western part of the kingdom, is nearly the lowest in point of education; almost four-fifths of the inhabitants

are destitute of its very elements. Religious feeling is strong; political excitement very little. The department of Ille et Vilaine (in which Rennes, the ancient metropolis of Britanny, is situated) ranks lowest of all France as to the proportion of electors who exercise their franchise. In fact, the general political complexion of Britanny is that of sullen and passive Royalism. Physically considered, the Breton race is short-lived; scarcely attaining an average of thirty years,-very ill-fed and lodged, and very low-in stature. The people of the department of Morbihan are the shortest in France; the average height of conscripts of twenty years of age being 1 mètre 633 millemètres, or five feet four inches English.

Anjou, Maine, and La Vendée, the seats of a population so distinguished in the annals of heroism and self-devotion, present no great difference from Britanny in their moral statistics. In all of them crime is rare,-education very low. The bodily characteristics of the race are favourable, with the exception of deficiency of stature. The number, both of illegitimate children and of foundlings, in this part of France, is extremely small.

The central region of Southern France, between the valleys of the Rhone, Loire, and Garonne, forms a wide space, comprising more than twenty modern departments, and presenting a general uniformity of features to the statistical observer,—the most miserable region, perhaps, not of France only, but of civilized Europe. This whole district is purely agricultural. Poverty is almost universal. The human race is diminutive, and far from robust. In one extensive province, chestnuts constitute an important addition to ordinary food; and that region (the Limousin) appears to be the worst circumstanced in all France with respect to the statistics of life. Considered as to the moral condition of its inhabitants, this wide tract presents a greater variety of appearances. These poor and neglected races, with very little instruction, are commonly very exempt from crime; but there are exceptions to this rule. Auvergne, with little industry or education, has many offences, both against person and property. Aveyron and Lozère (the region of the Cevennes, inhabited by a peculiarly ferocious people, whom the long wars of religion seem to have effectually demoralized) present nearly the worst aspect of any district in France. Military service is unpopular in all this part of the country; religious feeling strong; politics generally high; and it is curious that this poverty-stricken country seems peculiarly adapted to the growth of litigiousness. Indeed a district of about a dozen contiguous departments (com-. prising Auvergne, Lyonnais, and Dauphiné) would seem to be the pays de cocagne of French lawyers, a land where briefs drop

like ripe figs into the mouth of the eater. In the beggarly little department of Lozère, on the southern declivity of the Cevennes, there is one lawsuit per annum for every sixty-nine inhabitants, men, women, and children!

The inhabitants of the valley of the Garonne,-the Gascons proper, against whom so many of the proverbial witticisms of their fellow-countrymen are directed-exhibit far more agreeable features. Although industry is not so much developed here as in the northern departments, yet much comfort prevails. Life is long in this favoured district; and the number of individuals who attain the age of a century much greater than in any other part of France. Instruction is moderately diffused, crime extremely rare. The department of Gironde, although it contains the great commercial city of Bourdeaux, ranks amongst the very highest in the scale of morality. Party and religious zeal are high; yet the people are sober and orderly; and, in a political point of view, their worst features seem to be a decided dislike to taxation and military service. On the whole, it would be difficult to point out any part of France in which the nature of soil, climate, and people, present together so satisfactory a picture.

The natives of the Pyrenees are usually drawn in favourable colours by travellers; but statistical enquiry seems very far from bearing out this flattering representation. They appear to be a robust and long-lived race; but with little education or industry, much crime, and a very relaxed state of domestic morality. Even pauperism (which we should not have expected) seems much developed in this remote country. A difference, however, must be made between the Basques of the Western Pyrenees, who are comparatively a superior race, and the inhabitants of the Eastern part of the same chain. Those of Roussillon, in particular (Pyrénées Orientales), appear to be among the worstconditioned, in most respects, of the whole kingdom.

Provence ranks favourably in the scale of criminality, all things considered: although offences of violence are common, and morals lax. It is not much below the average in point of education. Religious sentiment is strong. It is observable that in this region, and in the maritime part of Languedoc also, the race of people is much taller than in the other southern parts of France. Perhaps an antiquarian might derive this peculiarity from the settlement of Phocean and Massilian colonists among the more diminutive races of Aquitanians and Ligures (τοῖς ὄγκοις συνεστάλμενοι, according to Diodorus Siculus). A simpler explanation may be found in the number of large maritime towns; for, in France at least, the people of cities are almost always better fed and taller than those of the country. Their subsistence is also good; yet life,

in this invalid-visited corner of the earth, is very short scarcely more than thirty years. Indeed it appears to admit of little doubt, that the climate of the southern coast of France, deceitfully bril liant and mild, is little favourable to the human constitution.

Lastly, Corsica-a country by itself—a little kingdom, of which the inhabitants are as widely removed in habits and character from their neighbours of the mainland, either in France or Tuscany, as the Irish from the British. The population of Corsica increases, at the present time, nearly at the rate of one per cent per annum-the highest ratio of increase in France. But the habits of social order and industry seem scarcely to have penetrated beyond the walls of one or two seaport towns. Law is hated and resisted by all. Out of every 1690 inhabitants, there is one annually accused of crime-the highest proportion in France; but it must be remembered that the crimes of the Corsicans are those of the savage, not the citizen. It is a land where the dagger and the musket decide the disputes which are elsewhere terminated by civil process: the vendetta of a Corsican sept is not less long-lived, and even more savage, than the feud of an old Scottish clan. It is impossible to compare such a people, by any recognised standard, with the civilized inhabitants of continental France. Physically, their condition is not among the worst; they are robust, although short of stature-tolerably well fed-and enjoy rather more than an average duration of life, notwithstanding the many extra accidents to which that of a true Corsican is exposed.

These are a few of the principal masses of population which have their assigned portions within the boundaries of this fair kingdom. In tracing this short outline of their characteristics, we have but indicated a line of investigation which we trust to see more adequately filled up than it has ever yet been ; and that in other countries also, in which we have an interest above that of mere curiosity. Let us conclude with the sentiment with which the able historian of the Gauls (M. Thierry) closes his work-a passage at once eloquent and true—allowing a little for the hyperbolical language, which continues to be the fault of Gallic rhetoric as much as it was in the time of Diodorus Siculus : Descended from the soldiers of Brennus and Vercingetorix-the citizens of Carnutum and Gergovia-the sena'tors of Durocortorum and Bibracte-have we no resemblance to our fathers? That type, so strongly impressed on the ear'liest generations, has time effaced it from the latest? Children

6

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* Πολλὰ λέγοντες ἐν ὑπερβόλαις.

as we are of modern society, has civilisation, that costume of 'human races, transformed as well as disguised in us the old 'man? And, if we were to examine ourselves well in one of those crises where nations, shaking off social conventions, show 'themselves in the very nakedness of their nature, would it not 'be possible to discover some signs of this inheritance of virtues ' and vices? I know not; but, in tracing the narrative of this long work, more than once I have been stopped by a sudden 'emotion; more than once I have fancied that I beheld the 'image of men of our own days pass before me; and I have thence inferred that our good and evil dispositions were not 'born yesterday on this earth, on which we shall leave them.'*

ART. III.-1. An Architectural Tour in Normandy; with Remarks on Norman Architecture. By HENRY GALLY KNIGHT, Esq., M.P. 8vo. London: 1836.

2. The Normans in Sicily; being a Sequel to an Architectural Tour in Normandy. By HENRY GALLY KNIGHT, Esq., M.P. 8vo. 1838.

3. Illustrations of the Normans in Sicily; being a Series of Thirty Drawings of the Saracenic and Norman Remains of that Country. 1838.

N these works, but more particularly the two latter, Mr Knight I has collected most valuable materials for the history of mediæval architecture,-opening a mine of exceeding richness, hitherto almost unworked by the diligence of archæology. The plan adopted by him is one, which few amateurs have the means, and still fewer the opportunity or spirit to employ. Mr Knight has been accompanied in all his extensive tours by able architects, who, at his expense, and under his direction, executed the series of ample drawings, portions whereof are given to the public in the Illustrations:' and it is upon these graphic evidences that any theory propounded by him must in great measure depend. If documents are to be fairly and usefully brought together for the annals of art, it is by such a union of the man of practice, and the man of speculation, that the enquiry can be most satisfactorily effected. The professional designer can seldom have devoted his

*THIER Y. Histoire des Gaules, ad finem.