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Untitled Article
pumpkins , kidney beans , vines , turnips , potatoes , tobacco , and many otber things , all intermixed in long and narrow fields , makes a new and curious spectacle to an Englishman . The roads , and also many of the fields , are planted with fruit trees , especially the walnut trees , the fruit of which is used for making oil . ** The soil of this country , and especially of Alsace , is so light that they generally plough with one horse , or cow , which they always yoke by the horns , which was the custom every where in our travels , except in Lorraine ,
where we saw some oxen yoked as with us . In Lorraine we frequently saw them ploughing with eight horses , and women either holding the plough of driving it . The wheat of Alsace is celebrated . At Strasburgh we had bread of the most exquisite fine flavour I ever tasted ; and at Nancy we were told that they cannot make such in France . " Thursday the 22 nd , I rambled into several Lutheran churches , where the ministers were catechising the children and young persons , and among others a class of young women about twenty years of age . After breakfast we left Strasburgh , and dining at Severne , where we saw a magnificent palace of the Archbishop of Strasburgh , we got to Sarreburg before night .
From the hills which divide Lorraine from Alsace , we had a noble prospect of all the country to and beyond the Rhine /* " In this great capital ( Paris ) I cannot say that I was much struck with any thing except the spaciousness and magnificence of the public buildings ; and to balance this , I was exceedingly offended with the narrowness , dirtr , and stench , of almost all the streets .
" Here I spent a month ; but though I was far from having any reason to complain of the reception I met with , and saw many truly polite and agreeable people , I cannot say that I saw any person that appeared to me to be more polite than many that I know in England , especially in the middle ranks of life , where there is , perhaps , more real politeness , as well as more virtue , than in the highest rank of society . " In general , as far as I can judge , the French are too much taken up with themselves to admit of that minute and benevolent attention to others
which is essential to politeness . This appears in nothing more than their continually interrupting one another in discourse , which they do without the least apology ; so that one half of the persons in company are heard talking at the same time . " The French are likewise exceedingly deficient in cleanliness . I also happened to be present at such a violent scene of altercation in a private party , as I think would not have been suffered in England ; and yet the behaviour of the company shewed that they were not much shocked at it . As to mere gracefulness of motion and address , as far as I pretend to judge , the English are by no means behind the French with respect to it . " In works of taste in general , and especially in the more ingenious mechanic arts , the French appear to me to be far behind the English , and in nothing could I imagine them superior to the English , or to have any advantage of us with respect to the commodious enjoyment of Jife , except in the arrangement of the parts of a house , which , however , is of late date with them , and which we consult taste in externals too much to have attended to .
Untitled Article
696 Dr . Priestley s Journal of a Tour on the Continent .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 696, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/44/
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