At Tarrare, I am sorry to say, we found a want of almost every comfort. It is a pretty large town, neater in exterior appearance than any we have seen, but very dirty within; it is famous for its muslins and calicoes.----All this day we have had nothing but constant ascending and descending; the country occasionally very fine, and always well cultivated. The ploughs here are very small and ill made; they have no wheels, and are drawn by oxen. Some of the valleys in our route to-day would be beyond any thing beautiful, if varied with a few of those fine trees, which we are accustomed to meet with every day in England and Scotland; but the manner in which the French trees are cut, clipped, and hacked, renders them very disgusting to our eyes. I have not seen one truly fine tree since we left Paris, about the environs of which there are a few. There is also a great scarcity of gentlemen's seats, of castles and other buildings, and of gardens of every kind. France, one would suppose, ought to be the country of flowers; but not one flower garden have we yet seen.----Distance about 31 miles--to the Half-way-House, between Arras and Salvagny.
(_Saturday, 18th._)--We left the inn at the half-way village, whose name I forgot to ask, between Arras and Salvagny, at six this morning, and arrived at Lyons at half-past ten. On the subject of to-day's route very little can be said. The first part of it conducted over a long succession of very steep hills, for about four miles, after which we descended through a fine varied country to the city of Lyons.---- Distance, 16 miles to Lyons.
Lyons is certainly a fine town, although, like Paris, it has only a few fine public buildings, among a number of very old and ruinous-looking houses. It is chiefly owing to the ideas of riches and commerce with which both of these towns _are connected_, that we would call them _fine_, for they have neither fine streets nor fine ranges of houses. I need not mention, that Lyons is the place of manufacture for all kinds of silks, velvets, ribbons, fringes, &c. But here, as at many manufactories, things bought by retail are as dear, or even dearer, than at Paris. The ladies of our party had built castles in the air all the way to Lyons; but they found every thing dearer than at Paris, and almost as dear as in England.