than that of our large cities in England, you must recollect that, with us, towns are not liable to similar charges: our corporations support no museums, no academies, no learned bodies; and our infirmaries, and dispensaries, and hospitals, are indebted, as well for their existence as their future maintenance, to the piety of the dead, or the liberality of the living. Nor must we forget that, even in this great kingdom, Rouen, at present, holds the fifth place among the towns; though it was far from being thus, when Buonaparté, uniting the imperial to the iron crown, overshadowed with his eagle-wings the continent from the Baltic to Apulia; and when the mural crowns of Rome and Amsterdam stood beneath the shield of the "good city" of Paris. The population of Rouen is estimated at eighty-seven thousand persons, of whom the greater number are engaged in the manufactories, which consist principally of cotton, linen, and woollen cloths, and are among the largest in France. At present, however, "trade is dull;" and hence, and as the politics of a trader invariably sympathize with his cash account, neither the peace, nor the English, nor the princes of the Bourbon dynasty, are popular here; for the articles manufactured at Rouen, being designed generally for exportation, ranged almost unrivalled over the continent, during the war, but now in every town they meet with competitors in the goods from England, which are at once of superior workmanship and cheaper. The latter advantage is owing very much to the greater perfection of our machinery, and, perhaps, still more to the abundance of coals, which enables us, at so small an expence, to keep our steam-engines in action, and thus to counterbalance the disproportion in the charge of manual labor, as well as the many disadvantages arising from the pressure of our heavy taxation.--But I must cease. An English fit of growling is coming upon me; and I find that the Blue Devils, which haunt St. Stephen's chapel, are pursuing me over the channel. Footnotes: [48] _Moore's Journal of a Residence in France_, I. p. 82. LETTER VIII. MILITARY ANTIQUITIES--LE VIEUX CHÂTEAU--ORIGINAL PALACE OF THE NORMAN DUKES--HALLES OF ROUEN--MIRACLE AND PRIVILEGE OF ST. ROMAIN--CHÂTEAU DU VIEUX PALAIS--PETIT CHÂTEAU--FORT ON MONT STE. CATHERINE--PRIORY THERE--CHAPEL OF ST. MICHAEL--DEVOTEE. (_Rouen, June,_ 1818)