whole energy, and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled up in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many cases, you will not meet an educated or cultivated individual until you arrive at another--all between is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country gentleman, we all know, is not a faultless character, but his useful qualities far prevail over his defects; and it is only when traversing a land all but destitute of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank are fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen in France, there would be more animal food and more wheaten bread in the country. The very idea of a great proprietor living upon his estates implies the fact of an educated person--an individual more or less rubbed and polished and enlightened by society--taking his place amongst a class who must naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, leaven. It is easy to joke about English country gentlemen--about their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France; examine its agriculture, and the structure and calibre of its rural society, and see the result of the utter absence of a class of men--certainly not Solomons, and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that, most useful personages--individuals with capital, with, at all events, a certain degree of enlightenment--taking an active interest in farming--often amateur farmers themselves--the patrons of district clubs, and ploughing matches, and cattle-shows--and, above all, living daily among their tenantry, and having an active and direct interest in that tenantry's prosperity." I do not mean to say that here and there, all over France, there may not be found active and intelligent resident landlords, nor that, in the north of France, there may not be discovered intelligent and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as I have stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to plod on from generation to generation, wrapped in the most dismal mists of agricultural superstition; while what in America would be called the "smart" part of the population, are intriguing, and constructing and undoing _complots_, in the towns. To all present appearance, a score of dynasties may succeed each other in France before La Vendée takes its place beside Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the Lothians. A word as to the subdivision of property. I know the extreme difficulties of the subject, and the moral considerations which, in connection with it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore, without discussing the question at any length, mention two or three personally ascertained facts:-- The tendency of landed properties, under the system in question, is to continual diminution of seize. This tendency does _not_ stop with the interests of the parties concerned--it goes on in spite of them.