To account for the poverty of a country, in which is found, in abundance, so rich a product as wine, it must be recollected how small a proportion the land covered with vines bears to the whole tract. This reasoning may be usefully applied to other countries similarly circumstanced. On the third day after leaving Auxerre, we arrived, by a very steep descent, on the plain of the Saône;--a plain at some time covered with water, which, depositing a loamy and fertile sediment, retired gradually into beds of rivers. The surface of the earth clearly indicates that it has once been sea without shore; the rivers that are still supplied by perennial sources in the higher elevations, hold on their course; many are dried up, leaving valleys to be watered by the dews and the clouds of heaven. The plain of the Saône continues below Macon: its products are such as may be expected on strong land in such a climate; among others, bled de Turquie, as the French call maize or Indian corn. Arthur Young, in his admirable Tour, divides France into four agricultural regions: in the first the vine is not; in the second maize is not; in the third the olive is not; in the fourth, Minerva, Ceres, Bacchus, Pomona, all conspire and dispense their united gifts. I was pleased to hear some French speak highly of Young's Tour: they said it had told them many things they did not know before, and had been of great service to them. It is thus that, while nation wars against nation, man may communicate good to man. The coche d'eau, as it is whimsically called, is a passage-boat which plies between Châlons and Lyons: places are reserved in it for those who may arrive by the diligence from Paris. It is roomy enough, but I found it very dirty: to remain under the deck, at this season of the year, would have been stifling, and on the deck there was no tent or awning. I determined to proceed in my berline. We made our noon-tide repast at Tournus, where I walked into the church; for in France the churches are open every day, and all day long; and there I saw an image of the Blessed Virgin in the dress of a lady of the court of Louis XIV. I talked afterwards with a well-meaning Catholic on the absurdity of this costume: he observed, that if the Blessed Virgin were exhibited in the dress of a carpenter's wife, the people would not respect her. The people are not so silly: they, at least, are "not ashamed of the cross of Christ," whatever the great may be: why should the poor be ashamed of the poverty of the mother of the Redeemer? Macon, where we slept, is a flourishing town: we left it at sun-rise, as we were to pass a steep and lofty hill in our road to Lyons. From this height we descried the mountains of Switzerland and Savoy, amongst which Mont Blanc was seen with his snow-topped summit. The view was indistinct, but imagination supplied the defects of the "visual nerve." The Alps are in the domain of history and poetry.