All this mischief, all this restraint, is endured, because, instead of a tax on the houses in which food is consumed, a duty is levied, at the gates, on the food itself; a duty, partial, because not paid by the inhabitants of the country; vexatious, because descending to so many and so minute objects; and expensive in its collection, because requiring perpetual superintendence. It is to be hoped the Chamber of Deputies of France will take some lessons, on the art of taxing, from the House of Commons, by whom that art has been so long and so successfully practised. Part of these tolls defray municipal expenses. The walls of Avignon are about three miles in circumference. A good road, bordered by trees, goes round the town; and, on the western side, is a public walk near the Rhone. The river is here divided into two branches by a long, narrow island: over each branch is carried a bridge on wooden piers, with a causeway across the island, uniting the two bridges into one road from bank to bank. The tolls, on this bridge, are let, by the city, at about fifty thousand francs a year; a large sum, and indicating an active intercourse in the direction of Bordeaux and Toulouse. There is a barrier at each end of the bridge, and the passengers pay on setting foot upon it, but go off from it scot-free. Why there are two receivers of one toll I know not, except that one may be a check on the other; but, as every "receiver is as bad as a thief," this expedient amounts only to "setting a thief to watch a thief." That in the twelfth century,--an age of Cimmerian darkness, according to the Protestants,--a poor shepherd should have conceived the project of building a bridge over the Rhone; that he should have been prompted to this undertaking by motives of Christian charity, on observing how many were drowned in attempting the passage by boats; that he should have devoted his life to the collection of alms for his purpose;--all this might procure for St. Benezet more favour than he will ever meet with in our _dis_-enlightened country. I leave it to my reader to judge of my reasons for not saying _un_-enlightened. The mischief is, they made the poor man a saint, instead of knighting him, like Sir Richard Arkwright. A punster might have entitled him Pontifex Maximus; but this would have been still worse for his reputation.