It is a pity that the nobles should be generally reproached with want of instruction: many of them plead in excuse that they are _enfans de la revolution_, born at a time when their education was of necessity neglected. I mentioned this excuse to an avocat. "Bah! they well know that their fathers were as ignorant as themselves." The avocat's argument was not conclusive; the nobles of the present day might, but for the unsettled time of their youth, have partaken of the gradual improvement in knowledge which pervades all classes; and the remark, "je suis meilleur gentilhomme que mon père, parceque j'ai une génération de plus,"[54] might have applied to other advantages than that of counting one generation more. The French nobles have now no longer that which, according to Juvenal, makes ignorance tolerable: let us hope they will avail themselves of their diminished wealth to acquire that learning, which, according to the proverb, though I do not believe it, is better than house and land. The practice of letting farms to a _métayer_, who retains a share of the produce, and pays his rent with the remainder, is resorted to and continued from necessity. The farmer has not capital enough to stock a farm. If the proprietor, after having made the necessary advances for the occupation of the land, were to let the whole for a money rent, the farmer would soon be in arrears, and would end by running away. _Métairie_ I suppose to be derived from the Italian _metá_, which signifies _half_. The landlord's share is however not always in this proportion: on fertile soils, and on account of rich products, he receives more than where more labour is required to reap an equal or less benefit. I believe the half to be the minimum. After having passed through nearly the whole length of Europe, with a taste prepared by a youth passed, as Gibbon says, "in port and prejudice;" and in the same college too, I venture to assert, that wine is good in proportion as the country in which it is produced is near the all-enlivening sun. The wine of Champagne, which cannot remain for a minute and a half in the glass without growing flat; that of Burgundy, which is hardly ever found but in an acid state; that of Bordeaux, "claret for boys;"--not any one of these wines is to be compared (not for strength only, but for flavour also,) to the wines of the Rhone and of Provence. Such is my opinion: experto credat who will. It may amuse my reader to learn that he may perhaps have been drinking French wine, when he little suspected that it lay concealed in "humble port." A trade, which in its first stage is not contraband, whatever it may be in its second, is carried on between the French shores of the Mediterranean and Portugal: wines are shipped off to Oporto, which, by the help of brandy and other manipulation, become good port wine for the London market.