Senate and the Chamber to the Opposition members in point both of character and of capacity. The intense centralisation of power in France is another and a very important force working in the same direction. Outside of the Federal field of political ambition in the United States we have the State governments. But there can be no more than forty-two State governors in the United States, whereas in France there are eighty-six prefects, and three in Algiers, without counting the administrative authorities in the Regency of Tunis and in the French colonies. The governorships of the American States are elective offices, to be won only by local services and local combinations. But the administrative prizes of French politics can only be secured through the central administration at Paris, under pressure from the all-powerful cliques and combinations in the National Legislature. Briefly, therefore, it seems to me quite clear that under the Third Republic in France the profession of politics is rapidly becoming, if it has not already become, much more easy of access, and, in proportion to the capital of character and of ability required for entering upon it, much more remunerative, than it has ever yet been in the United States, unless perhaps during the domination of Mr. Tweed and the Tammany Ring over the taxpayers of New York. CHAPTER XI IN THE NORD VALENCIENNES It says but little for what Texans call the 'sabe' of the municipal authorities of Valenciennes that this, which ought to be one of the most picturesque and attractive, is really one of the shabbiest historic towns of North-eastern France. The streets are ill-paved and ill-kept, the public buildings are untidy, and the whole place contrasts most unfavourably, from this point of view, with the rich and beautifully cultivated region through which you reach it by the railway from Douai. This is the finest agricultural region in France--the old French Flanders, a 'fat' country as well as a flat. You hardly see a weed between Douai and Valenciennes. Great fields of beetroot are cultivated like flower-gardens, and the green and growing crops are as daintily ordered as the coils and plateaux of flowers with which it is the fashion to adorn dinner-tables _a la Russe_. It is not pleasant to be assured that the industrious dwellers in this land of Goshen are as fond of cock-fighting as the Spaniards, who probably enough introduced the amusement here during their long domination over what is now known as French Flanders, and that they are addicted also in a systematic way to the abominable practice of blinding bullfinches to make them better singers. I am told that in many communes the authorities actually give prizes for the best singing birds thus produced, and that 'blind bullfinch societies' are among the many associations regularly established and nourishing among the fields and villages. The old Flemish love of strong drink also survives here, as is shown by the