the joy of living, were amongst them, for a more undecorated interior and duller persons I have never met, and yet, with so much comfortlessness, there was not a touch of vulgarity. The squireen was a rough son of the soil, but you accepted him as the animals of the field; you felt he belonged to the land, and, as such, claimed indulgence. You would not elect to pass your days in his society, any more than you would care to have a bear prancing about your drawing-room, but you instinctively felt his superiority to the town fop, who thinks himself a very fine fellow, with a little tailoring and a vast amount of pretension. The second _hobereau_ dwelt in the same department, but I visited him with very different results. I was invited to lunch, and my host drove me seven miles in a pony-cart. Here, also, were an imposing park and avenue, and an immense manor, which seemed all windows. There was among the guests a magistrate from Poictiers, who was witty as only a Frenchman can be witty. Our host was a charming, bright-eyed, lean little old man, full of vivacity, of charm, and intellectual alertness. He was voluble, and avid for information, and walked me up and down a delightful _berceau_ to obtain my views of the woman’s question and the relative positions of the young French and English girl. He even pressed me to contrast the French and English novel, and said he greatly preferred Scott to Zola—an opinion I endorsed with fervour. People drove over from neighbouring places, and we were quite a large party at lunch. The talk was capital—local, but interesting; no cheap gossip, but plenty of genial wit, anecdote, and repartee. The women were dowdily dressed, as provincial Frenchwomen frequently are. I judged them as dense, impervious to ideas, utterly uncultivated, never, in all probability, having read anything except the thin religious literature on which the virtuous ladies of France nourish their minds; but they could well hold their own in conversation, could cap a phrase with elegant neatness, and the hostess deserved well of her kind for the evidence she furnished of a perfectly ordered household. It would, however, be a mistake to credit them with grace because they are Frenchwomen. Nothing comes with such a shock upon the traveller in France, used to the feminine grace and charm and witchery of dress in Paris, as the dowdiness and want of ease, the total lack of taste in dress, the heavy figures and unexpressive faces of many of the women of the provinces. They dress shabbily, will even wear cotton gloves and badly cut boots when they consider themselves extremely exclusive, and carry off these defects of costume with a singular and unmistakable air of distinction. The commoner kind prefer to shine in fashions and colours unfamiliar to the eye of Paris; and, as a rule, look clumsy and obtrusive in their fine feathers. The same applies to the men. These, when they prefer to be shabby and roughly arrayed, look far better than