The town is surrounded by the _châteaux_ of the gentry. Very few of the right owners live in them, and many of them are going fast to decay. Every where I see the dove-cotes demolished, which were the earliest victims of the first revolution; and I cannot lament their overthrow. The game-law now established gives liberty to every one to kill what game he may find upon his own ground, or that which he rents; and if any person, without leave, shoot on his neighbour’s ground, he pays for each offence a fine of ten livres. How superior is this simple regulation, conceived in a spirit of equity, to a perplexed and odious code of penal statutes for the preservation of hares and partridges! Let me bring you acquainted with two other laws, which owe their birth to the revolution.----One of them is just passed, and exempts from the punishment of death, even after delivery, women who are tried for any crime when pregnant. “Can a woman so situated,” asks the framer of the decree, “become a mother in that tranquil state of mind, which is so necessary to ensure the physical good of her offspring? Besides, could we forget humanity, does not the republic act impolitically in probably preventing the birth of a new citizen; (for women in this condition almost ever miscarry) or in condemning the mother to bring forth a half-formed being, which is usually distorted in mind and body, incapable of serving the state, and of propagating its species?”----I am sure I hear you join me in unqualified applause of the principle of this humane and considerate institution.----The other interdicts a duel, in all cases whatever, under the penalty of death to the survivor or survivors.----The late king of Prussia said, that to determine whether single combat, in certain cases, ought, or ought not, to be abolished, required a congress of all the monarchs in Europe. Had he lived to witness the shocking grossness of speech and manners, which prevail among modern Frenchmen, for want of this or some other curb of a private nature, I think his uncertainty would have vanished, without troubling the crowned heads to assemble.----At least mine has. The French often boast of the unexplored subterranean treasures of their country; and some among them are sanguine enough to believe that they shall rival England in her collieries. There are near Quimper two veins of what is called _charbon de terre_ worked; but I have been assured by an English surgeon, that on analysis he found it to be _not coal_. I picked up a piece, one day, at the mouth of a pit, carried it home, and put it into the fire, where it became red-hot, without consuming. To what use it is applied by those who extract it, I know not. It is, however, certain, that they have several times been industrious in trying to find out miners among the English prisoners; and in a few instances have succeeded in seducing our men to go and work at some mines (of what I do not know) which are said to lie near Brest.