for he began writing a book in Toulouse because he had so little else to do, and he had not attempted anything of the kind in Glasgow, so far as we know, for five years; but, at all events, for the wealth of illustration which his new book exhibits, the variety of its points of view, the copiousness of its data drawn from personal observation, the world is greatly indebted to the author's residence abroad. And had Smith lived to finish his work on Government we should probably have had more results of his observation of France, but the _Wealth of Nations_ itself contains many. M'Culloch has expressed astonishment that for all his long stay in France Smith should have never perceived any foreshadowings of the coming Revolution, such as were visible even to a passing traveller like Smollett. But Smith was quite aware of all the gravities and possibilities of the situation, and occasionally gave expression to anticipations of vital change. He formed possibly a less gloomy view of the actual condition of the French people than he would have heard uttered in Quesnay's room at Versailles, because he always mentally compared the state of things he saw in France with the state of things he knew in Scotland, and though it was plain to him that France was not going forward so fast as Scotland, he thought the common opinion that it was going backward to be ill founded.[190] Then France was a much richer country, with a better soil and climate, and "better stocked," he says, "with all those things which it requires a long time to raise up and accumulate, such as great towns and convenient and well-built houses both in town and country."[191] In spite of these advantages, however, the common people in France were decidedly worse off than the common people of Scotland. The wages of labour were lower--the real wages--for the people evidently lived harder. Their dress and countenance showed it at once. "When you go from Scotland to England the difference which you may remark between the dress and countenance of the common people in the one country and in the other sufficiently indicates the difference in their condition. The contrast is still greater when you return from France." In England nobody was too poor to wear leather shoes; in Scotland even the lowest orders of men wore them, though the same orders of women still went about barefooted. But "in France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women; the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes and sometimes barefooted."[192] Another little circumstance struck him as a proof that the classes immediately above the rank of labourer were worse off in France than they were here. The taste for dressing yew-trees into the shape of pyramids and obelisks by "that very clumsy instrument of sculpture" the gardener's shears had gone out of fashion in this country, merely because it got too common, and was discarded by the rich and vain.