There is more of the _beau ideal_ of cottage life in France than in England. One meets with more of those bright and striking points of original character among the peasantry of France in a day, than one would find in England in a month. All over the world cultivation has put nature out of fashion, and man is all the smoother but none the brighter for it; but, however, it sometimes happens that in our wanderings we find little bits of pure unadulterated nature that are worth any price; and when I meet with such, I ask Memory to pick them up and put them in her pocket for me. It is true that she, careless slut, often drops what is good, and hoards up what she had better cast away; but still I have a little treasure in her hands, consisting simply of bright pictures that I have gathered together as I journey on. Things seen for a moment and passed by. A group of children playing; a girl drawing water, a striking effect of light and shade, or the passing away of a storm, will give me more pleasure and remain longer upon my memory than all the graces and attitudes even of a Taglioni. In passing through Normandy alone, a painter, who could sketch rapidly, with taste and imagination to guide him, might soon fill his portfolio with groups that would set him above all the artists in the world. I remember as we drove out of Bernay, there was a girl standing at the window of a cottage by the road-side; she was young, and her form had all the loveliness of youth, the wild grace of nature, and the richness of simplicity. Her hands leaned upon the bar of the window, and she seemed watching the progress of a cloud that flitted across the blue sky, with her eyes raised towards heaven, and her brown hair falling back from her face. She was worth all the Magdalens that ever were painted. The gardens of the Guinguettes, too, are prodigal of undisguised nature. In the evening of a summer Sunday, all the youth of the neighbourhood assemble there to dance away the afternoon, and all is harmony and joy. Nature has full room to act, and she always does it beautifully. I know not well which is the cause and which the effect--whether a French peasant's peculiar amusements render him a better tempered animal than an Englishman of the same class, or whether it is a disposition naturally gentler, that leads him to those amusements. Certain it is, that his amusements are generally milder in their kind, and more good-humoured in their execution than an Englishman's; and I cannot help thinking, that if our country magistrates would but encourage and revive the nearly forgotten rural sports of our ancestors, many good feelings which have been lost; would come back with those innocent pastimes.