(answering to our Chapels of Ease.)

Funds have

been voted for 300 more. To these may be added 8,500 Theological Students, intended for the priesthood. The Archbishop of Paris has 40,000 francs; the other Archbishops 15,000 francs each; and the Bishops 10,000 francs. The salaries of the VicarsGeneral and Canons vary from 2000 to 4000 francs; those of Cures from 1200 to 1500 francs. The number of Convents for Nuns of different orders is about 3000, and the number of Nuns about 24,000. There are also in France convents of Trappists, Carthusians, Capuçins, and Benedictines; besides the priests of St. Sulpice. The total cost of the catholic clergy in France in 1846, was estimated at 36,318,900 francs. There are 411 Calvinist Ministers; 230 Lutherans ; 8 Jewish Rabbins; and 86 Ministers of other denominations.

The churches are frequently of a cruciform structure, I suppose, as a short tower, springing from the centre, is their prevailing feature. The face of the country is variegated with an endless series of petty freeholds of all sizes and shapes, from a pennyworth, they say, to a thousand pounds' worth and upwards, without anything to denote a division, except the

difference that exists in the course of cultivation, I saw hardly any cows, and how the sheep are kept from straying upon the wheat and other white crops about the fallows where they generally congregate, passes my comprehension.

Women appeared more frequently employed in agricultural processes than the men, wearing huge handkerchiefs upon their heads, clogs and coarse stockings, presenting any thing rather than the idea of their being agreeable specimens of the fair sex.

The country, in short, the whole way seemed to be a sort of second edition of Salisbury Plain, and if the rest of France resemble it, where the thirty-four millions of inhabitants that enliven its surface stow themselves, is a mystery past my comprehension. And then the right of road to a freehold, the size of a counterpane, half a mile from the common highway, over properties of equal or smaller extent, must be an incorporeal hereditament of a most extraordinary character, and if enjoyed without trespass or heart-burning, must be the very triumph of "Liberté Egalité, et Fraternité." But there must be something more in all this than meets the eye, mental or bodily, or the people would never have sat down with

its apparent inconveniences, so long and so easily as they have done since the introduction of the present system of property in 1791. In that year Mirabeau, with his parting breath, dictated reasons for depriving individuals of the power to make wills that favoured unequal inheritances, earnestly entreating that those, his last words might be read in the Assembly, which they were, and carried by acclamation, and have been acted upon ever since, with a singular alteration in 1794, six months before the fall of Robespierre.

It indulged the possessors of property with a power to dispose of a small portion of it, but upon condition that it should not be exercised in favour of their own families, but of strangers. So the law remained until the Consulate restored some degree of common sense to revolutionary legislation, and in March, 1800, parents were permitted to dispose of a certain portion of their estate in favour of their children.

Then came the Code Napoleon, and a slight amendment introduced under the Restoration, by which a parent is allowed to limit to a grandchild or a nephew the share to which a child or a brother may be entitled, which leaves the law as it is at present, and as may be found more fully stated under date 8th inst.

In April, 1791, the original law was passed after a long discussion, rendered remarkable by Talleyrand reading from the tribune the speech in favour of the new law, which Mirabeau, who died the same morning, had intended to deliver. The law was also supported by Petion and Robespierre, for the purpose was, as Mirabeau confessed, that of laying the axe to the very root of aristocracy, a mischievous tree, the lopping of a few branches of which, would do no good. That was the object then, and its success has been written in lines of blood upon the face of France and of Europe! The same purpose seems to exist in England, probably with the school of Messrs. Bright, Cobden, & Co., and it will be our own fault, if, with the fate of France before our eyes, those gentlemen are allowed to carry their conceited and crabbed ends into effect. I trust the legislature will take time by the forelock, and give them checkmate in their notable scheme of swamping the county constituencies with their new-fangled forty shillings freeholders, by enacting that the forty shillings of Henry the 6th's time, be increased to-something like its relative value in Queen Victoria's reign-twenty pounds or upwards, (see Blackstone, vol. 1.)

If the principle be a correct one, as I believe it is, that the law of property always determines the form of government, then, the French law is revolutionary, always was, and always will be; its only congenial element and product, being red republicanism, socialism, and communism, introducing endless misery and confusion, casting the apple of discord, into the cauldron of despair.

However, we had nothing to complain of, in our reception from the few habitants, we did meet. We were evidently expected-a favoured race,-and our course continued to be one constant ovation, until darkness drew over all things its dusky hood, soon after which, we reached the spacious terminus, which marked our entrance into the gay, glittering, universally talked of, and thought of, revolutionary city of Paris, where, calling a citadine or French cab, we were speedily whisked away to Meurice's Hotel, about a mile off, through streets, and by shops, that, in that fitful, and uncertain light, might easily have passed muster, for London streets and shops; and where, after having been put into possession of our singular sleeping apartments, sat down, with other English faces, to a substantial repast, furnished to us, by M.

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