‘Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail;’
the smiling landscape waves on either side to a considerable extent; you pass a shepherd tending his flock, or a number of peasants returning from market in a light long waggon, like a hen-coop; the bells of the horses jingle, the postilion cracks his whip, or speaks to them with a friendly voice, and the _Diligence_ rolls on, at the rate of six miles an hour towards Paris!—Travelling is much cheaper in France than in England. The distance from Dieppe to Rouen is thirty-six miles, and we only paid eight francs, that is, six shillings and eight pence a-piece, with two francs more to the guide and postilion, which is not fourpence a mile, including all expenses. On the other hand, you have not the advantage of taking an outside place at half-price, as a very trifling difference is made in this respect.
The Diligence itself cuts a very awkward figure, compared with our stage-coaches. There is much the same difference as between a barge and a pleasure-boat; but then it is roomy and airy, and remarkably easy in its motion. In the common mechanic arts the French attend to the essential only; we are so fond of elegance and compactness, that we sacrifice ease to show and finish. The harness of the horses is made of ropes or rusty leather, and it is wonderful how they get along so well as they do, three, or sometimes four a-breast. The apples of the orchards hang over the road-side, which speaks well for the honesty of the inhabitants, or the plenty of the country. The women appear to work a good deal out of doors. Some of the older ones have strangely distorted visages, and those horrid Albert-Durer chins and noses, that have been coming together for half a century. The younger ones are handsome, healthy-looking, animated; a better sort of English country girls. The character of French coquetry prevails even here, and you see a young peasant-girl, broiling in the sun, with a blue paper cap on her head, that glitters like the smoothest satin, and that answers the purpose of finery just as well. I observed that one man frequently holds the plough and guides the horses without any one else to assist him, as they do in Scotland, and which in England they hold to be an agricultural heresy. In Surrey, where an English gentleman had hired a Scotch servant to try this method, the boors actually collected round the man in the church-yard on Sunday, and pointed at him, crying, ‘That’s he who ploughs and drives the horses himself!’ Our prejudices are no less on the alert, and quite as obstinate against what is right as what is wrong. I cannot say I was quite pleased with my barber at Dieppe, who inserted a drop of citron juice in the lather I was to shave with, and converted it into a most agreeable perfume. It was an association of ideas, a false refinement, to which I had not been accustomed, and to which I was averse. The best excuse I could find for my reluctance to be pleased, was that at the next place where the same thing was attempted, the operator, by some villainous mixture, almost stunk me to death!