MITSGRAVE'S PILGRIMAGE INTO DAUPHINE. * Tin Reverend George Musgrave is known

by two publications descriptive of excursions in France, which exhibited some of the best qualities of a traveller. He has a genial spirit, prompting him to companionship with his fellow men, and the power which genialitypossesses of bringing out the best natural qualities and the special knowledge of such chance companions. He takes a learned interest in many things in literature, as well as in the fine or the useful arts, so that go where he will he has a pursuit. In the country, there is agriculture ; in towns, there are the domestic architecture and the chefs d'ceuvre of the middle ages, especially the ecclesiastical buildings in which France is so rich. At a place like Lyons, he visits the manufactories with the zest of a silk.-weaver, and investigates the condition of the workmen with • A Pilgrimage into Datiphing ; comprising a Visit to the Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse; with Anecdotes, Incidents, and Sketches from Twenty Departments in Prance. By the Reverend George M. Musgrave, M.A., Author of A Ramble through Normandy," Ste. In two volumes. Published by Hurst and Blackett.

the zeal of a sanitary commissioner ; in the wine countries, he not only inquires into the process of manufacture and the statistical results, but practically tests the nature of the produce. He is a draughtsman and a musician, with a taste for bibliography, and of course for matters connected with his own profession,—the position character, and conduct of French ecclesiastics and the

working of the monastic system, whieh he had an opportunity of observing at the Grande Chartreuse—not perhaps under the most

favourable circumstances, on amount of the strictness of the order.

These qualities argue an active-minded man, and influence the tourist's style as well as his observations. Without anything re markable in the way of power or /pleasantry, the composition is plain, and with a living spirit, like that of a man who acquires his language from conversation as much as from books. The profession of the author may be too visible in commentary on passing incidents, which if at all deserving so extended remarks are out of place in a long journey, where more appropriate fads will occupy sufficient room. For the same reason, his exhaustive process, leading to accumulation of particulars, may be carried too far. Hence the real substance of the book is somewhat out of proportion to its bulk. The plan of Mr. Musgrave's tour was one which might be adopted with advantage by a person familiar with the language, and not objecting to rough it in the usual way of cross-country travelling a generation ago. Our tourist took advantage of the rail to any place which was worth seeing or had a neighbourhood worth exploring, and in the latter case trusted himself to country vehicles and country inns. In pursuance of his plan, Mr. Musgrave started from Paris in a direction rather North of East as far as Buzancy, and then struck Southward to Lyons as another head-quarters ; visiting Rheims, traversing the ground made memorable by Napoleon campaign of 1814, and exploring the champagne and burgundy districts. From Lyons the principal excursion was to the Grande Chartreuse, the traveller returiung to Paris by way of Orleans. Much of the journey was accessible by rail or steam-boat, if only by a branch line, as at Rheims and Chartres ; yet it is curious to see how little visited the country is by travellers, except the places regularly set down for them. Even at a town like Dijon the English are rarely seen : at Vogeot, the facile prin ceps of Burgundy, at sight of whose clos it is said the French regiments present arms as to the sovereignty of wine, the manager of the vineyard "had not seen an English gentleman for many years," though the vineyard is not above a furlong from the station : at Varennes, so fatal to Louis the Sixteenth, no one would change a sovereign ; the most extensive dealer looking at it curiously as a medal, but refusing to recognize it as a coin. It was only after exhausting the men of business that the clerical incumbent—a man of taste, learning, and experience—advanced the needful on English gold. It is probable, however, that in a small country-town in England as much difficulty would be found with a Napoleon, though its value in francs is expressed upon the coin.

There is a good deal of information upon almost all the subjects that turn up, and they are numerous enough in the course of such a tour ; but we think that which relates to wine is the most precise. A good deal has been said and written about adulterations lately, and the fraud is doubtless carried too far. Still, many people will not have a pure article ; in some instances they cannot. Such is the ease with "the spring-dew of the spirit, the heart's rain." In England we will not drink champagne without brandy, it cannot be drunk anywhere without sugar. "After having already detailed so much on this subject under the head of Epernay, I shall limit my statements to the facts that fell under my notice when endeavouring to discover, in the very centre of the producing districts, what constituted the genuine champagne wine. "'You never drink this wine entire,' said Monsieur L.; your nation rejects it in that pure and primitive form in which it is drunk in France and many other countries. The Russians consume enormous supplies of it ; and they, of all the Northerners, (and you know what intense cold is felt in Russia,) drink it without the slightest admixture of brandy. Whereas, to forty gallons of pure champagne wine we are obliged, by the requisitions of the British agents, to add at least five (but more frequently from ten to twelve) gallons of brandy; while for German orders we infuse half a gallon only in that quantity. We consider the true wine spoilt by this mixture ;

but the English p_alate demands it, is only in champagne but in other wines likewise. Here, for instance, is a letter from Duff Gordon in which

he guarantees to me the delivery of a certain quantity of sherry f;oni Cadiz, without any of the admixture usually introduced as a matter of course into the sherries sent to England.t All our champagne wine is sweetened artificially; but that is indispensable, as the unsweetened juice of the grape would find no purchaser.' "He here pointed out nine casks lying in the court-yard of his premises, containing a ton of white sugar from the Isle of Bourbon, every pound of which cost ninepenee. Hereupon I requested him to show me some of the genuine liquor, in the state that is in which it leaves the pressoir after the regular fermentation processes, and before the sweetening syrup is added. Ile presently selected a bottle from some bins at hand, opened it, and poured out a glassful. A more unpalatable drink under the denomination of wine I never tasted. It was like sauterne mixed with wormwood.

"'Now,' said Monsieur L., I have taken out two glasses from this bottle. Here is a bottle of sweetening syrup, from which I will fill up the deficiency you have just seen created.' "I witnessed this filling ; and he then handed the bottle to a cellarman, who corked and strung it in my presence.

"'That,' said he 'will at no distant date beeome a bottle of primest quality : it is the Yerzenay growth.' "

Our author dined with his new friend and his partner.

"'And now,' said mine host, let me offer you some of the best wine we have to boast of at Rheims.'

"The string and. wire were instantly cut, and away went the cork on its atrial travels. Our glasses overflowed with the creamy stream, and my lips with compliments on its unsurpassable excellence immediately afterwards. It was indeed beautiful wine. When all the eulogium which such is creditable sample elicited had been exhausted, and the sober certainty alone remained of having lived thus to clasp perfection,' the announcement was quietly made of the bottle just emptied being the identical one from which I had endeavoured in vain to drink a quarter of a glassful two hours previously! " It bad not been iced, but placed, after my first introduction to it, in a very cold vault, which sent it to table sufficiently chilled, while the thermometer out-doors indicated eighty-five degrees of heat.

" This was a pleasant mode of illustration. The syrup renders the wino palatable ; the body? the peculiar flavour of the grape, the effervescence, and general good condition of the generous draught, are wholly independent of the sweetening ingredient ; and it was impossible to conceive how such wine could admit of improvement. " And yet,' exclaimed my veritable Amphitryon,' ' there is not a drop of brandy in it. You have tasted, what you ought invariably to taste, the pure wine.'

"Thus Thus ended my inquiry into the sparkling fluid."

Bondy, celebrated in the world of tale and melodrame for its forest and the "Dog of Montargis " has a manufactory in the utilitarian way, which might be worth a visit by some one eonnetted with the new drainage of London. In this country attempts to utilize the refuse of towns have not apparently succeeded ; but what a French company can do, it would seem Englishmen might be able to do, if they were not installed in a public) department.

"The firm consists of a rich and powerful company, monopolizing all

the night-soil of Paris, fifteen miles distant ; and the premises exhibit an accumulation of deposits from that gay and brilliant capital, from which the nose of a wheat or turnip grower could alone inhale grateful aromata. The soil undergoes a thorough incorporation; and the decaying vegetable and animal matters reach by slow degrees a complete fermentation ; the whole process occupying a period of from two to three years, when, at length, a perfectly natural, homogeneous, and unvarying manure is concreted, free from smell, and calculated to increase, to an extent hitherto unattainable by artificial admixtures, the productiveness of comparatively poor land, and a fortiori that of a generous and prolific soil.

"The occupiers of land on the banks of the Seine and Marne, (the chief

gainers, as I observed, by the proximity, of their farms to the great metropolis,) have made experiments within the last three years with foreign guano and the pulverized matter above mentioned, on alternate breadths of wheat growth, extending the test over a very considerable width, and marked diversity of soil ; and the result has invariably shown that the yield of crops manured with the Bondy desiccated night-soil exceeded by twenty per cent that which was realized from fields unsparingly bestrewed with bone-dust, soot, rape, oil-cake, and guano. This would lead us to believe that the article thus chemically projected from the tanks and reservoirs of Bondy, avails for mere than a mere top-dressing. An increased energy is infused into the soil, the operation of which is far less transitory than that of the ordinary substitutes for good • rot-dung' ; and alters the nature, texture, and colour of the soil upon which it acts as an alterative, while it improves and enriches it with fresh organic matter and secretions of highly fertilizing quality,. A farmer occupying a small estate in the neighbourhood of Evreux had just harvested his crop of eolza rape, when I was returning in August 1865 from Central France ; and his testimony was conclusive on this subject. Having set apart a tract of land corresponding exactly in extent with one on which a fellow agriculturist had sown coiza and foreign guano, he dressed it with the Bondy powder exclusively. The average product from the guanoed field was sixteen bushels to the English acre that from the terre poudree, fifty-four; without any appearance of that exhaustion which. the French cultivators impute as a serious objection to the employment of the Chincha Islands' deposit."

This report of a conversation with a workman at Lyons presents some curious facts in connexion with French artisan life, and indicates the ready way in which the traveller gathered information.

"I found an opportunity of entering into quiet conversation with a weaver ; a middle-aged, intelligent, humble-minded man, who gave me to understand that, bad as the luck of his brethren might appear, the L3ronnese work was the best to take. He said, the average earnings of an ablebodied man at the loom might amount to throe shillings ;and fourpenoe a day ; equivalent, when the rate of lodgings and provisions in Lyons is considered, to one pound seven shillings for mic days' work.

"It is all piece-work; so that the workman receiving pay on this scale cannot depend on the prospect of seventy pounds a year ; for if orders be slack, or any political or mercantile troubles occasion a temporary cessation of business all pay stops instantly. Each man sets up his own loom in his hired apartment, keeps it in repair, and takes his supply of raw material for the completion of the order from the master-manufacturer, whose artist has designed the pattern, and whose card-stamper has arranged it on the pasteboard strips already described. In houses where a large amount of commonplace productions are wrought, it is not unusual to find two hundred individuals working in four floors. Ventilation is very inadequately cared for; the foul air and humidity in winter, and the heat and languor in summer, are most baleful in influence on health. Hence, young persons of twenty three acquire of age acque the appearance of those at eix or eight and thirty ; the girls become consumptive ; the youths contract a dwarfish, old-maniah,' and decrepit aspect arising from spinal affection and pulmonary disorders ; and one feeble and stunted generation is succeeded by another. The Sabbath is indeed to them a rest and a delight.' They enjoy no other holiday or respite. The loom, like time and tide, stays for no man ; and fatedays and fasts interfere not with the flight of the shuttle. The work is be spoken, spoken to be finished by a fixed date; and the employers know how soon, even toan hour, the piece given out ought to be finished. My informant said that on an average the morals of the multitude of workpeople were decidedly good, and that a man known to be leading a disreputable life suffered in repute among their body accordingly; that there were circulating libraries in each district, kept for the express purpose of disseminating useful knowledge among all classes of the weaving community; lecture-rooms were opened after working-hours for the enlightenment of as many as wished to benefit by. instruction in art and science ; meetings were frequent for the practice of singing from note, and of drawing, (especially in the Schools of Design,) and also for instrumental music ; that a lively interest was felt on their behalf by all classes of the wealthier citizens, who were continually making vast liberal efforts to befriend and sustain the younger children, and nursing and

unemployed mothers; that shopkeepers gave them very long credit, and served them on terms of kind consideration; that he himself paid his baker's and butcher's bill every half-year, and, on the whole, preferred Lyons to Paris, not only in respect of steady employment, but likewise of health and common comforts; that he would rather be a journeyman weaver in the former city than be established in the capital as a shopkeeper ;

that, say what men might of the splendour of Paris, it was decidedly a very unhealthy place for workpeople ; especially for those engaged, as weavers and other machinery folk are, in one undeviating course of the closest sedentary labour; that provisions in Paris were altogether inferior, and adulteration in groceries, bread-stuffs, and drinks, universal; the water was very bad, and the wine, (vin ordinaire,) made of everything and anything excerpt grape-juice ; that, certainly, there was but too much trickery of this kind in Lyons also, but as regarded water and cleanliness, the general expectation of a high-service supply of fine water throughout the Croix Rousse had encouraged sanguine hopes of the health of the population in that quarter being most materially improved."