and draw down upon my own devoted head the ruinous consequences of it, was an alternative too horrible to be thought of. The only other was acquiescence; and to this I came, in spite of the strong sense of the ludicrous which pressed itself upon me, as I drew a picture of myself forcing my way to the bar of the House of Commons; overpowering, with half-a-dozen porters, the Usher of the Black Rod; and delivering, in spite of remonstrance and resistance, at once my hide-bound bales of Paraguay merchandise, and the oration, verbatim, of the First Consul. But Assumpcion was a great distance from St. Stephen's. I therefore bowed assent to Dr. Francia's proposition, and trusted to the chapter of accidents for providing me, when the time should come, with a suitable apology for having been unable to get into the predicament which he had so graciously prepared for me.

"Having taken leave, the serjeant and grenadiers, heavily laden, followed me home; where I not a little astonished the new-comer, my brother, with the account of the diplomatic interview to which I had been called. I bade defiance to his scepticism on the subject, by making the soldiers unload at his feet the ponderous physical evidence, by which I sustained the truth of my tale.

"At a subsequent interview, Francia made out a long list of commissions for me to execute. I was to bring him gold lace, a cocked hat, a dresssword, a pair of double-barreled pistols, sashes, sabres, soldiers' caps, musical and mathematical instruments, with a very protracted detail of et cæteras. About the procuring of these, however, I had by no means so many misgivings, as in regard to my power of persuading Mr. Speaker and the House of Commons to accede to the political and commercial league, of which the Consul was so full.”—Vol. ii. p. 278–287.

We have called Francia the Robespierre of Paraguay; perhaps in this we wrong the French tyrant; his danger was more continual and his cruelty more justifiable. Francia did not live in the dangerous proximity of a Danton or a St. Juste, and the poor kind-hearted Paraguayans bore no resemblance to the sanguinary sectionnaires of Paris. Yet the South American Dictator went to his grave in peace :-the Frenchman left his head upon a scaffold. With the fall of Robespierre ceased the hideous reign of terror: what futurity has in store for Paraguay we will not attempt to prophesy ; perhaps the fate that has befallen Texas and threatens Mexico. We take leave of our authors with cordial pleasure, heightened by their promise of a further series of "Letters." Should the forthcoming volumes equal these which we have reviewed, the whole series will form one of the most agreeable records of travel which it has been our good fortune to meet with.

ARTICLE VI.

Railroads in France.

De l'Exécution des Chemins de Fer par l'Etat, Paris. M. J. BURAT, 1838.

Des Intérêts Matériels en France. Par M. MICHEL CHEVALIER, Conseiller d'Etat. 8vo. 1838. Paris.

Mémoires publiés :-1. Sur le Chemin de Belgique, par MM. les Délégués de St. Quentin. 2. Par la Compagnie Soumissionaire du Chemin de Paris à Rouen, par la vallée de la Seine. 3. Par la Compagnie Soumissionaire du chemin de Paris à Rouen, par les plateaux. April, May, and June, 1838. 4to. Paris*.

Second Report of the Commissioners appointed to consider and recommend a general system of Railways for Ireland. (July.) 1838.

THE first years which followed the Revolution of July 1830 were not years of prosperity to France: the internal disturbances which called out the national guard and the army to do battle with insurgents in the streets of Paris, the uncertainty of the maintenance of peace in Europe, the fluctuations of public credit, and the barbarous prejudices maintained by her custom-house laws, were the causes which checked the spring of her commerce and her manufactures. Within the last three years political disturbances have ceased; the tariff of the French douanes has been improved in some respects; and a fever of speculation has seized the country, which sweeps everything before it in the pursuit of wealth by the increase of labour.

This change has already produced results not undeserving of attention: the public revenue has risen 122,000,000 francs, or nearly £5,000,000 sterling, since 1830. The increase of commerce-amounting to 36 per cent. in the last ten years—

*The reader may be referred, for further information on these subjects, to M. Léon Faucher's essay "De la Souscription directe dans les Entreprises de Travaux Publics," published in the Revue des Deux Mondes for June 1838; to the Reports addressed to the French Government by MM. Vallée, Défontaine and Kermainget, on the proposed lines of railroad; and to the Reports addressed to the French Chamber, on the same subject, by MM. Dufaure, Vivien, Golbéry, Arago, &c., all made in the present year.

in France, has been surprisingly great, although it is still far from approaching the commerce of Great Britain; and, lastly, the spirit of joint-stock companies, heretofore almost unknown to the French, has spread with such uncommon rapidity, that, without reckoning the number of companies incorporated by the Conseil d'état, the capital of the joint-stock companies, called by the French sociétés en commandite*, amounts (if the money engaged in them was all paid up by the shareholders) to more than a milliard of francs, or £40,000,000 sterling.

But the principal efforts of the government, of the local authorities, and of private companies, have been directed to the improvement of the means of transport. Before 1830, France was far behind most of the countries of Europe in respect to roads and canals. The Royal Roads, as they are termed, which are the great arteries of communication, were barely passable, and in many places absolutely deficient; the departmental roads, which are the principal branches from them, improved very slowly for want of money; and the cross-roads (chemins vicinaux) were broken up by the slightest rain to such depths of mud, that the farmers could not bring their produce to their market-town without a supernumerary team of horses. The manufacturing districts, unlike the country about Manchester and Birmingham, were not intersected by numerous canals to convey their goods from the very doors of the factories; and the French manufacturers attributed the disadvantageous circumstances under which they were compelled to sustain the competition of foreign producers, to the dearness and the difficulty of the means of transport which they could command.

In France the government undertakes to execute what is done elsewhere by private individuals or companies. The sumptuous, though inconvenient, roads which lead the traveller to the approaches of Paris, were constructed by Louis XIV. Napoleon prolonged them and kept them in repair; and by instituting the Board of Works (Administration des

*The kind of company which the French call a société en commandite par actions, is peculiar to France. The shareholders are divided into two distinct classes: 1. the directors or members of the company (associés en nom collectif), who have the responsibility and the conduct of the undertaking: 2. the shareholders (associés comanditaires), whose liability does not extend beyond the amount of the shares they hold.

Ponts et Chaussées), it was his intention to furnish the state with an instrument always ready to execute his great projects of public improvement*. With these precedents, it seems natural that the government, after the revolution of 1830, should have proceeded in the work of completing the roads and canals already begun in France,-a work which it was alone competent to undertake.

The current estimates of the French Board of Works, which amounted to 40,000,000 f. (£1,600,000) in 1831, were raised to 45,000,000 f. (£1,800,000) in 1837. This very considerable sum is devoted to the maintenance of the roads, bridges, and canals. An engineering overseer, who is attached to the administration of each department, directs and manages the works to which the money is applied. Besides these current estimates, a law, passed in 1833, gave rise to a vote of extraordinary supplies for public works which provides for the more important repairs, the completion of undertakings still unfinished, and the construction of new lines of communication. This additional vote, which has been increased by similar laws passed in the years 1835, 1836, 1837, 1838, has now reached as large a sum as 350,000,000f. (£14,000,000 sterling). Out of this fund the Chambers have granted 27,000,000f. for the improvement of the harbours; 64,000,000f. for the amelioration of the river navigation; 63,000,000f. for the completion of the canals begun in 1832,

*It is hardly irrelevant to allude, in this place, to a book which we have for some time desired to notice, as equally creditable to the spirit of its author, and the taste with which it has been gotten up. It has been prepared for publication by M. Céard, the son of the enterprising engineer, who realized one of Napoleon's boldest conceptions, and, with wonderful sagacity and celerity, "carried," to use the emperor's expression, “cannon over the Simplon." The great Simplon road has been imitated and surpassed, since it was made, by other passes of the Alps in Switzerland and the Tyrol, which have been rendered practicable by the able engineers of the Austrian service; but its history, which is very pleasingly narrated, and picturesquely as well as scientifically illustrated, in the "Souvenirs des Travaux du Simplon," derives a powerful interest from its being the first great and successful attempt to render the wildest fastnesses of Nature accessible alike to the humble traveller and the mightiest host, to elude the dangers of the elements, to make the roughest places of the earth smooth, and to unite, by the design of genius and the patience of art, the southern with the northern lines of European intercourse. It is not uninteresting for the traveller, who has just been easily conveyed from Brieg to Domo d'Ossola, to find that 40 years have not elapsed since M. Ceard was scrambling through the snows of the Simplon, with no other guide than his pocket-compass, and no better support than his unconquerable perseverance, and the commands of the First Consul.-We believe that some copies of the work have reached England, and may be seen at Baillière's in Regent Street.

;

to which has been added a vote of 85,000,000f. for a lateral canal to the Garonne between Toulouse and Bourdeaux, and a junction-canal between the Marne and the Rhine lastly, the high-roads have obtained a grant of 107,000,000ƒ. The conseils-généraux in the departments have shown themselves ready to follow up these measures; and the sums which they have voted for the extension of the departmental roads cannot be calculated at less than 60,000,000f. When the works now undertaken, and in progress, are finished, there will be in France nearly 8000 leagues of high-roads of the first-class (routes royales), 8500 leagues of high-roads of the second-class (routes départmentales), and 850 leagues of canals. An unbroken line of internal navigation will be opened from Havre to Marseilles, and from Strasburgh to Hâvre: and it must be owned that there are few instances of such great efforts made by any nation within the narrow limits of a few

years.

The principal deficiency in the means of communication in France is celerity, and the consequent saving of time. The French diligences rarely attain a speed of more than two leagues per hour. The steam-boats have great difficulty in ascending against the stream of the larger rivers. The only canal on which the system of fly-boats has been borrowed from the Scotch and English canals, or at least borrowed with success, is the Canal du Midi, from Toulouse to Cette. The mails indeed are transported at an average speed of three leagues an hour; but they still require four days to cross the kingdom in its widest extent from north to south. The use of the telegraph is confined to the business of the government; and the great object of modern improvement is to facilitate the intercourse of man for the business of daily life. France, with her vast extent of territory, is evidently one of the countries in which rapid communications are most imperatively required. But France is notoriously behind other countries in this very respect. The railroads* which have

From Paris to St. Germain

44

of these the railway from Andrézieux to Roanne is insolvent; and the railway