The people are frugal and laborious; masons, carpenters and BOOK other artisans leave their country, and obtain employment CXLIV. in most parts of France. Such are some of the characters by which the department of Upper Vienne may be distinguished. The district of Bellac may be first described, because it Bellac is contiguous on the north to the department of Indre. The town stands on the declivity of a steep hill above the Vinçon, a small river or rather a stream; it possesses several leather works, some paper mills, linen and woollen manufactories. The vineyards in the neighbourhood yield wines of a good quality. A fine monument of the druidical worship may be observed at no great distance from Bellac, or still nearer the village of Borderie. Dorat is a small town of three thousand inhabitants; the people manufacture cloth and cotton stuffs, they also carry on a trade in weights, measures and barometers. The village of Darnac contains more than two thousand inhabitants, it has risen into importance from its glass and porcelain works. It may not be difficult to infer from the principal places some notion of the commerce and industry in the district. The Vienne waters a short way above Limoges, an agree- Limoges. able valley covered with artificial meadows and bounded by heights. The capital of Upper Vienne rises like an amphitheatre on one of the hills near the same valley; the streets are steep and crooked; if they are clean, it may be attributed to the streams that water the town; its situation on a height renders the air keen and pure, the chief cause perhaps of the health of the inhabitants, and the beauty for which the women are famed. Squares and different public walks occupy the highest part of the city; one of the former stands on the site of a Roman amphitheatre. The church of Saint Martial may be admired for its lofty spires, it belonged formerly to an abbey of which the ruins still remain; the cathedral is an imposing Gothic edifice, but the church of Saint Martin is perhaps the finest and certainly the oldest of the three. It might be difficult to discover a fourth public building at all worthy of notice; Limoges possesses, however, other titles to celebrity; it may be sufficient to mention the royal college, the mu CXLIV. BOOK seum of antiquities and natural history, the public library, the gratuitous school of drawing and geometry in their application to the arts, the dispensary, the lunatic asylum, the agricultural society, and what is not perhaps the least useful, the society for the relief of prisoners. At certain seasons, the town is crowded with strangers and country people who attend the races, in which the only horses that are allowed to run, are those bred in the department and nine others in the neighbourhood ;* much about the same time, a cattle show takes place, and prizes are awarded to those who exhibit the best oxen. The number of woollen manufactories amounts to thirty-two, and there are not fewer than eleven porcelain works. The distinguished men that the town has produced, are the carmelite Honoré de Sainte Marie, the author of three quarto volumes on different military orders, Dorat the poet, the chancellor D'Aguesseau, and marshal Jourdan. Antiquity Ratiatum, a town which Ptolemy mentions, appears to of Limoges. have been built on the site of Limoges; the Romans gave it the name of Limovices, by which they also designated the ancestors of the present Limousins. It must have been a flourishing city in Cæsar's time, for he says that the territory furnished ten thousand men to the confederation of the Gauls. It was laid waste in the fifth century by the Visigoths; the English obtained possession of it in 1860 by virtue of the treaty of Bretigny, but it was restored nine years afterwards to the kings of France. Saint-Leonard, the second town in point of importance in the district, may be about seven leagues above Limoges, in the direction of the Vienne; it is encompassed with agreeable walks, it contains several manufactories, and at least six thousand inhabitants. Rochechouard. Rochechouard lies towards the west of Limoges, near the frontier of the department; it is built on the declivity of a hill and commanded by an old castle, which the English besieged in vain during the reign of Charles the Fifth. The The departments of Allier, Cher, Creuse, Correze, Indie, Indre and Loire, Nievre, Saone and Loire, and Vienne. + Cæsar de Bello Gallica, liber VII et VIII. present name of the town is derived from Rupes Cavardi, the ancient name of the castle. Twelve burghs are situated in the district of which Rochechouard is the capital; the country abounds in iron ore; several iron works and manufactories account for the industry and comparative wealth of the inhabitants. Saint-Julian, a small city, but more populous than the last, is encompassed with ramparts; it rises like an amphitheatre on a hill at the confluence of the Vienne and the Glanne; it has twelve cloth and two flannel manufactories, five paper mills and two porcelain works. The district of Saint-Yriex, not less industrious than that of Saint-Julian, abounds in kaolin, of which the discovery made in 1770 by Villars, a druggist at Bordeaux, has greatly increased the number of porcelain works in France; almost all of them are supplied with the substance from the district of Saint-Yriex. The town, although wealthy, is ill built, it owes its origin to a monastery founded in the sixth century in honour of the Saint whose name it bears. BOOK CXLIV. ment of The Correze takes its source, and falls into the Vezere in Departa mountainous department, in one ill provided with good Correze. roads or navigable rivers. The inhabitants fatten several thousand oxen in winter, and export them to Paris in the spring of the year; they supply besides the maritime towns of Bayonne and Bordeaux with salt meat, and furnish walnut oil to different departments. These products indicate at least the abundance of walnut trees, and the richness of the pastures; the country may be divided into two regions, the one on the south-east, the other on the north-west of the road to Limoges. If a traveller ascend the Correze, he may observe on the right of the same road, mountainous and sterile districts which occupy nearly two-thirds of the department, and which the peasantry call the Montagne; the second or the low country, as it has been termed, consists of cultivated lands and fruitful vineyards, but it does not produce enough of grain to supply the consumption. In the former, the scenery is wild and romantic, and the inhabitants are thinly scattered; in the latter the population is more concentrated, almost all the ground is cultivated, and mills are erected on the different streams. BOOK CXLIV. Uzerche. Tulle. Brives-la The road from Limoges traverses the small but neat town of Uzerche, which does not contain more than two thousand inhabitants, it stands on the declivity of a hill above the Vezere; all the houses are covered with slates, the most of them are flanked with turrets which give the town a singular appearance, and attest its antiquity. Beyond Uzerche, the same road passes through a picturesque country, intersected with the ravines and precipices that are formed by the last heights in the mountainous region. The cathedral of Tulle was built in the ninth century, it is chiefly remarkable for the height of a tower, which may be seen from the road at the distance of three miles. The town owes its origin to a monastery, that dates from the seventh century, and to the destruction of another and more ancient city, of which all that now remains, are the ruins of an amphitheatre and other buildings about half a mile from the walls. The present city is dirty and ill built, the streets are crooked and narrow, and in many places very steep. There are several paper-mills, woollen manufactories, distilleries and leather works; the inhabitants carry on a trade in walnut oil. Tulle has produced few distinguished men, and certainly none during the last or present century, but it may be perhaps worth while to mention Stephen Baluze, who was sent into exile for having written a genealogical history of the house of Auvergne, in which he maintained the claims of cardinal Bouillon, who, it was asserted, could not be subject to the king, because his father was prince of Sedan before Tulle was united to France. The Correze waters the neat town of Brives-la-Galliarde, Galliarde. the birthplace of cardinal Dubois, general Treilhard and the unfortunate marshal Brune. Lubersac contains about three thousand inhabitants; general Souham may be mentioned among its distinguished townsmen. Turenne, at the distance of three leagues from the chief town in the department, has given its name to one of the greatest generals that France has produced. The population does not exceed sixteen hundred individuals; the ruins of a fortress, probably one of the most ancient in France, are situated on a steep rock that commands the town; the largest tower in the same fortress may be about a hundred feet in height, the country people call it the Tower of Cæsar. Few places of any consequence can be mentioned in the mountainous region; Ussel, the capital of a district, is surrounded by arid summits, and watered by the Sarsonne, on which a bold and elegant bridge has been erected since the revolution. Bort may be about five leagues on the southeast of the last town, it stands in a fine position on the right bank of the Dordogne, it boasts of being the birthplace of Marmontel. The Rue, a small river, forms a fine cascade about a mile and a half below Bort, the country people call it the fall of the Saule. BOOK CXLIV. Ussel. ment of The ramifications connected with Cantal extend over the Departdepartment, which bears the name of the mountain-a no- Cantal. ble monument of the volcanic convulsions, to which the centre and the south of France were exposed at a period, when the soil was covered with the sea. The sides of these heights formed by porphyry, basalt, lava, scoria and pumice are frequently beaten by violent winds, and the snow on their summits remains nearly eight months in the year. Limpid springs issuing from the depths of the earth, are enlarged or changed into rivulets; the numerous cascades, which they form in different directions, add to the beauty of varied landscapes. The same streams, precipitated into low valleys, fertilize the pastures which they water, and give rise to several rivers. The northern declivities furnish the principal streams of the Rue, a feeder of the Dordogne which receives also the Maronne and the Cere that descend from the western valleys. The eastern plains may be considered the sources of the Truyere, which throws itself into the Lot, of the Alagnon which advances in an opposite direction, and falls into the Arcueil above its junction with the Allier. The lands on the south are watered by different streams that enlarge the Truyere. The thermal and medicinal springs which rise from the sides of the same mountains, are supposed to be salutary in different diseases. The valleys watered by the streams and rivers which have been now enumerated, are in general fruitful, but the most of the grain that the inhabitants consume, is cultivated in |