Lyons, Tuesday, June 17, 1851.

I came out of Paris through the spacious Boulevards,[B] which, under various second appellations, stretch eastward from the Madeleine Church nearly to the barrier, and then bend southward, near the beautiful column which marks the site and commemorates the fall of the Bastile, so long the chief dungeon wherein Despotism stifled Remonstrance and tamed the spirit of Freedom. Liberty in France is doomed yet to undergo many trials—nay, is now enduring some of them—but it is not within the compass of probability that another Bastile should ever rear its head there, nor that the absolute power and abject servitude which it fitly symbolized should ever be known there hereafter. Very near it on the south lies the famous Faubourg St. Antoine, inhabited mainly by bold, free-souled working-men, who have repeatedly evinced their choice to die free rather than live slaves, and in whom the same spirit lives and rules to-day. I trust that dire alternative will never again be forced upon them, but if it should be there is no Bastile so impregnable, no despotism so fortified by prescription, and glorious recollections, and the blind devotion of loyalty, as those they have already leveled to the earth.The Paris Station of the Lyons Railway is at the eastern barrier of the City. I received here another lesson in French Railroad management. I first bought at the office my ticket for Chalons on the Saone, which is the point to which the road is now completed. The distance is 243 miles; the fare (first-class) $7.50. But the display of my ticket did not entitle me to enter the passengers' sitting-room, much less to approach the cars. Though I had cut down my baggage, by two radical retrenchments, to two light carpet-bags, I could not take these with me, nor would they pass without weighing. When weighed, I was required to pay three or four sous (cents) for extra baggage, though there is no stage-route in America on which those bags would not have passed unchallenged and been accounted a very moderate allowance. Now I was permitted to enter the sacred precincts, but my friend, who had spent the morning with me and come to see me off, was inexorably shut out, and I had no choice but to bid him a hasty adieu. Passing the entrance, I was shown into the apartment for first-class passengers, while the second-class were driven into a separate fold and the third-class into another. Thus we waited fifteen minutes, during which I satisfied myself that no other American was going by this train, and but three or four English, and of these the two with whom I scraped an acquaintance were going only to Fontainbleau, a few miles from Paris. They were required to take their places in a portion of the train which was to stop at Fontainbleau, and so we moved off.

The European Railway carriages, so far as I have yet seen them, are more expensive and less convenient than ours. Each is absolutely divided into apartments about the size of a mail-coach, and calculated to hold eight persons. The result is thirty-two seats where an American car of equal length and weight would hold at least fifty, and of the thirty-two passengers, one-half must inevitably ride backward. I believe the second-class cars are more sociable, and mean to make their acquaintance. I should have done it this time, but for my desire to meet some one with whom I could converse, and Americans and Englishmen are apt to cling to the first-class places. My aim was disappointed. My companions were all Frenchmen, and, what was worse, all inveterate smokers. They kept puff-puffing, through the day; first all of them, then three, two, and at all events one, till they all got out at Dijon near nightfall; when, before I had time to congratulate myself on the atmospheric improvement, another Frenchman got in, lit his cigar, and went at it. All this was in direct and flagrant violation of the rules posted up in the car; but when did a smoker ever care for law or decency? I will endeavor next time to find a seat in a car where women are fellow-passengers, and see whether their presence is respected by the devotees of the noxious weed. I have but a faint hope of it.

The Railroad from Paris to Chalons passes through a generally level region, watered by tributaries of the Seine and of the Saone, with a range of gentle hills skirting the valleys, generally on the right and sometimes on either hand. As in England, the track is never allowed to cross a carriage-road on its own level, but is carried either under or over each. The soil is usually fertile and well cultivated, though not so skillfully and thoroughly as that of England. There are places, however, in which the cultivation could not easily be surpassed, but I should say that the average product would not be more than two-thirds that of England, acre for acre. There are very few fences of any kind, save a slight one inclosing the Railway, beyond which the country stretches away as far as the eye can reach without a visible landmark, the crops of different cultivators fairly touching each other and growing square up to the narrow roads that traverse them. You will see, for instance, first a strip of Grass, perhaps ten rods wide, and running back sixty or eighty rods from the Railroad; then a narrower strip of Wheat; then one of Grape-Vines; then one of Beans; then one of Clover; then Wheat again, then Grass or Oats, and so on. I saw very little Rye; and if there were Potatoes or Indian Corn, they were not up sufficiently high to be distinguished as we sped by them. The work going forward was the later Weeding with the earlier Hay-making, and I saw nearly as many women as men working in the fields. The growing crops were generally kept pretty clear of weeds, and the grass was most faithfully but very slowly cut. I think one Yankee would mow over more ground in a day than two Frenchmen, but he would cut less hay to the acre. Of course, in a country devoid of fences and half covered with small patches of grain, there could not be many cattle: I saw no oxen, very few cows, and not many horses. The hay-carts were generally drawn by asses, or by horses so small as not to be easily distinguished from asses as we whirled rapidly by. The wagons on the roads were generally drawn by small horses. I judge that the people are generally industrious but not remarkably efficient, and that the women do the larger half of the work, house-work included. The hay-carts were wretchedly small, and the implements used looked generally rude and primitive. The dwellings are low, small, steep-roofed cottages, for which a hundred dollars each would be a liberal offer. Of course, I speak of the rural habitations; those in the villages are better, though still mainly small, steep-roofed, poor, and huddled together in the most chaotic confusion. The stalls and pastures for cattle were in the main only visible to the eye of faith; though cattle there must be and are to do the ploughing and hauling. I suspect they are seldom turned loose in summer, and that there is not a cow to every third cottage. I think I did not see a yoke of oxen throughout the day's ride of 243 miles.

I was again agreeably disappointed in the abundance of Trees. Wood seems to be the peasants' sole reliance for fuel, and trees are planted beside the roads, the streams, the ditches, and often in rows or patches on some arable portion of the peasants' narrow domain. This planting is mainly confined to two varieties—the Lombardy Poplar and what I took to be the Pollard, a species of Willow which displays very little foliage, and is usually trimmed up so as to have but a mere armful of leaves and branches at the top of a trunk thirty to fifty feet high, and six to twelve inches through. The Lombardy Poplar is in like manner preferred, as giving a large amount of trunk to little shade, the limbs rarely extending three feet from the trunk, while the growth is rapid. Such are the means employed to procure fuel and timber with the least possible abstraction of soil from the uses of cultivation. There are some side-hills so rocky and sterile as to defy human industry, and these are given up to brush-wood, which I presume is cut occasionally and bound into faggots for fuel. Some of it may straggle up, if permitted, into trees, but I saw little that would fairly justify the designation of Forest. Of Fruit-trees, save in the villages, there is a deplorable scarcity throughout.

We passed through few villages and no town of note but Dijon, the capital of ancient Burgundy, where its Parliament was held and where its Dukes reigned and were buried. Their palace still stands, though they have passed away. Dijon is 200 miles from Paris, and has 25,000 inhabitants, with manufactures of Cotton, Woolen and Silk. Here and henceforth the Vine is more extensively cultivated than further Northward.

We reached Chalons on the Saone (there is another Chalons on the Marne) before 9 P. M. or in about ten hours from Paris. Here a steamboat was ready to take us forthwith to Lyons, but French management was too much for us. Our baggage was all taken from the car outside and carried piece by piece into the dÉpÔt, where it was very carefully arranged in order according to the numbers affixed to the several trunks, &c., in Paris. This consumed the better part of half an hour, though half as many Yankees as were fussing over it would have had it all distributed to the owners inside of ten minutes. Then the holders of the first three or four numbers were let into the baggage-room, and when they were disposed of as many more were let in, and so on. Each, as soon as he had secured his baggage, was hustled into an omnibus destined for the boat. I was among the first to get seated, but ours was the last omnibus to start, and when the attempt was made, the carriage was overloaded and wouldn't start! At last it was set in motion, but stopped twice or thrice to let off passengers and baggage at hotels, then to collect fare, and at last, when we had got within a few rods of the landing, we were cheered with the information that "Le bateau est parti!" The French may have been better than this, but its purport was unmistakable—the boat was gone, and we were done. I had of course seen this trick played before, but never so clumsily. There was no help for us, however, and the amount of useless execration emitted was rather moderate than otherwise. Our charioteers had taken good care to obtain their pay for carrying us some time before, and we suffered ourselves to be taken to our predestined hotel in a frame of mind approaching Christian resignation. In fact, when I had been shown up to a nice bed-room, with clean sheets and (for France) a fair supply of water, and had taken time to reflect that there is no accommodation for sleeping on any of these European river-boats, I was rather glad we had been swindled than otherwise. So I am still. But you may travel the same route in a hurry; so look out!

We rose at 4 and made for the boat, determined not to be caught twice in the same town. At five we bade good-bye to Chalons-sur-Saone (a pleasant town of 13,000 people), under a lowering sky which soon blessed the earth with rain—a dubious blessing to a hundred people on a steamboat with no deck above the guards and scarcely room enough below for the female passengers. However, the rain soon ceased and the sky gradually cleared, so that since 9 o'clock the day has been sunny and delightful.

The distance from Chalons to Lyons by the Saone is some 90 miles. The river is about the size of the Connecticut from Greenfield to Hartford, but is sluggish throughout, with very low banks until the last ten or fifteen miles. After an intervale of half a mile to two miles, the land rises gently on the right to an altitude of some two to five hundred feet, the slope covered and checkered the whole distance with vineyards, meadows, woods, &c. The Poplar and the Pollard are still planted, but the scale of cultivation is larger and the houses much better than between Paris and Dijon. The intervale (mainly in meadow) is much wider on the left bank, the swell beyond it being in some places scarcely visible. The scenery is greatly admired here, and as a whole may be termed pretty, but cannot compare with that of the Hudson or Connecticut in boldness or grandeur. There are some craggy hill-sides in the distance, but I have not yet seen an indisputable mountain in France, though I have passed nearly through it in a mainly southerly course for over five hundred miles.

As we approach Lyons, the hills on either side come nearer and finally shut in the river between two steep acclivities, from which much building-stone has been quarried. Elsewhere, these hill-sides are covered with tasteful country residences of the retired or wealthy Lyonnais, surrounded by gardens, arbors, shrubbery, &c. The general effect is good. At last, houses and quays begin to line and bridges to span the river, and we halt beside one of the quays and are in Lyons.

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