DIJON, OR THE WINE COUNTRY.

As an illustration of what a French provincial town is in the way of hotels, I would take Dijon, where I stopped a night on my way from Lyons to Paris. From Marseilles to Dijon the country is interesting, giving fine views of the valley of the Loire and hills and mountains far away. From thence to Paris the ride is uninteresting. I suppose a great many people stop at Dijon, as it abounds in magnificent hotels, all of which seem to flourish. I put up at the HÔtel de Jura, close to the railway-station, and I feel as proud as a lord as I enjoy the luxury of that well-appointed hotel. My bedroom is delicious, very unlike that of an English hotel. Everyone in the house seems smiling and civil. The dining-room is large and lofty, the cuisine is excellent, and the smoking-room is elegantly furnished, as much so as a drawing-room in England. I feel that I am in France, and that there they manage better than they do with us. I go into the shop, and the shopkeeper and his men all wear the blue blouse of the country. If I buy anything, it is done up for me in the most careful manner, and so profuse are the thanks of the shopkeeper and his wife that I leave with a feeling that my visit has been a real benefit to the town.

There is much to see in Dijon; it is an ancient city, formerly the capital of Burgundy, and still the headquarters of its extensive wine trade. Let us hope that the dealers are honest men, as burgundy is much in demand in my native land. What I have at the hotel is excellent and cheap, and this is the great difficulty in France in the way of any national temperance movement. Like the Cape, like Australia, the wine trade is an important factor in the national life. It is the Diana of the Ephesians. Try to check it, and everyone is up in arms. The traveller is bound to drink. At lunch he has a quart bottle of red or white wine placed before him, and it is just the same at dinner. The wine is included in the bill, and it is all the same whether you drink it or leave it alone. If there is a family dining or lunching together, the bottle goes round, and perhaps a glass or two will suffice; but a solitary traveller has his two quart bottles to tackle per day, and what are you to do?—one is afraid to drink water when travelling, as there may be poison in the pot. A similar remark applies to milk. It is sadly liable to infection, and it may be that, when you ask for it, it may prove no exception to the general rule. I remember how Sir Russell Reynolds, when on a Continental tour, confined himself to milk, and on his return to England had a serious illness in consequence. No wonder, then, that as a rule the ordinary traveller sticks to the wine of the country, which is little intoxicating, and has a pleasant favour that helps much in its consumption.

I fancy the burgundy of Dijon is much purer and pleasanter than that of London. Nevertheless, two quarts of it a day are rather too much. I got rid of the difficulty by sacrificing my dinner and having tea instead. Dijon is a very ancient city, and full of very interesting remains. Indeed, I fancy it is one of the most interesting cities in France. In an old engraving of it which I have, it is surrounded by a wall, and seems a city of church spires, and its ecclesiastical buildings are very old and numerous, but the walls are gone, and handsome boulevards have taken their place. Its modern fame depends on its wine, its spiced bread, and its mustard. I buy a mustard-pot—a characteristic specimen of French ingenuity. It is an earthenware pig. The back is hollow. You take off the top, and there is the place for the mustard and a long mustard-spoon, the crooked end of which does duty as a tail. The animal has his nose in a trough, which is divided into two portions, one for pepper, the other for salt. I am proud of that mustard-pot, and only use it on state occasions. At Avignon the mustard-pot was equally a combination, but of a less artistic character. It was simply a blue earthenware pot with the mustard in the centre, while just below are two little recesses, one for the pepper and one for the salt; and these you see at really good hotels in preference to the costlier electroplate mustard-pots in use nearer home. At Thetford they make unbreakable earthenware. I should recommend the company to try a few mustard-pots À la Francaise.

Dijon, says the guide-book—one of that excellent series in red known as Guide-Ioannes, to be purchased for a franc, sometimes less, at all French railway-stations—is one of the most interesting cities in France, containing 63,425 inhabitants. It is situated at the junction of the Ouche and the Suzon, at the foot of the mountains of the CÔte d’Or, and at the commencement of a fruitful valley which stretches as far as the Jura. It is lovely—when I was there it rained, and I did not see much of its loveliness—well built and salubrious. Its principal attractions are the Cathedral of St. Benigne, the Churches of Notre Dame and St. Michel, and the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, the Palace of Justice, the museum containing the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy and the remains of the Chartreuse de Chamoi. Wherever you go you meet with old houses and architecture of the most interesting character. It is a place to be visited carefully by the artist. He will find much to interest him at every step. In England we have nothing like it. In the troubles and wars which led, after many ages, to the establishment of a united France under one monarch, Dijon became a place of great importance and the seat of a legislative assembly. Originally a second-rate Roman settlement, it had become Christianized by the preaching of St. Benigne, who died a martyr for his faith, and to whom, as I have already stated, the great cathedral was consecrated; yet it did not become the seat of a bishopric till 1731. For ages the Dukes of Burgundy resided there, and at a later time it gave to France its grand pulpit orator, Bossuet, and to the Church St. Bernard. In 1477 the French King gained possession of the city, and the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy came to an end.

‘The Lord of Craon,’ writes old Philip de Commines—the father of modern history, whose memoirs, writes Mr. Hallam, almost make an epoch in historical literature—‘when he drew near Burgundy, sent forward the Prince of Orange and others to Dijon to use persuasion and require the people to render obedience to the King, and they managed the matter so adroitly, principally by means of the Prince of Orange, that the city of Dijon and all the other towns in the duchy of Burgundy, together with many others in the country, gave in their allegiance to the King.’ Whether the people gained much by the change is not very clear. Apparently, Commines did not think Dijon had much cause for thankfulness. ‘In my opinion,’ he writes, ‘of all the countries in the world with which I was ever acquainted, the government is nowhere so well managed, the people nowhere less obnoxious to violence and oppression, nor their houses less liable to be destroyed by violence or oppression, than in England, for these calamities only fall upon the authors of them.’ I suppose the people of Dijon were of a similar way of thinking, as the writer of the guide-book tells us that ‘Dijon adopta avec enthousiasme les principes de la RÉvolution.’ Happily its victims during that reign of terror were few. In the war with France the Germans got hold of Dijon; but Garibaldi came to the rescue. Now Dijon is at peace, and long may it so remain, its hotels affording rest and refreshment to the weary traveller, and its wine, when taken in moderation, making glad the heart of man. Let me make one remark as a hint to the tourist. Possibly he sees in the Continental Bradshaw an advertisement of a hotel where the charges are rather less than those of others. He goes there, but he finds no reduction. The excuse is that the lower charge is not for the hasty traveller, but for the one who comes to stay.As a recent writer in Temple Bar remarks, the general air of pride and prosperity indicates that the capital of the duchy thrives excellently as a member of the Republic. The Rue de LibertÉ reminds us of some of our old English towns. Step aside into any of the cross-streets, and you find yourself in a labyrinth of crooked by-ways and carved doors, by the side of low angular bell-towers, which seem to have come straight from some old Flemish city, or you come to quaint, quiet, detached squares, planted with young trees, with white detached houses all round some of them, remnants of feudal hotels. In the Salle des Gardes of the old palace the tombs of the two greatest Dukes may still be seen. The palace, a huge, stately, modernized building, is now a museum, a picture-gallery, and the headquarters of all local and departmental business. It is there that the French Protestants of to-day worship. The Church of Notre Dame, of which the great CondÉ declared that it should be packed in a jeweller’s box to preserve it, is beautiful outside as in. It is the mother-church, to which the Dijonais cling, where their children are baptized and brought on their First Communion. It is crowded of a Sunday. Nor is St. Michel externally less impressive; but the interior is described as dowdy and disappointing. But, after all, I fancy the chief visitors to Dijon are the wine-merchants, and others interested in the wine trade. The railway time-tables are full of familiar names of vineyards. In a journey of thirty miles southwards, you meet with, the well-known names of Chambertin, Vougeot, Beaune, and Meursault, and you think, perhaps, of feasting and gaiety a long time ago. But the country lacks the picturesque. You may travel far on the main line without seeing anything in the shape of pleasant landscape. The country around is undulating, but on the whole flat. There are many walks with pleasant memories—one leads to Talant, the ancient palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, now the seat of an archaic village with a marvellous church, where they show you an ancient picture said to have been painted by St. Luke. From the common at the foot of the hill you get a good view of Dijon, with the cathedral towers in the foreground, and the cupola of St. Michel standing up above. In an old chÂteau near-by was the birthplace of the great St. Bernard. Far off is the rolling expanse of land which stretches away to the frontiers of Champagne. ‘It was among these fields and villages,’ says the writer in Temple Bar to whom I have already referred, ‘that the three battles of Dijon were fought during the Franco-Prussian War, and here and there, at turnings in the road and in wide ploughed land, monuments covered with withered wreaths recall the event, and make the sad landscape all the sadder; yet France pines for war, and the clang of martial strains everywhere makes it little better than an armed camp. It is the same everywhere. The one great problem of European statesmen seems to be to find a sufficiency of soldiers and sailors, as if we still lived in the dark ages, when might was right, and the sole arbiter of nations was the sword. It is awful to think of; it is a disgrace alike to Christianity and civilization that such should be the case. It is not now that we can sing, as we did in the great Exhibition year, more than forty years ago, of the triumph of Captain Pen over Captain Sword. Still, we can pray with Campbell:

‘The cause of truth and human weal,
O God above!
Transfer it from the sword’s appeal
To Peace and Love.
Peace, Love! the cherubim that join
Their spread wings o’er devotion’s shrine;
Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine,
Where they are not.’