| Peaceful abode! with rural beauty rife, |
| And charms that smooth the rugged paths of life; |
| Here human aid assumes a power divine, |
| And Virtue's fix'd her gentle, hallowed shrine; |
| Erring, untutor'd youth, enraptur'd pause |
| Mid wild career, to recognize her laws. |
| Vice with her direful train abash'd retires, |
| Nor dares to light her soul-consuming fires; |
| Industry with her sober, powerful arm, |
| Guards the young mind, and keeps the passions calm: |
| While benign religion, with sweet controul, |
| Gently compels, the wild and wayward soul |
| To taste the various joys her truths impart, |
| And kiss the rod that rectifies the heart. |
The customary paved roads having in this department as in many other provinces of France been broken up, and superseded by well formed macadamized ones, trips into the surrounding country can be performed with as much ease and facility as is afforded by the unequalled highways of England.
The steam packets which navigate the river as far down as Nantes, and up to Orléans, offer every facility for agreeable excursions.
SOCIETY.
It is presumed that in closing these multifarious notices, a few words touching the social habits and condition of the little coterie of English located at Tours, may prove acceptable to the general reader, as well as to persons who contemplate an abode within its interesting precincts.
The established etiquette is, for those who have resolved on a period of residence, first to call upon such of the British residents as they may feel disposed to visit, which acts of courtesy, are, generally speaking, the prelude to a reciprocity of agreeable and social intercourse.
An air of high respectability, and elegance, is characteristic of the Anglo-French circle of acquaintance pervading Tours and its environs; the newly arrived man of social habits and fashion, may if he chooses, soon possess the happy consciousness of feeling, that, though distant from friends and native land, he has his customary social comforts, and habitual pleasures and refinements of life, completely at his command.
It is true, these enjoyments exist in a limited and circumscribed form, but for this very reason, facility of intercourse and goodfellowship, are distinguished by an acuteness of character, rarely to be found in the far more expansive arrondisements of English society at home.
The warm, generous heart of the Englishman, like the concentrated rays of the genial orb of day, here, glows with the greater intensity on all who come within the sphere of its vivifying influence.