EMENDATIONS AND ADDITIONS. RETURN TO CALAIS.
THE paragraph at the bottom of page 11, is intended to be merely descriptive, but not ludicrous, so that the reader is requested to expunge the word night.
In the enumeration of the Bishopricks (page 14) I unaccountably omitted the ten metropolitan sees, which are those of Paris, Lyon, Bourdeaux, Rouen, Reims, Besançon, Bourges, Rennes, Aix and Toulouse: Thus there are eighty-three bishopricks, or one for each department.
After what is said (in page 89) relative to the division of the country, there should, in justice, be added: "To the confused medley of Bailiwicks, Seneschal-jurisdictions, Elections, Generalities, Dioceses, Parliaments, Governments, &c. there succeeded a simple and uniform division; there were no longer any provinces, but only one family, one nation: France was the nation of eighty-three departments." Notwithstanding this, I regret the ancient names of the provinces. The old Atlas of France is become useless, as the whole of its geography is altered. The land is at present divided into nine regions, and each of these into nine departments; Paris and the country about ten miles around (24 square leagues) forms one, and the Island of Corsica another department. In the modern Atlas, after every new name, is put ci-devant, and then the old name, thus: Region du Levant, departement de la côte d'or, ci-devant Bourgogne. I called one day, after dining in a tavern, for a bottle of wine of the Departement de l'Aube, Region des Sources, the landlord consulted his Atlas, and then brought the bottle of Champagne I required. It will be some time before foreigners are sufficiently familiarized to the new phrases which must be used for Gascon, Normand, Breton, Provençal, Picard, &c.[42]
The following paragraphs are taken from the new Voyage de France.
"During fourteen hundred years, priority in follies, in superstition, in ignorance, in fanaticism, and in slavery, was the picture of France. It was just, therefore, that priority in philosophy, and in knowledge, should succeed to so many odious pre-eminences."
"The French people, to whom liberty is now new, are like the waves of the sea, which roll long after the tempest has ceased: and of which the agitation is necessary to depose on the shores the scum which covers them."
"The confusion inseparable from a new order of things, has necessarily caused Paris to swarm with vagabonds; so that far from being surprized that some crimes have been committed, we ought rather to wonder that they are not more frequent."
"When Louis XVI. was brought back to Paris (25 June, 1791) the inhabitants of fauxbourgs pasted a placard (advertisement) against the walls, saying, 'Whoever applauds him shall be cudgelled, whoever attacks him shall be hanged.' An awful silence was observed."