A new stone house turns black outside
from three to ten yours after its erection,
by the chemical action of the vapours
from brandy stores. Otherwise, there is no
want either of good houses in the town—
surrounded by that symptom of wealth,
luxurious gardens— or of handsome villas out
in the country. The names of many of these
narrow little streets, such as Street of the
Gardens, and Street of the Golden Island,
are inviting enough, if the reality did but
answer to the title. Great complaints are
made just now of want of employment
amongst the working-classes. The merchants
are obliged to discharge most of their men.
There has been no wine lately to make into
brandy ; and everything vinous and spirituous
is so dear that every accustomed purchaser
is afraid to buy. Still, Arthur Young's test
of a town's prosperity is manifestly visible ;
public and private buildings are being erected
and restored on a liberal scale.

The Parc, or promenade, is a public
strolling-place that any town might be
proud of. You mount a gentle slope, which
leads you to what is in the way of being
made a formal terrace, looking down into
the well-watered valley below. To clear
the view a little, they talk of cutting down
some half-a-score of evergreen oaks, against
which I took the liberty of firmly protesting.
The authorities, if aware of my opinion that
the trees should stand, would doubtless treat
it with a deal of deference. You pass the
stone monument which stands on the spot
where Francis the First first saw the light
beneath a spreading tree, rather earlier than
his mamma intended ; you cross a bridge
which will soon be built over a wooded hollow,
and then you may stroll all day long in a
tangled thicket of shrubs, evergreens, and
timber trees, with winding paths cut through
the wood and native wild flowers springing
up amongst the grass, making it look more
like an English pleasure-ground than
anything I have yet seen in France.

Estimating the intellectual spirit of Cognac
by the literary supply attainable there, it is
certainly above proof, when compared with
other French towns of the same size. It has
at least one weekly newspaper,—L'Indicateur
de Cognac. There are several well-supplied
bookseller's shops ; although here, as
elsewhere, the trade is often made to combine
with other professions in a way that looks odd
in English eyes. Thus, Monsieur Gerard,
on the Place d'Armes,— an obliging and
well-informed gentleman,— writes himself
Libraire et Opticien, over his door. He
also take.s photographic portraits,— a fact
which is humourously indicated by the
picture of an ugly fellow grinning for a wager,
and making faces at a daguerreotype
battery; the operator being behind it. Besides
books and striking likenesses, he also deals
in instruments that are of service to dealers
in things spirituous. For instance, for
thirty-seven francs, he will sell you a pretty
little experimental toy. called Sulleron's
alembic, which in ten minutes will tell you
how much brandy will be produced by any
given hogshead of wine. A measured quantity
of white wine is put into a little glass balloon;
a spirit-lamp is lighted under it; the fumes
pass through an india-rubber tube and a zinc
or leaden worm, into a copper cooler filled
with cold water, and the spirit drops into the
same graduated glass receiver from which the
wine was measured out. A simple sum of
the rule of three tells you what your cask of
wine is worth, in respect to its brandy-giving
capabilities. Coarser implements, worms for
practical distillation, creep out at the foot of
many of the shop-doors, and beg you to buy
them as you walk through the streets.

Brandy we know, in comparison with
wine, is a mere modern upstart,— a
mushroom of the day before yesterday; and so,
Cognac, its grand metropolis, is of very recent
date, as a commercial town, though not as
a mere cluster of human dwellings. Twenty
years ago, Cognac was only a village ; the
same dull, steady-going place that it had been
ever since the dawn of time. Now, not to
speak of the merchants, the peasantry of the
arrondissement of Cognac are the richest in
all France. Some few are worth as much as
sixty thousand pounds sterling ; many are
worth from twenty to five-and-twenty thousand
pounds. Remember that, not long since,
they had a succession of abundant vintages.
Instead of selling their wine at a ruinous low
price, they distilled it and kept it. By that
process, it was very easy to pack a great deal of
wine into a very little space. Then followed
a run of failing crops of grapes, and up went
their wares,—up— up— up, till it is to be hoped
that they have reached their climax at last, and
that the present spring, summer, and autumn
will prove more propitious to Jean Raisin's
health.

These wealthy peasants still remain peasants,
scarcely changing their former mode of
life, a hardy generation of men addicted to
sky-blue clothing, and of hale women with
caps in various stages of goitreism, and with
complexions so tanned by the summer's sun
as not even to be bleached by the past long
winter. These head-dresses, like flattened
and squeezed paper fire-balloons, appear to
be their pride and glory. Some ladies seem
to protect their caps in damp weather with a
woollen covering, as if to prevent them (the
bonnets) from catching cold ; the whole
apparatus being large enough to be a cradle
for a new-born baby, in the case of such
need as that which happened to Francis
the First. Charente is altogether a rich
department ; and the Charentois, unlike the
Poitevins, not only make the most of their
fertile soil, but welcome agricultural and other
improvements which penetrate so far into
the interior.

One trifling circumstance struck me as a