The Express.
London, England, 1856-10-10 00:00:00

CENTRE AND SOUTH OF FRANCE.

(MAX AN

LYONS. Oorosan 7.
I was hardly prepard to find so much interest
taken by the townspeople of the South lathe struggle
now going on between the ultramontane part
the moderate catholic& There is never a
strong feeling among the masses against the exorbi-
tant powers claimed by the clergy, which are identi-
fied in their minds with absolutist principles, to
which they are by no means disposed to submit
' patiently. The priest. are very active just now, and
groups are to be found at every railway station re-
turning from the tours they have made during the
vacation t and I hear that they have been beating up
recruits diligently for the seminaries—with what
success I have no means of knowing. The religious
feeling, as regards the offices of the church at lust,
is by no means active in the districts I have visited.
The women attend mass and confession, the men
loiter about the squares and cafés during service. At
Clermont, Le Puy, St. Etienne, Nimes, Arles—even
"La Boone Ville" of the Pope's, Avignon, the same
scene was always presented; for twenty women to
be seen at church one man attended, and I saw
one of our own sex at confessional, where they only
appear on the greater occasions. A canon of Avignon,
with whom I conversed on the subject, acknowledged
this state of things with regret. " The revolutions and
the secret societies," he said, " are to blame for a por-
tion of the indifferentism which has struck you, but the
Nurtenotterie ' of the Ardennes does en infinity of
mischief." Unluckily, he then asked me if I were a
peetestaist or a catholic, and so our conversation ter-
minated for all useful purposes, to my great regret,
for I wished to obtain some information as to the
religious condition of Daupttioy. New are abundant
everywhere, and are usefully employed in supervising
the various charitable institutions, and as they are
also charged to a considerable extent with the educa-
tion of the girls, the religious feeling of the women of
all classes to easily amount* d for. I met only two
monks, cordeliers, remarkably fine men, and in sleek,
good condition, but could extract nothing from them:
they detected the Huguenot, I suppose.

_
At Marseilles, a merchant who had come through
Provence front Bayonne fully confirmed the bad
accounts of the harvests in the intermediate districts,
where the small proprietors are always in a condition
to suffer acutely from any visitation of that
desctiption. They are, in fact, little more
than mitten, dependent for their subsistence
on the proclaim of their small holdings, which are not
I large enough to prodooe sufficient surplus commodities
to enable them to accumulate capital. South of Lyons
there is little doubt that the winter is likely to prove
• trying one. I have already stated that the wine
crop of the Rhone is scarcely more than a fourth of
the usual yield, and that the local consumption of
wine is very large, it being a necessary of lite to the
labourer. The corn mope, always below the require-
ments of the population, are very deficient, and the
silk crop is a failure, so that it is feared that in addi-
tion to an enhanced oat of the necessaries of life,
labour will not be in great demand, the high price of
the staples of Lyons, Eft. Etienne, and Valence being
likely to diminish the orders, an effect which the
manufacturers here say is already being produced.
Following the inundations so closely, this is a subject
of some anxiety to the government, and it is believed
that extensive works in the whole of these southern
departments will be undertaken, partly with a view
to give the peasantry employment daring the winter.

Among other things needed is a good and ex-
tousles system of forest planting and nursing.
One of the thine which strikes every traveller
through the South is the great scarcity of
forest trees of .0 dent size to be squared. Plum
abound in the mountain districts, but they are of
small seantling ; sod the olive, mulberry, and other
fruit trees, are good for little when they have done
bearing. The sycamore is the largest elms of tress,
but the timber is not good, aid the evergreen oak,
the maple, the chewer, &0., attain a good size only
in particular localities; even the beech is usually of
small size, and I found that most of the large timber
used in constructions is grown out of the district.
The abundance of stone and the scarcity of timber
accounts for the peculiar character of the buildings in
the South of France and the universal employment
of masonry. The ground floors of most of the houses
have stoee-groined erilinge, and stone staircases are
almost universal.

It is amusing to hear the wondering of travellers
by railway at the absence of national charseteristics
among the people with whom they are brought into
contact, but a railway station is scarcely the place to
seek for them. The costume and the decorations
may vary, but the dramatis persona are much the
same throughout France. A tolerable sprinkling of
soldiery, rude and noisy ininverse proportion to their
length of service; a priest or two (south of the
Loire especially) local proprietors or dignita-
ries, owing evidently small allegiance to
soap and water, but having red 'Abend' at
their button-holes; peasants in blooms, and their
wives and sisters, presenting the only peculiarities
of costume; stout old women preternaturally ugly,
with them immense bundles and baskets which stout
old women always cling to as though they carried
their very souls in them; and commercial travellers, who
are much alike in all countries where railways exist.
Bat the extension of the railway system in this
terentry bas undoubtedly done much towards render-
ing the inhabitants of the various departments sore
oosreopolitan in their habits and appearance, though
dissimilar in dialects and usual occupations. It has
diffused a more utilitarian spirit and greater commer- '
dal activity. Let no traveller in Provence or Lan-
guedoc dream of the poetry he may have been
led to expect as existing there, nor look for
the wild simple life associated with his a priori
DOOM of Auvergne. The inhabitants of the
larger towns are all wrept in commerce; "la gal
seines" has given place to money getting ; and the
egvisultneist finds that he can afford few cessations
from lessor, and the rural holiday makisgs, chiefly
arising from the terrific abundance of church
holidays in the olden time, are nearly at an end.
The Sunday, or the great holiday, is passed in
the nearest town accessible, the women frequent.
lag the churches, the men congregating in the open
places or at the roles and &liberate, alloying them-
selves with wonderful stolidity and demureness. At
Villeneuve pat Avignon a sound of fiddling in the
court of what had once been a convent, but had now
become a sort of raft, attracted me, and there I
found the younger people of the town and of the
surrounding villages dancing—quadrilles and polkas.
And that II all that remains of the troubadours;
though a Reboot still makes songs end pastry, many
such swallows would not make summer again in
those provinces. By the bye, I found that Sophooles
was a perruquier at Villeneuve, for I saw not only
his name over the door, but the namesake of the great
tragic post himself exercising his craft on one of the
dandies of the town.

SPAIN.

The Madrid journals of the 4th inst. give details of
the review at Los Carabasebeles, when 8,000 troops

were as the ground. After the

Queen gave a grand dinner to the misisters, the
marshals. generals, and other dignitaries, and it is
said that at it her Majesty paid marked attention to
the Minister of War (O'Donnell). M. Gonzales
Romero, M. Gonzales Bravo, M. Belbran de Lis, and
other notorioas politicians who had been is eine,
have returned to Madrid.

GREECE.

Litton from Athena, of the 28th alt., state that
brtgandep was as rife se ever in Greece. Right
prisoners convicted of robbery and murder had
elm* from the prima of Canals and held the
reentry in tam