The French have as yet -but few cut-iron bridges, all their great structures of this description being of stone. Of these, the chief are the bridges over the Loire at Orleans, Tours, and Nantes ; those on a smaller scale over the Seine at Paris, and those over the Saone and Rhone at Lyons. The Pont du St Esprit above Orange, over the Rhone, is a long structure of sixteen arches. At no great distance from it is the Pont du Gard, one of the most entire and beautiful monuments of Roman architecture, composed of a triple tier of arches, erected for the purpose of conducting an aqueduct over the river Gardon. This magnificent structure is 157 feet in height, 530 feet in length at the bottom, and 872 at the top. Of the lately ereeted bridges in France, the most remarkable are those over the Seine at Neuilly near Paris, and over the Oise at St Maixent, along with two of larger dimensions, viz. one over the Garonne at Bordeaux, the other over the Seine at Rouen.
the course of the latter. The canal of the Ouxcq was dug, not for a commercial purpose, but to con vey the water of that little river to Paris, for the consumption of the inhabitants. At a village called La Villette on the north side of Paris, there has been lately excavated, at the expence of a million Sterling, a basin, approaching in size to our Lon. don docks, and calculated, when the necessary ca nals shall be completed, for the deposit of merchan dise brought from Havre and Rouen on the one side, and from Flanders and Champagne on the other. In the south of France, there is a short ca. nal proceeding from the Rhone, near Tarascon, in a south-west direction to the Mediterranean, and call ed, from its vicinity to a well known annual fair, Canal de Beaucaire. These are as yet the chief canals of France. They have been made by associations of individuals as in England, or at the charge of government ; but on either footing they proceed very slowly, France being very defi cient both in capital and commercial enterprise ; and most of the works, so loudly vaunted under the sway of Bonaparte, such as the canal of Burgundy, and the canal from the Rhine to the Rhone, being as yet in their infancy.
The great roads in France are managed, not as with us, by county commissioners, but by govern ment Bureaux or Boards, the chief of which are at Paris. The extent,. under their direction, is about 30,000 miles ; the annual expenditure from L. 1,300,000• to L.1,500,000, the whole defrayed without one toll or turnpike. An attempt was made under Bonaparte to levy tolls ; but this excited so much clamour in a country where commercial in tercourse is carried on almost wholly by land-car riage, that it was found indispensable to seek the necessary funds from another source,—a tax on salt. The great roads in France are, in general, in toler able condition ; but no epithet can convey an idea of the wretched state of the cross roads in almost every department ; full of hollows, encumbered with stones, or inundated with water, they receive hardly any repair, but are abandoned, year after year, to the effects of the elements.
The great roads in France are much wider than in England, exhibiting frequently a long straight avenue, lined on each side with chesnut trees or other large trees. They are often paved like a street for many miles in succession ; the art of road making being as yet too little understood, to prevent material injury from the heavy waggons and ill con. structed wheels, without resorting to this unpleasant alternative. Travelling is thus much less agreeable than in England, particularly as the villages want neatness and cheerfulness, while most of the towns along the road are disfigured by narrow crooked streets, in which new stone buildings are often mix-. ed with antiquated wooden structures, such as have disappeared from our provincial towns, for nearly a century back. The clumsy vehicles, furmorly used