Yes. France has grown better, and has been growing better, I
believe, for centuries past. And the difference between the France
of the middle age and the France of the present day, is fitly
typified by the difference between the new Carcassone below and the
old Carcassone above, where every traveller, even if he be no
antiquarian, should stop and gaze about a while.
The contrast is complete; and one for which a man who loves his
fellow-men should surely return devout thanks to Almighty God.
Below, on the west bank of the river, is the new town, spreading and
growing, unwalled, for its fortifications are now replaced by
boulevards and avenues; full of handsome houses; squares where,
beneath the plane-tree shade, marble fountains pour out perpetual
health and coolness; manufactories of gay woollens; healthy,
cheerful, market folk; comfortable burghers; industry and peace. We
pass outside to the great basin of the Canal de Languedoc, and get
more avenues of stately trees, and among them the red marble statue
of Riquet, whose genius planned and carried out the mighty canal
which joins the ocean to the sea; the wonder of its day, which proved
the French to be, at least in the eighteenth century, the master-
engineers of the world; the only people who still inherited the
mechanical skill and daring of their Roman civilizers.
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