60. The following table exhibits a view of the provinces and departments, together with their chief towns, and the population of the latter:

61. The government of France, since 1814, has been a limited monarchy, resembling in it's forms that of Great Britain, but females are excluded from the throne. The royal prerogative is nearly the same as in our own country; but in France the king has the exclusive right of bringing bills before Parliament. The responsibility of public measures rests with the ministers. The Parliament is composed of a chamber of peers, and a chamber of deputies. The chamber of peers consists of upwards of 200 members, whose dignity is hereditary, and who possess privileges similar to those of the peerage in England, their number being unlimited, and the grant of titles being vested in the crown. No clerical dignitaries have seats in the legislature: a few cardinals, who are members, owe it altogether to their titles as temporal peers. Their discussions are not made public, as in the case of the chamber of deputies. The house of commons, or chamber of deputies, is elected by the people, for a term

of seven years; the number of representatives may, in some measure, be altered at the pleasure of the king, the smallest number allowed by the constitution being 256. The inhabitants of France are all Roman Catholics, with the exception of about 4 millions of Protestants, and 65,000 Jews: all forms of religion, however, are tolerated. Before the revolution, there were 23 universities in France; in that terrible convulsion, education was totally suspended; but it's establishments have since been reinstated in a different form. The lycées, now called royal colleges, are 36 in number, and are large provincial schools, where the pupils receive instruction in the classics, mathematics, and rhetoric. The name of university is confined to the metropolis; but the provincial establishments, bearing the name of academies, are constituted like the universities of other countries, and are 25 in number, viz.

The Protestants have two seminaries for studying divinity, one at Strasburg, and one at Montauban.

62. Paris, the metropolis of France, is built on both banks of the Seine, and on three islands in the river: it is about 15 miles in circumference, nearly of a circular form, and is surrounded by a great wall, which was erected in 1787. The Seine, which intersects the city nearly in the middle, has not half the width of the Thames: and though it's banks are termed quays, it wants almost entirely the enlivening aspect of shipping. The estimated number of inhabitants in Paris, in 1827, amounted to 890,400, or to about half the population of London at the same period. Paris is the centre of government, the residence of the king and his court, of the two chambers, of the supreme courts of justice, and of the chief officers of state: it is also the seat of an archbishop, and the focus of all the literature and amusements of the country. The king has likewise a splendid palace at Versailles, about 10 miles to the S. W. of Paris, and another residence at St. Cloud, about half that distance from the capital, nearly in the same direction. There is, likewise, another royal palace at Fontainebleau, about 30 miles to the S. E. of Paris; it has given name to several treaties of peace, which have been signed here. To the N. of Paris, upon the banks of the Somme, stands Amiens, where a definitive treaty of peace was concluded, A. D. 1802, between Great Britain and France. To the N. W. of Amiens, about midway between it and Boulogne, are the two villages of Cressy and Agincourt, remarkable for the splendid victories gained there by the English over the French. The battle of Cressy, or Crecy, as it is sometimes written, was fought a. D. 1346, between Edward the 3rd, of England, and his gallant little army of less than 25,000 men, against Philip the 6th, of France, and his mighty force of 120,000, out of whom, only five knights, and about 60 soldiers fled with him: the French were defeated with great slaughter, and left the King of Bohemia, 11 princes, 80 bannerets, 1,200 knights, 1,500 gentlemen, 4,000 men at arms, 1,200 horse, and 30,000 foot dead on the field. The battle of Agincourt, or Azincourt, was fought A. D. 1415; the English were commanded by King Henry the 5th, whose army had been reduced by sickness and accidents to 10,000 men; the French had collected together a force of 100,000, or, as some say, of 140,000 men, to intercept the march of the English from Harfleur towards Calais. But notwithstanding the immense superiority of their numbers, they were gloriously beaten, and they left dead on the field the Constable d'Albert, 3 dukes, the archbishop of Sens, 1 marshal, 13 earls, 92 barons, 1,500 knights, and a far greater number of gentlemen, besides several thousands of common soldiers. The number of captives exceeded that of the whole English army, and many of them were persons of rank and fortune, who, encumbered with their heavy armour, could not make their escape.

63. The sea-port towns of Boulogne and Calais lie opposite to Dover, and are the ordinary landing-places from the S. E. part of England. Calais is strong, and tolerably well-built, and is remarkable, from having been in the possession of the English for upwards of 200 years: about eight miles to the S. of it, stands the little town of Guines, near which Henry the 8th, of England, and Francis the 1st, of France, had an interview in a plain, which, from the display of magnificence made

by the latter monarch to gain Henry over to his side, was named Le champ du drap d'Or, or the field of the cloth of Gold. At the mouth of the Seine is the famous port, called Havre de Grace, or sometimes only Le Havre, and to the E. of it, some distance up the river, stands the great commercial town Rouen. Cherburg, is an important harbour in the N. W. of Normandy, opposite the I. of Wight. To the W. of Normandy, the N. of Britany, and opposite the coast of Dorsetshire in England, lie the islands Jersey, Guernsey, and Alderney, which have been already mentioned as belonging to the British. Brest, one of the finest harbours of France, is situated in the Westernmost part of the country, at the farthest extremity of Britany; it is rendered very important, not only by it's situation, but by the fortifications with which it is defended, and the use which the French make of it for naval purposes. La Rochelle, on the B. of Biscay, is another valuable sea-port, opposite the I. de Ré, and the I. d'Oleron: we may likewise notice Bordeaux, at the mouth of the Garonne, the population of which amounts to 95,000 souls, and Bayonne, at the mouth of the Adour, near the Spanish frontiers, as very important maritime towns. To the E. of La Rochelle, in Poitou, is Poitiers, celebrated for the battle fought there A. D. 1356, between the English and French, in which Edward the Black Prince, with an army of only 12,000 men, defeated John, king of France, with a force of 50,000, and took him prisoner. Orleans is about midway between Poitou and Paris, and stands on the banks of the R. Loire; it is celebrated as having always given the title of Duke to a prince of the Blood Royal. The city of Lyons, at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, ranks as the second city in France, and in manufactures the first; it is especially noted for it's fabrics of silks and rich stuffs. The two principal French ports on the Mediterranean are Marseilles and Toulon, both lying Eastward from the mouths of the Rhone. Marseilles, the more Western of the two, is a place of great commerce, and the chief outlet for all the natural and artificial productions of the South of France: Toulon, which lies 25 miles to the E. of it, has long been one of the chief stations of the French navy, being, on the Mediterranean, what Brest is on the Atlantic; it's new, or military port, is one of the finest in Europe, and is said to be capable of containing 200 sail of the line. -The I. of Corsica is, properly speaking, an Italian island, though it has been annexed to the crown of France since the year 1769; it is remarkable as having given birth to the plebeian emperor of France, so long the scourge of Europe, whose flag was, by the unwearied perseverance of Britain, repeatedly levelled with the dust, and finally trodden under foot at the ever-memorable battle of Waterloo.

64. The foreign possessions of France are neither important nor numerous. In Asia, they consist of Chandernagore in Bengal, Pondicherry and Karical on the coast of Coromandel, and Mahé on the coast of Malabar. In Africa, of the I. of Gorée, I. St. Louis, a few factories at the mouth of the Senegal, and I. Bourbon, in the Indian Ocean. In America, they consist of the two small islands St. Pierre and Miquelon, near Newfoundland; Martinique, Guadaloupe, Mariagalante, Deseada, the Saints, and the Northern part of St. Martin, in the West Indies; and the colony of Cayenne, in Guyana, on the mainland of South America.

65. THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS is bounded on the S. by the kingdom of France; on the W. and N. by the German Ocean, or North Sea; on the E. by the kingdom of Hanover, and that part of the kingdom of Prussia which extends along the Rhine. It contains 19.000 square miles, and it's estimated population in 1821 was 5,992,700 souls. It consists of eighteen provinces: eight of these are Dutch, and were formerly called the Seven United Provinces (from their having been then but seven in number) or Holland; one is German, viz. Luxemburg; the other ten are Belgic, and were formerly called the provinces of Belgium, or The Netherlands. The names of all these provinces, together with their chief towns, and the population of the latter, may be seen by the following table:

66. The whole of this country was formerly divided into little principalities, after the manner of Germany; but at length, by conquests, treaties, and intermarriages, it fell under the dominion of the House of Burgundy. The male line in this family becoming extinct, Mary, the sole heiress, transferred her dominions to the House of Austria, A.D. 1477. Charles 5th, emperor of Germany, united the seventeen provinces into one state, and enacted that, in future, they should all be governed by the same sovereign. But the bigotry and tyranny of his son, Philip 2nd, caused the seven Dutch provinces to revolt, and to form the famous Union of Utrecht: after a violent struggle for liberty, they were declared a free and independent state, A. D. 1648, by the treaty of Munster. The other ten provinces continued subject to the Crown of Spain till the death of Charles 2nd, in the year 1700, when they were transferred to the German line of the Austrian family. From this time till the termination of the war in 1814, this unhappy country was the frequent scene of the most sanguinary hostilities; but at the end of that period, all the provinces were erected into one independent state, and placed under the guardianship of one sovereign.

67. The government of The Netherlands is a limited, hereditary monarchy, and it's constitution bears a close resemblance to that of Great Britain. It's Parliament is composed of two Houses: the Upper House consists of not less than 40, and not more than 60, members, above forty years of age, who are elected for life by the king; the Lower House contains 110 members, elected for three years by the people. The established religion of the Dutch provinces is the Calvinistic, and of the Belgie provinces the Roman Catholic, but all sects are tolerated. In the Dutch provinces the Dissenters are numerous, and all the clergy, whether Calvinistic or Dissenting, receive their salaries from the public treasury. The number of Roman Catholics in the whole kingdom greatly exceeds that of the Protestants, being in the ratio of about four to one and a half. There are six well-known universities, viz. Leyden, Utrecht, Groningen, Louvain, Ghent, and Liege. But for the sake of those, to whom distance and expense might render it inconvenient to attend these universities for the completion of their education, there are other great seminaries established, where nearly the same instruction is given, but where no degrees can be conferred: they are called Athenæa, and are seven in number, viz. Brussels, Amsterdam, Harderwyk, Middelburg, Franeker, Deventer, and Breda. The Dutch language is a dialect of the German, and is generally called low Dutch, in opposition to the latter language, which is the high Dutch. The people are called Dutch, from the German word Deutsch,