Bernay, Orbec, and Lisieux, communicate only by cross roads, scarcely passable by a carriage, even at this season of the year.  From Orbec to Lisieux the road runs by the side of the Touques, which, at Orbec, is no more than a rivulet.  The beautiful green meadows in the valley, appear to repay the great care which is taken in the draining and irrigating of them.  They are every where intersected by small trenches, in which the water is confined by means of sluices.—­In this part of the country, we passed several flocks of sheep, the true moutons du pays, a large breed, with red legs and red spotted faces.  Their coarse wool serves to make the ordinary cloth of the country, but is inapplicable to any of a finer texture.  To remedy this deficiency, and, if possible, improve the local manufactures, some large flocks of Merino sheep were imported at the time when the French occupied Spain; and they are said to thrive.  But it is only of late years that any attempts, have been made of the kind.—­The Norman farmer, however careful about the breed of his horses, has altogether neglected his sheep; and this is the more extraordinary, considering that the prosperity of the province is inseparably connected with that of the manufactures, and that much of the value of the produce must of necessity depend upon the excellence of the material.  His pigs are the very perfection of ugliness:  it is no hyperbole to say, that, in their form, they partake as much of a greyhound as of an English pig.—­These animals are sure to attract the gaze of our countrymen; and poor Trotter, in his narrative of the journey of Mr. Fox, expressed his marvel so often, as to call down upon himself the witty vengeance of one of our ablest periodical writers.

Melons are cultivated on a great scale in the country about Lisieux.  They grow here in the natural soil, occupying whole fields of considerable size, and apparently without requiring any extraordinary pains.—­As we approached the city, the meadows, through which we passed, were mostly occupied as extensive bleaching-grounds.  Lisieux is an industrious manufacturing town.  Its ten thousand inhabitants find their chief employment in the making of the ordinary woollen cloths, worn by the peasantry of Normandy and of Lower Brittany.  Linen and flannels are also manufactured here, though on a comparatively trifling scale.  For trade of this description, Lisieux is well situated upon the banks of the Touques, a small river, which, almost immediately under the walls of the town, receives the waters of a yet smaller stream, the Orbec.  A project is in agitation, and it is said that it may be carried into effect at an inconsiderable expence, of making the Touques navigable to Lisieux.  At present, it is so no farther than the the little town of the same name as the river; and even this derives no great advantage from the navigation; for, however near its situation is to the mouth of the stream, it is approachable only by vessels of less than one hundred tons burthen.—­It was at Touques that Henry Vth landed in France, in the spring of 1417, when the monarch, flushed with a degree of success as extraordinary as it was unexpected, quitted England with the determination of returning no more till the whole kingdom of France should be subjugated.