Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution (league) had a number of variations, particularly the "aune" (which was used to measure cloth The "loi du 19 frimaire an VIII" (Law of 10 December 1799) states that one decimal metre is exactly 443.296 French lines, or "3 pieds 11.296 lignes de la "Toise du Pérou"". Thus the French royal foot is exactly 9000/27,706 metres (about 0.3248 m). In Quebec, the surveys in French units were converted using the relationship 1 "pied" (of the French variety, the same word being used for English feet as well) = 12.789 English inches. This makes the Quebec "pied" very slightly smaller (about
Pied Beauty of form and content: the meter is Hopkins's own sprung rhythm, and the packing-in of various alliterative syllables serves as an aural example of the visual variety Hopkins describes. Pied Beauty "Pied Beauty" is a curtal sonnet by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). It was written in 1877, but not published until 1918, when it was included as part of the collection "Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins". In the poem, the narrator praises God for the variety of "dappled things" in nature, such as piebald cattle, trout and finches. He also describes how falling chestnuts resemble coals bursting