Chapter VII: Part 7

We had a rattling drive back to Moville. The first sight we met on reaching the wharf was our jolly beggar, transformed almost past recognition by soap and water, sneezing and coughing and claiming the promised sixpence: "Shure, yer honor, ye might make it a shillin', for in the washin' I've caught the divil of a cowld." When we came back a few months afterwards we missed him. I made up my mind that he had never recovered from that cleansing; but a more recent visitor tells me that he is still alive, as witty and as dirty as ever.

[The traveller next made his way, _via_ Londonderry, to Antrim,
where stands a celebrated round tower.]

There is perhaps nothing of more puzzling interest to the Irish antiquary than the round towers, of which there are about eighty in the island. Their origin and purpose have been variously guessed at, some maintaining that they were erected by the Danes as watch-towers and afterwards changed by the Christian Irish into clock- or bell-towers. But why should the Danes confine these structures to Ireland, and not build them in England, Scotland, and other regions where they had a much firmer foothold? Others regard them as fire-temples, where the Druids lit the sacred flame and kept it safe from pollution. This view was accepted for a long time as a settlement of the question, on account of the resemblance of these towers to similar structures found in India and thought to have been used in an extinct form of worship. The Irish Druids followed many Eastern customs in their religious rites, but these may have been mere coincidences. The turrets in the vicinity of Turkish mosques, from the summits of which approaching festivals were proclaimed, suggested the hypothesis that the Irish towers were intended for the same purpose. Others held the theory that they were built by the ancient bishops as strongholds for the sacred articles belonging to the churches. In the neighborhood of many of these towers churches still exist. A very picturesque one forms part of a church in Castle-Dermot, in the county Down. At Drumbo, a few miles from Belfast, the ruin of one stands in the church-yard of a Presbyterian chapel.

The Antrim tower is in fine preservation to the very summit, but no trace has been found to indicate that a church existed in its vicinity. It is ninety-three feet high, and about fifty-three feet in circumference at its base, is built of rough stone, and has a stone flooring, underneath which it is supposed a sepulchre, as at Ardmore, exists. Above the door-way is a bas-relief like a Maltese cross. I climbed into the tower through the entrance, two feet by four. Its width inside is about eight feet, but narrows gradually to the top. The ivy which clung affectionately to its outside had grown into several of the windows and lay in decayed brambles inside. Up at the very top the jackdaws had a gloriously independent life of it all to themselves. The grass outside was as level as a century's care and rolling could make it. And hark! "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" "No, you don't, my dear fellow!" I replied. "You are a relative of our cuckoo of Green-Castle." "Cuckoo!" he replied in denial; and I found out that it was a live cuckoo coaxing me to play at hide-and-seek. I started to accept the challenge,--when "Trespassers will be Prosecuted" stared me in the face as I mounted an innocent stile. Forty jackdaws--the Forty Thieves--got together on the topmost boughs of trees near by and discussed my intentions: Was I loading a gun, or only making a sketch? Was I painter or poacher? I followed the cuckoo's cry in spite of the trespass, but caught no second glimpse of him.

Coming back and crossing a picturesque stream, a short walk brought me to the famous Lough Neagh, the fourth largest lake in Europe, twenty miles in length and fifteen in breadth. In size it seemed a mere pond, compared to the great inland seas of America; but the legend of its buried glories, and the belief of the fishermen that when the water is clear they can see round towers and high steeples and churches of the land below, would waken any one's interest. Wonderful petrifactions are found along its margins, referable to some remote geological era, and no doubt these fossil woods gave rise to the fishermen's superstition. On the borders of the lake you see the ruins of the seat of Lord O'Neill, "Shane's Castle," which is surrounded by as much superstition as the lake. The banshee of the O'Neills was a firm article of faith of mine host in Antrim, who told me that his father had heard its wail.

As I came back to the town I saw a characteristic scene which reminded me of Father Prout's remark, that "the pig is as essential an inmate of the Irish cabin as the Arab steed of the shepherd's tent on the plains of Mesopotamia." At the door of a thatched mud hut there was a fierce tooth-and-nail contest between two pigs. Out sallied the good woman of the house and belabored the nearest one gently with stick, roughly with tongue: "Whist wid ye! Take that, now! _Come into the house wid ye!_" With well-trained docility Piggy obeyed. A short distance away I saw a crowd gathered about a cart covered with a pure white sheet. The look of delight upon the faces of those who had peeped under the cover tempted my curiosity, and I lifted the linen. It was a young pig, as white as snow and as fresh as a daisy.

But I intended only to take a peep at the northern coast of Ireland, and here I am _en route_ to Belfast. As you go farther you fare better in the way of fine scenery and interesting people. There is something about the greenness of Ireland which sanctifies its claim to be called the Emerald Isle. I have seen nothing anywhere else to rival the soft luxuriance of nature here. Grass, ivy, and flowers seem as indigenous as hospitable hearts. I was told that if you flung a clean-cut stick in a County Meath meadow, you might pick it up in a day or two covered with young lichens and moss; but this reminded me too much of the crow-bar planted in some other fertile country in the evening which sprouted out tenpenny nails in the morning. The very primroses have a depth of mellow beauty I never saw in England. Walking through the country you get a good insight into its social and political questions, and, whatever preconceptions you may have, you will be sure--if you have no bigotry in your bones and do not excite people about the burning questions of the hour--to carry from Ireland memories of its lovely scenery which nothing on earth can ever dispel.

PARIS AND ITS ATTRACTIONS.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

[The city of Paris, the cynosure of European eyes, and the
paradise of good Americans, calls loudly for a description at
our hands. It is a call which can readily be answered. We
suffer, indeed, from a superfluity of riches. Descriptions of
every sort, shape, and complexion are so numerous that it is
not easy to select with discretion. We take one that has the
quality of enthusiastic admiration from the "Sunny Memories of
Foreign Lands" of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It begins
with her entrance into the city, after passing the easy ordeal
of the custom-house officials.]

We rode through streets whose names were familiar, crossed the Carrousel, passed the Seine, and stopped before an ancient mansion, in the Rue de Verneuil, belonging to M. le Marquis de Brige. This Faubourg St. Germain is the part of Paris where the ancient nobility lived, and the houses exhibit marks of former splendor. The marquis is one of those chivalrous legitimists who uphold the claims of Henri V. He lives in the country, and rents his hotel. Mrs. C. occupies the suite of rooms on the lower floor. We entered by a ponderous old gate-way, opened by the _concierge_, passed through a large paved quadrangle, traversed a short hall, and found ourselves in a large, cheerful parlor, looking out into a small flower garden. There was no carpet, but what is called here a parquet floor, or mosaic of oak blocks, waxed and highly polished. The sofas and chairs were covered with light chintz, and the whole air of the apartment shady and cool as a grotto. A jardiniere filled with flowers stood in the centre of the room, and around it a group of living flowers--mother, sisters, and daughters--scarcely less beautiful. In five minutes we were at home. French life is different from any other. Elsewhere you do as the world pleases; here you do as you please yourself; my spirits always rise when I get among the French....

_Monday, June 6._--This day was consecrated to knick-knacks. Accompanied by Mrs. C., whom years of residence have converted into a perfect _Parisienne_, we visited shop after shop and store after store. The politeness of the shopkeepers is inexhaustible. I felt quite ashamed to spend a half-hour looking at everything and then depart without buying; but the civil Frenchman bowed and smiled, and thanked us for coming.

In the evening we rode to L'Arc de Triomphe d'Etoile, an immense pile of massive masonry, from the top of which we enjoyed a brilliant panorama. Paris was beneath us, from the Louvre to the Bois de Boulogne, with its gardens and moving myriads, its sports, and games, and light-hearted mirth,--a vast Vanity Fair, blazing in the sunlight. A deep and strangely-blended impression of sadness and gayety sunk into our hearts as we gazed. All is vivacity, gracefulness, and sparkle to the eye; but ah, what fires are smouldering below! Are not all these vines rooted in the lava and ashes of the volcano-side?...

_Wednesday, June 8._--A day on foot in Paris. Surrendered H. to the care of our fair hostess. Attempted to hire a boat at one of the great bathing establishments for a pull on the Seine. Why not on the Seine as well as on the Thames? But the old Triton demurred. The tide _marched_ too strong,--"_Il marche trop fort._" Onward, then, along the quays; visiting the curious old book-stalls, picture-stands, and flower-markets. Lean over the parapet and gaze upon this modern Euphrates, rushing between solid walls of masonry through the heart of another Babylon. The river is the only thing not old. These waters are as turbid, tumultuous, unbridled, as when forests covered all these banks,--fit symbol of peoples and nations in their mad career, generation after generation. Institutions, like hewn granite, may wall them in, and vast arches span their flow, and hierarchies domineer over the tide; but the scorning waters burst into life unchangeable, and sweep impetuous through the heart of Vanity Fair, and dash out again into the future the same grand, ungovernable Euphrates stream. I do not wonder Egypt adored her Nile and Rome her Tiber. Surely, the life artery of Paris is this Seine beneath my feet! And there is no scene like this, as I gaze upward and downward, comprehending in a glance the immense panorama of art and architecture,--life, motion, enterprise, pleasure, pomp, and power. Beautiful Paris! What city in the world can compare with thee?

And is it not chiefly because, either by accident or by instinctive good taste, her treasures of beauty and art are so disposed along the Seine as to be visible at a glance to the best effect? As the instinct of the true _Parisienne_ teaches her the mystery of setting off the graces of her person by the fascinations of dress, so the instinct of the nation to set off the city by the fascinations of architecture and embellishment. Hence a chief superiority of Paris to London. The Seine is straight, and its banks are laid out in broad terraces on either side, called _quais_, lined with her stateliest palaces and gardens. The Thames forms an elbow, and is enveloped in dense fog and smoke. London lowers; the Seine sparkles; London shuts down upon the Thames, and there is no point of view for the whole river panorama; Paris rises amphitheatrically, on either side the Seine, and the eye from the Pont d'Austerlitz seems to fly through the immense reach like an arrow, casting its shadow on everything of beauty or grandeur Paris possesses.

Rapidly now I sped onward, paying brief visits to the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, and spending a cool half-hour in Notre Dame. I love to sit in these majestic fanes, abstracting them from the superstition which does but desecrate them, and gaze upward to their lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectural sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express. Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built; they seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little ornament here; that roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets, exploring a quadrangular market; surveyed the old church of St. Genevieve, and the new, now the Pantheon; went onward to the Jardin des Plantes, and explored its tropical bowers. Many things remind me to-day of New Orleans and its Levee, its Mississippi, its Cathedral, and the luxuriant vegetation of the Gulf. In fact, I seem to be walking in my sleep in a kind of glorified New Orleans, all the while. Yet I return to the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place Vendome, and in the shadow of Napoleon's Column the illusion vanishes. Hundreds of battles look down upon me from their blazonry.

In the evening I rested from the day's fatigue by an hour in the garden of the Palais Royal. I sat by one of the little tables and called for an ice. There were hundreds of ladies and gentlemen eating ices, drinking wine, reading the papers, smoking, chatting; scores of pretty children were frolicking and enjoying the balmy evening. Here six or eight midgets were jumping the rope, while papa and mamma swung it for them. Pretty little things, with their flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, how they did seem to enjoy themselves! What parent was ever far from home that did not espy in every group of children his own little ones,--his Mary or his Nellie, his Henry or Charlie? So it was with me. There was a ring of twenty or thirty singing and dancing, with a smaller ring in the centre, while old folks and boys stood outside. But I heard not a single oath, nor saw a rough or rude action, during the whole time I was there. The boys standing by looked on quietly, like young gentlemen. The best finale of such a toilsome day of sight-seeing was a warm bath in the Rue de Bac, for the trifling sum of fifteen sous. The cheapness and convenience of bathing here is a great recommendation of Paris life. They will bring you a hot bath at your house for twenty-five cents, and that without bustle or disorder. And nothing so effectually as an evening bath, as my experience testifies, cures fatigue and propitiates to dreamless slumber....

After visiting the Luxembourg, I resorted to the gardens of the Tuileries. The thermometer was at about eighty degrees in the shade. From the number of people assembled, one would have thought, if it had been in the United States, that some great mass convention was coming off. Under the impenetrable screen of the trees, in the dark, cool, refreshing shade, are thousands of chairs, for which one pays two cents apiece. Whole families come, locking up their door, bringing the baby, work, dinner, or lunch, take a certain number of chairs, and spend the day. As far as eye can reach you see a multitude seated, as if in church, with other multitudes moving to and fro, while boys and girls without number are frolicking, racing, playing ball, driving hoop, etc., but contriving to do it without making a hideous racket.

How French children are taught to play and enjoy themselves without disturbing everybody else is a mystery. "_C'est gentil_" seems to be a talismanic spell; and "_Ce n'est pas gentil ca_" is sufficient to check every rising irregularity. Oh, that some _savant_ would write a book and tell us how it is done! I gazed for half an hour on the spectacle. A more charming sight my eyes never beheld. There were gray-headed old men, and women, and invalids; and there were beautiful demoiselles working worsted, embroidery, sewing; men reading papers; and, in fact, people doing everything they would do in their own parlors. And all were graceful, kind, and obliging; not a word or an act of impoliteness or indecency. No wonder the French adore Paris, thought I; in no other city in the world is a scene like this possible. No wonder that their hearts die within them at thoughts of exile in the fens of Cayenne!

But under all this there lie, as under the cultivated crust of this fair world, deep abysses of soul, where volcanic masses of molten lava surge and shake the tremulous earth. In the gay and bustling Boulevards, a friend, an old resident of Paris, pointed out to me, as we rode, the bullet-marks that scarred the houses,--significant tokens of what seems, but is not, forgotten.

At sunset a military band of about seventy performers began playing in front of the Tuileries. They formed an immense circle, the leader in the centre. He played the octave flute, which also served as a baton for marking time. The music was characterized by delicacy, precision, suppression, and subjugation of rebellious material.

I imagined a congress of horns, clarionets, trumpets, etc., conversing in low tones on some important theme; nay, rather a conspiracy of instruments, mourning between whiles their subjugation, and ever and anon breaking out in a fierce _emeute_, then repressed, hushed, dying away, as if they had heard of Baron Munchausen's frozen horn, and had conceived the idea of yielding their harmonies without touch of human lips, yet were sighing and sobbing at their impotence. Perhaps I detected the pulses of a nation's palpitating heart, throbbing for liberty, but trodden down, and sobbing in despair.

[A _salon_ experience is next described, followed by a visit to
Versailles. Then our authoress plunges into the world of art at
the Louvre.]

At last I have come into dream-land; into the lotos-eater's paradise; into the land where it is always afternoon. I am released from care; I am unknown, unknowing; I live in a house whose arrangements seem to me strange, old, and dreamy. In the heart of a great city I am as still as if in a convent; in the burning heats of summer our rooms are shadowy and cool as a cave. My time is all my own. I may at will lie on a sofa, and dreamily watch the play of the leaves and flowers in the little garden into which my room opens; or I may go into the parlor adjoining, whence I hear the quick voices of my beautiful and vivacious young friends.

You ought to see these girls. Emma might look like a Madonna, were it not for her wicked wit; and as to Anna and Lizzie, as they glance by me, now and then, I seem to think them a kind of sprite, or elf, made to inhabit shady old houses, just as twinkling harebells grow in old castles; and then the gracious mamma, who speaks French or English like a stream of silver, is she not, after all, the fairest of any of them? And there is Caroline, piquant, racy, full of conversation, sharp as a quartz crystal, how I like to hear her talk! These people know Paris, as we say in America, "like a book." They have studied it aesthetically, historically, socially. They have studied French people and French literature, and studied it with enthusiasm, as people ever should who would truly understand. They are all kindness to me. Whenever I wish to see anything, I have only to speak; or to know, I have only to ask. At breakfast every morning we compare notes and make up our lists of wants. My first, of course, was the Louvre. It is close by us. Think of it. To one who has starved all a life, in vain imaginings of what art might be, to know that you are within a stone's throw of a museum full of its miracles; Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman sculptors and modern painting, all there!...

It was, then, with a thrill almost of awe that I approached the Louvre. Here, perhaps, said I to myself, I shall answer fully the question that has long wrought within my soul. What is art? and what can it do? Here, perhaps, these yearnings for the ideal will meet their satisfaction. The ascent to the picture-gallery tends to produce a flutter of excitement and expectation. Magnificent staircases, dim perspectives of frescoes and carvings, the glorious hall of Apollo, rooms with mosaic pavements, antique vases, countless spoils of art, dazzle the eye of the neophyte, and prepare the mind for some grand enchantment. Then opens on one the grand hall of paintings arranged by schools, the works of each artist by themselves, a wilderness of gorgeous growths.

I first walked through the whole, offering my mind up aimlessly to see if there were any picture there great and glorious enough to seize and control my whole being, and answer at once the cravings of the poetic and artistic element. For any such I looked in vain. I saw a thousand beauties, as also a thousand enormities, but nothing of that overwhelming, subduing nature which I had conceived. Most of the men there had painted with dry eyes and cool hearts, thinking only of the mixing of their colors and the jugglery of their art, thinking little of heroism, love, faith, or immortality. Yet when I had resigned this longing, when I was sure I should not meet there what I sought, then I began to enjoy very heartily what there was.

In the first place, I now saw Claudes worthy of the reputation he bore. Three or four of these were studied with great delight,--the delight one feels who, conscientiously bound to be delighted, suddenly comes into a situation to be so. I saw, now, those atmospheric traits, those reproductions of the mysteries of air and of light, which are called so wonderful, and for which all admire Claude, but for which so few admire Him who made Claude, and who every day creates around us in the commonest scenes effects far more beautiful. How much, even now, my admiration of Claude was genuine, I cannot say. How can we ever be sure on this point, when we admire what has prestige and sanction, not to admire which is an argument against ourselves? Certainly, however, I did feel great delight in some of these works.

One of my favorites was Rembrandt. I always did admire the gorgeous and solemn mysteries of his coloring. Rembrandt is like Hawthorne. He chooses simple and every-day objects, and so arranges light and shadow as to give them a sombre richness and a mysterious gloom. The House of the Seven Gables is a succession of Rembrandt pictures, done in words instead of oils. Now, this pleases us, because our life really is a haunted one; the simplest thing in it is a mystery, the invisible world always lies around us like a shadow, and therefore this dreamy golden gleam of Rembrandt meets somewhat in our inner consciousness, to which it corresponds. There were no pictures in the gallery which I looked upon so long, and to which I returned so often and with such growing pleasure, as these. I found in them, if not a commanding, a drawing influence, a full satisfaction for one part of my nature.

There were Raphaels there which still disappointed me, because from Raphael I asked and expected more. I wished to feel his hand on my soul with a stronger grasp; these were too passionless in their serenity, and almost effeminate in their tenderness.

But Rubens, the great, joyous, full-souled, all-powerful Rubens! there he was, full as ever of triumphant, abounding life; disgusting and pleasing; making me laugh and making me angry; defying me to dislike him; dragging me at his chariot-wheels; in despite of my protests forcing me to confess that there was no other but he....

I should compare Rubens to Shakespeare for the wonderful variety and vital force of his artistic power. I know no other mind he so nearly resembles. Like Shakespeare, he forces you to accept and to forgive a thousand excesses, and uses his own faults as musicians use discords, only to enhance the perfection of harmony. There certainly is some use even in defects. A faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects rouse and excite the sensibility to seek and appreciate excellences. Some of Shakespeare's finest passages explode all grammar and rhetoric like sky-rockets,--the thought blows the language to shivers....

The halls devoted to painting of which I have spoken give you very little idea of the treasures of the institution. Gallery after gallery is filled with Greek, Roman, Assyrian, and Egyptian sculpture, coins, vases, and antique remains of every description. There is also an apartment in which I took a deep interest, containing the original sketches of ancient masters. Here one may see the pen-and-ink drawings of Claude, divided into squares to prepare them for the copyist. One compares here with interest the manners of the different artists in jotting down their ideas as they rose, some by chalk, some by crayon, some by pencil, some by water-colors, and some by a heterogeneous mixture of all. Mozart's scrap-bag of musical jottings could not have been more amusing.

On the whole, cravings of mere ideality have come nearer to meeting satisfaction by some of these old mutilated remains of Greek sculpture than anything I have met yet. In the paintings, even of the most celebrated masters, there are often things which are excessively annoying to me. I scarcely remember a master in whose works I have not found a hand, or foot, or face, or feature so distorted, or coloring at times so unnatural, or something so out of place and proportion in the picture as very seriously to mar the pleasure that I derived from it. In this statuary less is attempted and all is more harmonious, and one's ideas of proportion are never violated.

My favorite among all these remains is a mutilated statue which they call the Venus de Milo. This is a statue which is so called from having been dug up some years ago, piecemeal, in the island of Milos. There was a struggle for her between a French naval officer, the English, and the Turks. The French officer carried her off like another Helen, and she was given to Paris, old Louis Philippe being bridegroom by proxy. _Savans_ refer the statue to the time of Phidias, and as this is a pleasant idea to me, I go a little further, and ascribe her to Phidias himself.

The statue is mutilated, both arms being gone, and part of the foot. But there is a majesty and grace in the head and face, a union of loveliness with intellectual and moral strength, beyond anything which I have ever seen. To me she might represent Milton's glorious picture of unfallen, perfect womanhood, in his Eve.

Compared with this matchless Venus that of Medici seems as inane and trifling as mere physical beauty always must by the side of beauty baptized and made sacramental, as the symbol of that which alone is truly fair.

TRAVEL IN FRANCE FIFTY YEARS AGO.

CHARLES DICKENS.

[It hardly seems to us, to whom the works of Dickens are
household words, that his fame as a writer began more than half
a century ago. Yet such is the case. The "Pictures from Italy,"
from which we make the following selection, was published in
1846, while his first book saw the light ten years earlier. We
give here his story of how France and French life appeared to
him on a journey southward from Paris.]

On a fine Sunday morning in the midsummer time and weather of eighteen hundred and forty-four it was, my good friend, when--don't be alarmed; not when two travellers might have been observed slowly making their way over that picturesque and broken ground by which the first chapter of a Middle Age novel is usually attained--but when an English travelling carriage of considerable proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon near Belgrave Square, London, was observed (by a very small French soldier, for I saw him look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hotel Meurice in the Rue Rivoli at Paris.

I am no more bound to explain why the English family travelling by this carriage, inside and out, should be starting for Italy on a Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, than I am to assign a reason for all the little men in France being soldiers and all the big men postilions, which is the invariable rule. But they had some sort of reason for what they did, I have no doubt, and their reason for being there at all was, as you know, that they were going to live in fair Genoa for a year; and that the head of the family purposed in that space of time to stroll about wherever his restless humor carried him.

And it would have been small comfort to me to have explained to the population of Paris generally that I was that Head and Chief, and not the radiant embodiment of good-humor who sat beside me in the person of a French courier,--best of servants and most beaming of men. Truth to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to no account at all.

There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris--as we rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the Pont Neuf--to reproach us for our Sunday travelling. The wine-shops (every second house) were driving a roaring trade; awnings were spreading, and chairs and tables arranging, outside the cafes, preparatory to the eating of ices and drinking of cool liquids later in the day; shoeblacks were busy on the bridges; shops were open; carts and wagons clattered to and fro; the narrow, uphill, funnel-like streets across the river were so many dense perspectives of crowd and bustle, parti-colored nightcaps, tobacco pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy heads of hair; nothing at that hour denoted a day of rest, unless it were the appearance, here and there, of a family pleasure-party, crammed into a bulky old lumbering cab, or of some contemplative holiday-maker in the freest and easiest dishabille, leaning out of a low garret window, watching the drying of his newly-polished shoes on the little parapet outside (if a gentleman), or the airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady), with calm anticipation.

Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement which surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards Marseilles are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens. To Avallon. To Chalons. A sketch of one day's proceedings is a sketch of all three, and here it is.

We have four horses and one postilion, who has a very long whip, and drives his team something like the courier of St. Petersburg in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's, only he sits his own horse instead of standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by these postilions are sometimes a century or two old, and are so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's foot that the spur, which is put where his own heel comes, is generally half-way up the leg of the boots. The man often comes out of the stable-yard with his whip in his hand and his shoes on, and brings out, in both hands, one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by the side of his horse with great gravity, until everything is ready. When it is--and oh, Heaven! the noise they make about it!--he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted into them by a couple of friends; adjusts the rope harness, embossed by the labors of innumerable pigeons in the stables; makes all the horses kick and plunge; cracks his whip like a madman; shouts "En route--hi!" and away we go. He is sure to have a contest with his horse before we have gone very far; and then he calls him a thief, and a brigand, and a pig, and what not, and beats him about the head as if he were made of wood.

There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the country for the first two days,--from a dreary plain to an interminable avenue, and from an interminable avenue to a dreary plain again. Plenty of vines there are, in the open fields, but of a short, low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere, but an extraordinarily scanty population and fewer children than I ever encountered. I don't believe we saw a hundred children between Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns, drawbridged and walled, with odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the wall had put a mask on, and were staring down into the moat; other strange little towers, in gardens and fields, and down lanes and in farm-yards; all alone, and always round, with a peaked roof, and never used for any purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all sorts; sometimes an hotel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched over by extinguisher-topped turrets and blink-eyed little casements, are the standard objects, repeated over and over again.

Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of out-houses; and painted over the gate-way, "Stabling for sixty horses," as indeed there might be stabling for sixty score, were there any horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, or anything stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative of the wine inside, which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping with everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age, though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day long strange little narrow wagons, in strings of six or eight, bringing cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, of one man, or even boy,--and he very often asleep in the foremost cart,--come jingling past; the horses drowsily ringing the bells upon their harness, and looking as if they thought (no doubt they do) their great blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and thickness, with a pair of grotesque horns growing out of the collar, very much too warm for the midsummer weather.

Then there is the diligence, twice or thrice a day, with the dusty outsides in blue frocks, like butchers; and the insides in white nightcaps; and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding and shaking like an idiot's head; and its Young-France passengers staring out of window, with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks clinched in their national grasp. Also the malle-poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at a real good daredevil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady old cures come jolting past, in such ramshackle, musty, rusty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing, or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks,--to obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in any country, it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and imagine to yourself whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike the descriptions therein contained.

You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you generally do in the last stage of the day; and the ninety-six bells upon the horses--twenty-four apiece--have been ringing sleepily in your ears for half an hour or so; and it has become a very jog-trot, monotonous, tiresome sort of business; and you have been thinking deeply about the dinner you will have at the next stage; when down at the end of the long avenue of trees through which you are travelling the first indication of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages; and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement, ... and here we are in the yard of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or....

The landlady of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the landlord of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the femme de chambre of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, with a red beard like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or, is here; and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in a corner of the yard by himself, with a shovel-hat upon his head, and a black gown on his back, and a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other; and everybody, except Monsieur le Cure, is open-mouthed and open-eyed for the opening of the carriage-door. The landlord of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or dotes to that extent upon the courier that he can hardly wait for his coming down from the box, but embraces his very legs and boot-heels as he descends. "My courier! My brave courier! My friend! My brother!" The landlady loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him, the garcon worships him.

The courier asks if his letter has been received. It has, it has. Are the rooms prepared? They are, they are. The best rooms for my noble courier. The rooms of state for my gallant courier; the whole house is at the service of my best of friends! He keeps his hand upon the carriage-door, and asks some other question to enhance the expectation. He carries a green leathern purse outside his coat, suspended by a belt. The idlers look at it; one touches it. It is full of five-franc pieces. Murmurs of admiration are heard among the boys. The landlord falls upon the courier's neck and folds him to his breast. He is so much fatter than he was, he says. He looks so rosy and so well!...

The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the night, which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds in it; through a dark passage, up two steps, down four, past a pump, across a balcony, and next door to the stable. The other sleeping apartments are large and lofty; each with two small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the windows, with red and white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is already laid in it for three; and the napkins are folded in cocked-hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There are no carpets, and not much furniture to speak of; but there is abundance of looking-glass, and there are large vases under glass shades filled with artificial flowers, and there are plenty of clocks. The whole party are in motion. The brave courier in particular, is everywhere, looking after the beds, having wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the landlord, and picking up green cucumbers,--always cucumbers; Heaven knows where he gets them,--with which he walks about, one in each hand, like truncheons.

Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup; there are very large loaves,--one apiece; a fish; four dishes afterwards; some poultry afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no lack of wine. There is not much in the dishes, but they are very good, and always ready instantly. When it is nearly dark, the brave courier, having eaten the two cucumbers, sliced up in the contents of a pretty large decanter of oil and another of vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and proposes a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down upon the court-yard of the inn. Off we go; and very solemn and grand it is in the dim light; so dim at last that the polite old lantern-jawed sacristan has a feeble little bit of candle in his hand to grope among the tombs with, and looks, among the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his own.

Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of the inn are supping in the open air, at a great table; the dish, a stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron caldron it was boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and are very merry; merrier than the gentleman with the red beard, who is playing billiards in the light room on the left of the yard, where shadows with cues in their hands and cigars in their mouths cross and recross the window constantly. Still the thin cure walks up and down alone, with his book and umbrella. And there he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we are fast asleep.

We are astir at six the next morning. It is a delightful day, shaming yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a carriage in a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody is brisk, and as we finish breakfast the horses come jingling into the yard from the post-house. Everything taken out of the carriage is put back again. The brave courier announces that all is ready, after walking into every room and looking all round it to be certain that nothing is left behind. Everybody gets in. Everybody connected with the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is again enchanted. The brave courier runs into the house for a parcel containing cold fowl, sliced ham, bread, and biscuits for lunch, hands it into the coach, and runs back again.

What has he got in his hand now? More cucumbers? No. A long strip of paper. It's the bill.

The brave courier has two belts on this morning,--one supporting the purse, another a mighty good sort of leathern bottle, filled to the throat with the best light Bordeaux wine in the house. He never pays the bill till this bottle is full. Then he disputes it.

He disputes it now violently. He is still the landlord's brother, but by another father or mother. He is not so nearly related to him as he was last night. The landlord scratches his head. The brave courier points to certain figures in the bill, and intimates that if they remain there the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is thenceforth and forever an hotel de l'ecu de cuivre. The landlord goes into a little counting-house. The brave courier follows, forces the bill and a pen into his hand, and talks more rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the pen. The courier smiles. The landlord makes an alteration. The courier cuts a joke. The landlord is affectionate, but not weakly so. He bears it like a man. He shakes hands with his brave brother, but he doesn't hug him. Still, he loves his brother, for he knows that he will be returning that way one of these fine days with another family, and he foresees that his heart will yearn towards him again. The brave courier traverses all round the carriage once, looks at the drag, inspects the wheels, jumps up, gives the word, and away we go!

[And so onward they go, passing Chalons, which excites little
comment, and at length reaching Lyons.]

What a city Lyons is! Talk about people feeling at certain unlucky times as if they had tumbled from the clouds! Here is a whole town that has tumbled anyhow, out of the sky; having been first caught up, like other stones that tumble down from that region, out of fens and barren places, dismal to behold! The two great streets through which the two great rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling out of the windows and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods, and living, or rather not dying till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing town melted into one would hardly convey an impression of Lyons as it presented itself to me, for all the undrained, unscavengered qualities of a foreign town seemed grafted there upon the native miseries of a manufacturing one, and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles out my way to avoid encountering again.

In the cool of the evening, or rather in the faded heat of the day, we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a few dogs, were engaged in contemplation. There was no difference in point of cleanliness between its stone pavement and that of the streets; and there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on any terms, and which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed of. If you would know all about the architecture of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr. Murray's Guide-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to him, as I did?

For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made in connection with that piece of mechanism. The keeper of the church was very anxious it should be shown; partly for the honor of the establishment and the town, and partly, perhaps, because of his deriving a percentage from the additional consideration. However that may be, it was set in motion, and thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and innumerable little figures staggered out of them, and jerked themselves back again, with that special unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which usually attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. Meanwhile, the sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and pointed them out, severally, with a wand. There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary; and close to her a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw accomplished; instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and banging his little door violently after him. Taking this to be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and not at all unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the subject, in anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, "Aha! The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon disposed of." "Pardon, monsieur," said the sacristan, with a polite motion of his hand towards the little door, as if introducing somebody,--"the Angel Gabriel!"

Soon after daybreak next morning we were steaming down the arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel full of merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers for our companions; among whom, the most remarkable was a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there to remind himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief.

For the last two days we had seen great sullen hills, the first indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we were rushing on beside them; sometimes close beside them; sometimes with an intervening slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and small towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen through the light open towers of their churches, and clouds moving slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind them; ruined castles perched on every eminence; and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills, made it very beautiful. The great height of these, too, making the buildings look so tiny that they had all the charm of elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the olive-tree, and the puny size and little slow walk of the Liliputian men and women on the bank, made a charming picture. There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont d'Esprit, with I don't know how many arches; towns where memorable wines are made; Vallence, where Napoleon studied; and the noble river, bringing, at every winding turn, new beauties into view.

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-pie-crust, battlemented wall that never will be brown, though it bake for centuries.

FROM NORMANDY TO PROVENCE.

DONALD G. MITCHELL.

["Fresh Gleanings; or, A New Sheaf from the Old Fields of
Continental Europe," an interesting and appreciative work of
travel by the "Ik Marvel" of literary fame, presents us with
the following picturesque account of some of the more
interesting cities of Normandy and Southern France, which can
scarcely fail to prove of interest to readers. Leaving Lyons,
our traveller makes a diligence journey to Limoges, in which
city we take up the thread of his route.]

We wish to take our stop at some not too large town of the interior, and which shall it be,--Chalons-sur-Saone, with its bridge, and quays, and meadows; or Dijon, lying in the vineyards of Burgundy; or Chateauroux, in the great sheep plains of Central France; or Limoges, still more unknown, prettily situated among the green hills of Limousin, and the chief town of the department _Haute Vienne_?

Let it be just by the Boule d'Or, in the town last named, that I quit my seat in the diligence. The little old place is not upon any of the great routes, so that the servants of the inn have not become too republican for civility, and a blithe waiting-maid is at hand to take our luggage.

A plain door-way in the heavy stone inn, and still plainer and steeper stair-way, conduct to a clean, large chamber upon the first floor. Below in the little salon some three or four are at supper. Join them you may, if you please, with a chop nicely done, and a palatable _vin du pays_.

It is too dark to see the town. You are tired with eight-and-forty hours of constant diligence-riding,--if you have come from Lyons, as I did,--and the bed is excellent.

The window overlooks the chief street of the place; it is wide and paved with round stones, and dirty, and there are no sidewalks, though a town of thirty thousand inhabitants. Nearly opposite is a cafe, with small green settees ranged about the door, with some tall flowering shrubs in green boxes; and even at eight in the morning two or three are loitering upon their chairs and sipping coffee. Next door is the office of the diligence for Paris. Farther up the street are haberdashery shops and show-rooms of the famous Limoges crockery. Soldiers are passing by twos, and cavalrymen in undress go sauntering by on fine coal-black horses; and the guide-book tells me that from this region come the horses for all the cavalry of France....

There are curious old churches, and a simple-minded, gray-haired verger, to open the side chapels and to help you spell the names on tombs. Not half so tedious will the old man prove as the automaton cathedral-showers of England, and he spices his talk with a little wit. There are shops, not unlike those of a middle-sized town in our country; still, little air of trade, and none at all of progress. Decay seems to be stamped on nearly all the country towns of France, unless so large as to make cities, and so have a life of their own, or so small as to serve only as market-towns for the peasantry....

Wandering out of the edge of the town of Limoges, you come upon hedges and green fields, for Limousin is the Arcadia of France. Queer old houses adorn some of the narrow streets, and women in strange head-dresses look out of the balconies that lean half-way over. But Sunday is their holiday time, when all are in their gayest, and when the green walks encircling the town, laid upon that old line of ramparts which the Black Prince stormed, are thronged with the population.