the gainers. In the fulsome eulogies which were published in praise of Don Carlos, Gachard fancies he discovers the sentiments of the Spanish people. If, instead of printed verses, which could not elude the censure of the Government, he had found anything unpublished of the same description, not open to suspicion, or written to be seen, the observation would have been more to the

point.

If posterity judged Philip himself by the poems written in his praise after his death by the best authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all the qualities of the great heroes of ancient and modern times would not come up to those attributed to the monarch, who, in the opinion of Mr. Motley, was the worst and wickedest of mankind.

HOW

OW shall I talk about Touraine? Quiet, pleasant towns, with rich meadows along the river sides, and uplands where the vine thrives wonderfully, and long stretches of forest which I saw now for the first time in all the glorious variety of their spring green, and old churches, so numerous that at last we get quite tired of Romanesque, and take as matter of course a lofty apse and quaintly carved capitals, such as in England would draw archeologists from the other side of the island. These are very good in their way, and so are the châteaux, big and little, of which there are almost as many as there are churches.

But who cares for châteaux, or Romanesque, or talk about soils and crops, when all these Whitsuntide horrors have come upon Francewhen M. Thiers and his Assembly have shown so emphatically that 'they know not what they do,' and when that ignorance is their sole excuse for the cruellest bit of repression that has been done since the day of St. Bartholomew?

What a solution of the great 'labour and capital' difficulty!-just one of those solutions which never solve anything, but leave things to go round again in the old vicious circle.

But I want to take you into Touraine, and believe me it is not mere dilettante work to go about there at such a time as this; for (as the French always say) Touraine is the heart of France, and there, if anywhere, you see the French character: there, too, you may, I think, trace some of the causes which have made France what she is.

I shall take you from town to town just as I travelled myself; for the route is one to be recommended to any one who wants, after a pleasant change of scene, to return tout bourré de vieux châteaux.

Tours is not so English as it was, but it is undoubtedly an agreeable place to live in, lying close to the wide river, and thereby getting that freshness which always comes with running water. Flat country is very pleasant for a change. If you live, as I do, among rocks and treeless moors, you begin to hunger for rich meadow land and broad sweeps of forest, and to feel that Izaak Walton was very excusable for not seeing anything but bad roads and weary desolation in Dovedale. Round Tours the land is very rich: how such sandy-looking soil can send up such crops puzzles those who are used to connect sand with barrenness. Market gardens of course there are in plenty: they stretch past Louis XI.'s den-gloomy, disappointing Plessis les Tours, right across to the Cher; and such watering and manuring as was going on whenever I went near them soon showed me that the Tourangeaux don't trust to their soil alone. Every market-gardener's house had a flood-mark on it: on some was the gloomy notice "This house fell in after the great flood of 18-.' Ten years seem to elapse between flood and flood. I can't tell how far the cutting down of forests in the Forêz and Cevennes helps to make them worse; but the old levées, dating from Charlemagne or Dagobert, or any one else you please, show that they are no post-revolution evil. One patent cause is the silting up of the river-beds: I spoke of this to a very intelligent priest at Madame de Pompadour's Menars-le-Château. The dyke just opposite had been cut, some people hoaxingly said to flood the country against the Prussians; but he assured me it was only to let off some of the water, that the mischief done below might be less. 'Why not dredge?' said I. 'But it would cost enormously,' he replied. Alas! France is not likely for a very

long time to be able to do anything that will cost enormously,' unless in sheer despair she takes (like some ruined men) to spending without any care where the money is to come from The best way, I think, "national degradation' apart, would be for her to let some Loire and Cher Improvement Company do the work, and lease them public lands to pay themselves out of meanwhile. Anyhow, it wants doing much more than many of the ridiculous trifles which the Versailles Assembly has been voting urgent. The state of things by the splendid Tours bridge (the only unbroken bridge of any size which I saw in the whole province), where half the arches are dry in summer and the water trickles among shifting sandbanks, is not a credit to French engineering. I suppose if you enrolled 'conscripts' for navvies' work, and, like the Assyrians of whom Herodotus tells, made a number of reservoirs up the river, deepening at the same time its channel, you would be called an odious tyrant: it's only when the conscripts are to be food for powder that you are free to lay your hands on them.

The Tours nursery gardens are wonderful. I wanted so much to bring over a few of their standard magnolias, about as big as Rivers's pears; and the way in which they cover all eyesores with Westeria is worthy of imitation. One grows a little weary of our English way of never growing anything on stable and workshop and rubbish corner but ivy and Virginia creeper. Round Tours, and in it too, almost every 'back yard' was either glow. ing with white thorn or Judas tree or flowering creeper, or else was full of the promise of neatly trellised vines.

At Tours almost everybody is 'white.' There was a Républicain d'Indre et Loire, which I used to buy daily it was so much better than that filthy Gaulois. One day the little

lass with whom I dealt, mysteriously pulled one out from under a layer of Petits Moniteurs and Mondes Illustrés, and smiling, said in a whisper, 'I can't sell it you, sir; but I'll lend it you.' 'How's that?' 'Oh, it's not allowed to be sold in the streets now.' So I paid my penny and walked off with my paper, and I soon heard at the Cercle that the Prefect has at last suppressed that black. guard paper.' Next day there was no Républicain: the day after the girl showed me a little pile from which I drewone, very pale in type and printed only on one side; the leader was headed Un Journal à la Brosse, detailing how the printer had been for bidden to use his press, and thus the editor, determined to make a stand for freedom, had gone back to primitive methods. One Tours Tory was wicked enough to suggest that it was all a ruse to stimulate the sale. I don't know: I am very certain that the Républicain never degene rated into the blatant bombast of many Radical papers at home; its grand aim was municipal reform, beginning at Paris, but carried out all over France. How would you like a nominee, not of Parliament, but of the Crown, to be registrar, magistrate, chairman of the board of guardians, assessor of taxes, all in one? How would it work in your parish? Fancy the fussy importance, the desire to meddle with everybody's business, with which it would inspire Mr. Stringer, who now not only keeps the registers (besides collecting the rates and a good deal of the local rents too), but also keeps in his place. They wouldn't appoint the squire: he would simply decline, not liking the work; besides, he's away a good part of the year; and your maire must always be on the spot. So you would at once have to create that bureaucracy from which English country places are happily pretty free. I liked the Républicain much better than I did the Feuille

du Village, Courrier du Bonhomme Manceaux, by dispersing which the Communals of Le Mans tried to convert the peasants to their way of thinking. The Feuille was rabidly anti-Bonapartist, and nothing else. Of course it is easy to pick holes in Imperialism-to show that although the Empire meant peace,' it brought on war in the Crimea, in Italy, in China, in Mexico, and ruined the army into the bargain; but when its magnificent expenditure is laid to its charge, I cannot help remembering in Touraine the extravagance of the old kings. They say the French like that sort of thing: they've certainly always had plenty of it. No country not exceptionally rich could have supported the cost of government as it has been under almost every king but Louis Philippe.

But I must get away from Tours, and its politics, and the old Tories of the Cercle St. George, who showed such grim joy when the false news came about the taking of Fort Issy. My first station was Loches. The early coach left Tours to a minute, contrasting with the railway, where, the day before, after wandering an hour on the platform (to which a judicious tip' had admitted us), we were told the train va se former: the said 'forming' took nearly an hour more. Still, six is not a pleasant time to begin a long drive; and, after a little talk about the fine tall rye, the promising vines, the wheat, which the alternate frost and thaw, with little or no snow, had killed, and the dearth of horses, some of which changed hands for 2fr. 50c. after Beaugency, said our driver, every one fell asleep. The driver had the art of waking whenever he was wanted. Up-hill he cheered on his horses, down-hill he worked the mécanique; but he was too sleepy to smoke, much less to talk.

A

The road was dull enough. It was startling to see how wonderfully

well it was kept; how the cantonniers were at work, and how their huts, as well as the numerous notices of distance, level, &c., and the well-made drains which abound on a route départementale, were all intact. The hard side of peasant life, too, I had often noted before; though till now I never saw wife and daughter scattering the manure with their hands into the furrow which the husband drew with his one horse. Much pleasanter it was to see the women out with their cow or two, or some times a cow, a donkey, and a pair of goats, knitting while their pets were picking up the grass by the woodside. This abundant open air must counterbalance many sanitary evils, and they look neat and happy, with their box-wood faces set off by the whitest of caps, and their blue cotton dresses, always clean, even when old and patched.

Here goes a Tours dentist's caravan in undress; then a string of charcoal waggons; then some of the nar row country carts, very well packed. One thing one learns in France is never to slur over a thing; it is we who are really the makeshift nation. Past Corméry, with its very fine Romanesque spire, its ruined abbey, and thriving mill: cœur marri, says the legend, so named by the brokenhearted Count who went into retreat' there,

In coming over the down we sighted the Tour des Bradons, one of those feudal watch-towers, commanding both valleys, the Cher and Indre, which are popularly attributed to Foulques Nerra (the Black Hawk), who certainly built part of the vast keep of Loches which now rises before us, Loches is a thoroughly feudal town: it clusters under the castle hill as if there was not much safety in the open; yet it is cut off from that hill by a deep ravine. So close are the houses that from the castle terrace you can throw stones down their chimneys, and yet no separation could be more com

plete, and in the days before artillery more effectual. You understand the feudal system when you see Loches. All the way from Tours there has been scarcely a house near the high road; the hamlets are hidden out of sight along the byeways; Corméry was safe without walls amid its gloriously fertile meadows, because of the abbey to which it belonged. But Loches has its gates and walls; and besides, independent of them all, the great stronghold of the Angevin Counts-so strong that any attack from the town on the castle would be as hopeless as for a fleet of fishing smacks to attack an ironclad.

'À la Providence, chez Labbé,' I got the very best lunch I ever had at a French country inn-soup, cutlets, salad, cheese like that of Brie, only quite fresh, and such a fowl-the good capon' of Shakespeare's justice, roast with just a soupçon of garlic. They had Prussians here. Our landlady's complaint was twofold: first, they ate hugely, no bread, but unlimited potatoes and meat, with red wine (white they refused), and tobacco enough to break the hearts of those who had to provide it; next, that the poor had to keep them and pay the tax as well, while the bourgeois simply paid their tax and had no one billeted on them. Was this true? Of course not of big places like Tours, where rich and poor suffered alike, and where nothing but the most energetic appeal saved some English friends of mine from faring like their French neighbours. But Mrs. Labbé had no motive for telling me a lie; and country mayors do strange things. Even in Paris I was assured by quite independent authorities that some of them sold our English siege-relief stores, and that one in particular was so barefaced that he was found out by the authorities and had to refund afterwards. I wonder whether he came back to his post with the friends of

order. One thing is certain: the Providence is a style of inn universal in France, but never found in England. An English inn of the same rank you would never think of entering. If you did, they would put before you doctored beer or sour cider, and a bit of fossil cheese with pasty bread; if they gave eggs and very salt bacon, they would think they were feeding you like a prince. You would be obliged, too, to sit by yourself in a mouldy little room, for fear some drinker should insist on fraternising. In an auberge there is only one big room; possibly even mine host's bed is stowed away in an alcove at the far end; but there is room for all, and no one ever interferes with you, though every one is civil and ready to talk, provided you've made yourself free of the place by touching your hat as you walked in. Another thing: I never had a meal in a French auberge, no matter how humble, where they did not give a napkin (generally of clean unbleached) as a matter of course.

Up to the Castle plateau. 'Je vais demander papa,' says the gaoler's daughter when we ask admission. Papa takes us all over; shows us the frescoes high up inside the keep : all the lower part was scraped for saltpetre' at the old Revolution. He shows us the dungeons and the oubliettes below them, and points, among many names on the walls, to 'Ebenezer Kilburn, 1780, temperate abstine;' 'a Scotchman,' he says, and that is all he can tell us about him. The big dungeon where Ludovico Sforza, il Moro, was shut up by Louis XII., is full of drawings-his arms, his helmet and portrait, and a sun-dial cleverly contrived opposite the little window. The Moro died here. We saw Cardinal Balue's dungeon, and a picture of the cage, of which we read in Louis XI.'s day-book: 'A Guion de Broc, escuyer, seigneur de Vouvray, 60 livres tournoises pour