are grouped together at the back of the port,
and seem airy and lofty structures.

What strikes one most in the port is not
so much the absolute amount of acreage
covered by it as the conveniences it enjoys,
and the neatness and airiness of the Ateliers,
and other buildings. The timber shed is
nine hundred and fifty-eight feet long, and
supported by one hundred and thirty stone
pillars. The large storehouses are close to the
basins. Steamers can coal alongside the wharf,
whereas with us at Portsmouth they must
employ hoys and hulks. All these are elements of
advantage to Cherbourg, even though it is not
put forward by the French officers as a very
great building port.

Yet we must do it justice in that particular
also. Some very fine ships have issued from
Cherbourg: le Friedland, le Henri IV., and
several others. Ten ships could be built there
at a time. The Cales de Construction, or building
sheds, are planned on the same solid and liberal
principle as other edifices there: particularly to
the covered sheds in the north-eastern part of
the yard, the roofs of which rest on arches,
supported by piers of granite and slate. There is
not much ship-building going on at Cherbourg
just now, though we must not forget the activity
of the last ten years and the resources of Toulon
and Brest. What is most interesting in the
Cales de Construction of Cherbourg at
present, is the progress of the new frigate
Normandie. This is a frigate of unexampled size
and armament, sharp both at bow and stern, and
intended to be plated with iron on the new
principle. The hull is well advanced, and covered
with labourers hammering away. A French
gentleman, employed in the iron trade, is at
Cherbourg, in communication with the authorities
respecting the plating. Otherwise, there is
nothing in the building sheds to excite particular
attention; no overstrained activity about this bit
of work is to be remarked, though the whole
establishment is a scene of steady and continuous
activity. Of the amount of military stores in
the arsenal I had no opportunity of forming an
opinion. The armoury is arranged with coquettish
elegance of taste. You pass many rows
of burnished cannon lying dismantled, alongside
pyramids of brilliant shot.

Before quitting the Port Militaire through its
well-defended walls, let us sum up, in a brief
paragraph, the elements which make up
Cherbourg. It is a French port, near England,
well supplied with resources, capable of harbouring
about a hundred vessels while building ten,
protected by the largest breakwater in the world
and more than six hundred cannon. This is, I
think, a liberal résumé of the pretensions of a
place which, a century since, hardly outvied
Boulogne.

And now for a glance at the social Cherbourg,
and the personnel of the French navy.

Cherbourg is execrably dull, as all the young
"aspirants" and "enseignes de vaisseau" are
unanimously agreed. In this respect it is far
inferior to Brest, which, again, is inferior to
Toulon. There is a theatre, to be sure, where a
company of strollers occasionally play indifferent
vaudevilles. And, for the "men," there are
"spectacles"—the Battle of Solferino, for
instance—intended to keep up the patriotic spirit
and the military vanity of the race. But, after
these amusements, there remain only the cafés—
poor imitations of the brilliant cafés of the Paris
Boulevards—which line the quay along the
commercial basin mentioned before. Enter any
of these at any hour, almost as early in the
forenoon as you like, and you find military and
naval officers playing billiards, cards, or dominoes,
smoking, or reading the journals. Light
literature is the fashion, as in our own seaports.
There is the Moniteur de la Flotte, to be
sure, which contains all the naval news; but
it has a feuilleton with a story. Then there
is the Charivari, where they have been fond,
lately, of caricaturing the British army. Another
publication, Le Monde Illustré, deserves
harsher notice. Some of the numbers of
this journal contain papers about the treatment
of French prisoners in England last war—
a rather old grievance. In one anecdote, we
we are represented as encouraging a shark, by
periodical pork, to swim round one of our
prison-ships in the West Indies, to prevent
the poor Gauls from escaping. In another,
a British nobleman is represented as visiting
a prison in England, on which occasion he
naturally leaves his horse outside. Returning
to mount, milord misses the gallant steed.
"Where is my horse?" he asks of one of
the prisoners. "Eaten, my lord." "What!
Eat a horse! and in ten minutes?" "Yes,
my lord," is the reply; "five to kill and
strip, five to devour him!" And the narrator
chuckles over the daring gaiety, in such trials, of
his French countrymen. Who would think that,
of these stories, the shark one was a joke of
poor Captain Marryat's against his own
countrymen as dealing with their own British
deserters; and that the second is told of a peer,
Lord "Cordover," or some such name, with a
title never heard of in England? The author of
these stupid calumnies in Le Monde Illustré
is a certain M. Léon Gozlan (a Jewish gentleman,
I believe), who is in some degree known
in the French comic world. It must be added
that three or four French naval officers, to whom
M. Gozlan's fictions were quoted (and for
whose courtesy, on every occasion, we here
return our best thanks), treated them with
contempt. But the ignorant mass—and the
ignorance of the uneducated part of the French,
concerning England, is beyond belief—are
corrupted by this kind of thing, absurd though
it be.

The first thing that strikes one about
French naval officers is the fact that they are
gentlemen, compared with the general run
of men of corresponding positions seen in
France. It is not only—though this, too, is the
case—that the navy is a profession in favour
among good French families, but the manners
of the men are agreeable, quiet, sensible,