level at the bridge, it is brought easily enough
in covered aqueducts.

A hundred and twelve public fountains, or
rather taps, within the town distribute water
to the population at large, and there are from
seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred
private water customers. Constant high
pressure water supply to every house is one
of the good things yet to come even in
Amiens; but the water as it is, is pure and
plentiful. The principal reservoir is roofed
with brickwork, vaulted like a cellar, and
supported internally by columns, so that the
water is completely sheltered-against soot
and dust, and all defilement.

The principal streets of Amiens have been
lately repaved, with underground drains,
foot-pavements, and a surface which is highest
in the centre; in others the gutter runs down
the middle, with no footpath, in old fashioned
style. I saw no street with a small stream
of clear water constantly flowing through it,
like that refreshing current which passes
down Trumpington Street, from Hobson's
Conduit at Cambridge.

And now I will catalogue some of the treasures
of the townspeople. They have a Garden
of Paris, just large enough to aid and
encourage any taste for botany; of which the
grounds form also a pleasant walking-place,
open gratuitously to the public. A museum
attached to the garden contains a small
collection of natural history specimens. Then the
town is peculiarly rich in Boulevards: it is
almost perfectly encircled by them. From
whatever quarter the wind may blow,
inhabitants of Amiens can drive or walk under
fine rows of horse chestnuts, elms, limes, or
aspens, and catch the breeze, as it sweeps in
upon them from the open country.

In the fourteenth century Amiens was
surrounded, not with these delicious groves, but
with ditches and fortifications, which included
the suburbs. The walls were flanked with
towers, and four gates were pierced through
them. In the seventeenth century, these
ramparts, reckoned among the best and
handsomest in France, occupied a breadth of
eleven yards, and a length of nearly twenty
thousand paces. Of all this mass of fortifications
nothing remains except one picturesque
old fragment of wall, which has been suffered
to stand, out of fear lest the removal of it
might disturb certain springs that supply the
hydraulic machine with water. On the site
of the old ramparts are now planted the
Boulevards, defending against a thousand enemies
to health with a stout wall of living green.
The railway runs in the old moat; and rows
of trees and sloping gardens form the outworks
of this peaceful fortress. The gardens
laid out on the side of the old ditch and over
the railway tunnels are all open to the public.
I would have every young town crowned in
this way with a garland of green boulevards.
It is a good charm against sickness. It is
good, too, when the town outgrows them, and
they still separate the suburbs from the
parent nucleus by a cool circle of fresh air.

Passing down the Boulevard Fontaine, the
dweller in the paradise of Amiens can turn to
the right, down the Boulevard St. Jacques,
and reach an opening which gives him, to the
left, a peep at the famous Promenade de la
Hotoie, a noble park, one of the best
possessions of the town. Marie de la Hotoie gave
it in the fourteenth century, for the Picard
youth to make merry in. Its plan, by
Lenôtre, is quite simple, and old-fashioned. A
long straight central avenue shoots far away
down to the open country. Among the trees
on either side are four angular and prim
spaces of well-trodden turf, devoted to the
exercise of four national games. There is, on
one side, the tennis green—within the limits
of which the ball is retained by temporary
nets—and the foot-ball ground; on the other
side there are spaces for ball-play and the jeu
de tamis, in which latter game a small ball,
made of leather and egg-shells, is struck with
a sort of wooden boxing-glove. Of cricket,
the French have not a notion.

Cross-roads, that run like vaults under the
trees, conduct from the centre of this park to
lateral avenues, which had branched, right
and left, from the main trunk promenade at
its entrance; and these side walks, after
making a slight bend, run boldly out into the
distant perspective. The end of all those
walks or rides (for they are also carriage
ways) is an exactly circular lake, containing
two exactly circular islands and a pair of
milk-white swans. Round the lake is a circular
drive—the ring of Amiens under a zone
of trees.

From this part of the park a foot-bridge
leads over a stream of water to the Little
Hotoie, where the promenader, tired of trees,
may wander among flowers, flanked in the
distance by a few acres of beet-root. At the
entrance to this garden is a lodge built like a
Swiss cottage, and called the Chalet. There
dwell maids with milking-pails, and there
are kept the cows, who eat the beet-root
growing in the distance, and with whose milk
the promenaders can refresh themselves.
There are even occasions on which the
municipality of Amiens allow the holiday folks a
gratuitous supply of syllabub from this
establishment. The wanderer among the
flowers may return by another foot-bridge to the
trees of the Great Hotoie, and all the sunshine,
all the air, and all the beauty of the Hotoies
is his own; the poorest may walk there and
is required only to respect the grass and
trees.

The plan of the Hotoie demanded regularity;
and, after all was finished, one little
strip of ground remained unused. Of that, a
convenient market was eventually made—a
market quite out of the town—for pigs, cows,
sheep, and bullocks. No droves of animals
ever appear to create confusion in the streets
of the most sensible town of Amiens. The