behind. You can now eat meat and drink
wine untaxed by octroi duties. You rush
across meadows through which the Seine
meanders, becoming, at every fresh glance
you catch of it, fine by degrees and beautifully
less. The principal figures that animate
the landscape are horses and cows, besides
women scattered over the fields for the purpose
of grubbing up dandelion plants to gratify
Parisian epicures. The quantity of raw
dandelion eaten as spring salad in Paris must,
to use a novel expression, be seen to be
believed. On we go, leaving suburbs, market-
gardens, suburban villages, and village
châteaux behind us. Everywhere we are
struck by the immense abundance of fruit-
trees. The plum season hereabouts must be
a trying time. Have they any infallible antidote
to the I-dare-not-say-what ache, in time
of need? Perhaps the numerous walled-in
orchards of St. Michel are only meant to put
a prudent restraint on a people too voracious
of vegetables and fruit. Turpentine is said
to be a specific against the internal parasites
which tease the inward man, when the
outward man's mouth is too greedy of unripe
gooseberries and apples; perhaps that may
be the reason why more fir-trees are planted
here than are usually seen in other parts of
France. You dart along a cut in the chalk-
hills of Estampes; you glide on to Angerville;
and there you find yourself flat on
your back, as far as the picturesque is
concerned, on the wearisome, endless plain of La
Beauce.

The plains of Champagne are bearable.
They are undulating; and you may speak
of them in the plural number. La Beauce
is a plain—and unbearable to those whose
senses require other stimulants than corn
and cattle. In La Beauce, supposing you
to be standing on any given spot, you say
to yourself, "What is the use of stirring?
If I go forward ever so far, the scene will be
exactly the same as it is here, and if I go
forward for ever so long, neither my own nor
my horse's legs will ever be able to carry me
out of it." Take the idea of arable land, as
present in the mind of a scientific agriculturist,
let it spread itself out to an indefinite
extent in all and every possible direction,
like a pint of oil poured on the surface of a
lake, as if it meant to constitute itself into a
diaphragm of the universe, separating utterly
the upper from the lower half of things
created, and you have a clear notion of La
Beauce. Belsia (the Latin name of this
cheering landscape) —Belsia, says a middle-
age poet who had the happiness to be Bishop
of Poictiers, is a triste country, for it is deficient
in only twice three things—namely,
springs, meadows, woods, stones, bushes, and
grapes. All which is true to the present
day. There is not a bush nor a bramble to
be seen; not even a respectable tuft of
nettles, or a good tall thistle, for a benighted
linnet or goldfinch to hide itself in. The
paved roads show the want of pebbles—
macadamisation would be a piece of extravagance
only to be effected by the importation
of materials from such enormous distances as
would render them very precious stones
indeed. What is it to us, flying travellers, that
this brown and hedgeless desert consists of
fertile loamy soil, which lets for so many
francs per hectare?  The little, squat, grey,
dumpy towns seem to crouch as close to the
ground as they can, either because they are
ashamed of themselves, or because they are
afraid of being swept away by the first fresh
gale that blows. The neat, plain, utilitarian
farm buildings are scattered over the land
with such regular irregularity, that you take
them to have been driven into their present
positions by some principle of mutual repulsion,
or, perhaps, had been suddenly fixed to
the spot in the midst of a grand game of chasse-
chasse. Everything else is made to give way
to the convenience and comfort of wheat and
beans, of ploughs and harrows, and of the
animals who drag and drive them. The
Beauceron grudges a currant bush or a cherry tree
the space of ground it takes to grow in, because
it is so much land stolen from his darling grain.
The best thing I have heard in his favour is,
that he is in the habit of paying ready money.
You grow sick of the very sight of La Beauce
before you have travelled half-way across it;
but have patience—look out of the window
now and then. At last you will see a couple
of blunt sticks rising side by side at the edge
of the horizon. They are the towers of
Orleans Cathedral.

"The origin of Orleans is lost in the night
of ages." Oh, dear me, what a pity it is that
the history of so many European towns
should invariably begin with the above set
phrase! What a delicious variety it would
give to our topographical works, if we could
introduce a few flourishing young cities,
blooming in their teens, like the promising
juvenile municipalities of California, New
Zealand, and Australia. Orleans is old, and
looks old. I won't bore you about the Maid
this time, further than to say that I hope her
own merits were greater than those of her
statue in the market-place. Orleans is one
of the numerous French towns whose
prevailing tint resembles that of the harmonious
Friar of Orders Grey; while the handsome
cathedral, the dulness, and the easy life led
there, tempt many devotees to "walk forth
to tell their beads." The Orleannais speak
low —an excellent virtue in a woman, but
somewhat lazy and unenergetic in men. Those
who have seen Dijon can easily picture to
their mind's eye Orleans, except that Dijon
has no river Loire, no raving, ravaging
Vistula of the south, whose unchecked current,
far too rapid for ordinary swimmers, compels
the adoption of floating inclosed bath-houses
for the use of the natives of the dried-up
interior, who are glad to come to an inland
watering-place, where, instead of Gravesend