The village at the foot of the wooded hill presents an aspect perhaps unique on the Loire, the precise aspect of a Rhine village of a long frontage stretching along the edge of the

water.

Amboise is a pleasant, pretty town, half a league from Tours, crowned with a magnificent edifice, facing those three precious arches of the ancient bridge, which will disappear one of these days in some scheme of municipal improvement.

The ruin of the Abbey of Marmontiers is both great and beautiful. In particular there is, a few paces from the road, a structure of the Fifteenth Century—the most original I have seen by its dimensions a house, by its machicoulis a fortress, by its belfry an hôtel de ville, by its pointed doorway a church. This structure sums up, and, as it were, renders visible to the eye, the species of hybrid and complex authority which in feudal times appertained to abbeys in general, and, in particular, to the Abbey of Mar

montiers.

But the most picturesque and imposing feature of the Loire is an immense calcareous wall, mixed with sandstone, millstone, and potter's clay, which skirts and banks up its right shore, and stretches itself out before the eye from Blois to Tours, with inexpressible variety and charm, now wild rock, now an English garden, covered with trees and flowers, crowned with ripening vines and smoking chimneys, perforated like a sponge, as full of life as an ant-hill.

Then there are deep caves which long ago hid the coiners who counterfeited the E. of the Tours mint, and flooded the province with spurious sous of Tours. To-day the rude embrasures of these dens are filled with pretty window-frames coquettishly fitted into the rock, and from

time to time one perceives through the glass the fantastic head-dress of some young girl occupied in packing aniseed, angelica, and coriander in boxes. The confectioners have replaced the coiners.

THE LOIRE

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

HE banks of the Loire, from Blois to Angers, have

THE

been high in favour with the two last branches of the royal race that occupied the throne before the House of Bourbon. This beautiful basin so richly deserves the honours paid to it by royalty that this is what one of our most elegant writers has said of it:

"There exists in France a province that has never been sufficiently admired. Perfumed like Italy, flowered like the banks of the Guadalquiver, and beautiful in addition with its individual physiognomy, and entirely French, having always been French, in contrast to our northern provinces, corrupted by German contact, and our southern provinces that have lived in concubinage with the Moors, Spaniards and all races that desired to;-this province pure, chaste, brave and loyal is Touraine! Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne; Languedoc is only Languedoc, but Touraine is France; and for us the most national river of all is the Loire that waters Touraine. Hence, we should not be so astonished at the quantity of monuments found in the Departments that have taken the name and derivatives of the name of the Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment, we discover a picture the frame of which is a river or a tranquil oval sheet that reflects in its liquid depths a castle with its turrets, woods and springing waters. It was only natural that where

royalty abode by preference and established its court for such a long period the great fortunes and distinctions of race and merit should group themselves and raise palaces there grand as themselves."

Is it not incomprehensible that Royalty did not follow the advice given by Louis XI. indirectly to make Tours the capital of the kingdom? There, without much expenditure, the Loire could have been made accessible to trading vessels and to ships of war of light draught. There, the seat of government would have been secure from the surprise of an invasion. The northern strongholds would not then have demanded so much money for their fortifications, as costly to themselves as the sumptuousness of Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to the advice of Vauban, who wanted to build a residence for him at Mont Louis, between the Loire and the Cher, perhaps the Revolution of 1789 would not have occurred. Still, here and there, those lovely banks bear the marks of the royal affection. The castles of Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-lez-Tours, all those which the mistresses of our kings, and the financiers and great lords built for themselves at Véretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Ussi, Villandri, Valençay, Chanteloup, Duretal (some of which have disappeared but the majority still exist) are admirable monuments that are redolent with the marvels of that epoch that is so ill comprehended by the literary sect of Mediævalists. Among all these castles, that of Blois is the one on which the magnificence of the Orleans and the Valois has set its most brilliant seal; and is the most interesting of all for the historian, the archeologist, and the Roman Catholic.