ting, to all who have artistic instinct, that it will be difficult to do justice to it in this article.

If the reader will refer to the accompanying map he will see at a glance the position of the principal towns in Normandy that we suggest for a tour, making the seaports of Havre or Dieppe the starting-points, and leaving out Paris altogether. From Havre we proceed to the little unknown town of Pont-Audemer, situated about six miles from Quilleboeuf and eight from Honfleur, both on the left bank of the Seine. From Havre, Pont-Audemer may be reached in a few hours by water, and from Dieppe, Rouen, and Paris there is now railway communication. From Pont-Audemer we go to Lisieux (by road or railway), from Lisieux to Caen, Bayeux and St. Lo, where the railway ends, and we take the diligence to Coutances, Granville, and Avranches. After a visit to the island of Mont St. Michael, we may return (by diligence) by way of Mortain, Vire, Falaise; thence to Rouen, and by the valley of the Seine to the sea

coast.

About one hundred and fifty miles in a direct line from the door of the Society of British Architects in Conduit Street, London, (and almost unknown, we may venture to say, to the majority of its members,) sleeps the little town of Pont-Audemer, with its quaint old gables, its tottering houses, its Gothic "bits," its projecting windows, 'carved-oak galleries, and streets of time-worn buildings-centuries old. Old dwellings, old customs, old caps, old tanneries set in a landscape of bright green hills; old as the hills, and almost as unchanged in aspect, are the ways of the people of PontAudemer, who dress and tan hides, and make merry as their fathers did before them. For several centuries they have devoted themselves to commerce and the arts of peace,

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and in the enthusiasm of their business have desecrated one or two churches into tanneries. But they are a conservative and primitive people; loving to do as their ancestors did, and to dwell where they dwelt; they build their houses to last, and take pride and interest in the " family mansion," a thing unknown and almost impossible amongst the middle classes of most communities. Pont-Audemer was once warlike; in feudal times it had its castle (destroyed in the fourteenth century), and the legend exists that cannon was here first used in warfare. The little river Rille winds about it, and spreads its streamlets like branch

es through the streets, and sparkles in the evening light. If we take up our quarters at the inn called the Pôt d'Etain, we shall find much to remind us of the fifteenth century. If we take a walk by

the beautiful banks of the Rille on a summer evening, or in the fields where the peasants are at work, we shall find the aspect curiously English, and in the intonation of the voices the resemblance is sometimes startling. That young girl with the plain white cap A NORMAN MAIDEN. fitting close to her hair, who tends the flocks on the hillside, and puts all her power and energy into the little matter of knitting a stocking, is a Norman maiden, a lineal descendant, it may be, of some ancient house, whose arms we may find in our own heraldic albums. She is noble by nature, and has the advantage over her coroneted cousins in being permitted to wear a white cap out of doors, and an easy and simple costume; in the fact of her limbs being braced by a life spent in the open air, and her head not being plagued with the proprieties of cities. She is pretty; but what is of more importance, she knows how to cook, and she has a little store of money in a bank. She has been taught enough for her station, and has few wishes beyond it; and some day she will marry Jean, and happy will be Jean. That stalwart warrior (whom we see in our sketch) sunning himself outside his barrack-door, having just clapped his helmet on the head of a little boy in blouse and sabots, is surely a near relation to our guardsman; he is certainly brave, he is full of fun and intelligence, he very seldom takes more wine than is good for him, and a game at dominoes delights his soul.

But it is in the marketplace of Pont-Audemer that we shall obtain the best idea of the place and of the people; on market mornings and on fête-days, when the place is crowded with old and young, we have a picture the like of which we may have seen in rare paintings, but very seldom realize in life.

Here the artist will find plenty of congenial occupa tion, and opportunities (so difficult to meet with in these days) for sketching both architecture and people of a picturesque type-groups in the market-place, groups

down by the river fishing under the trees, groups at windows of old hostelries, and seated at inn-doors; horses in clumsy wooden harness; calves and pigs, goats and sheep; women at fruit-stalls, under tents and colored umbrellas; piles upon piles of baskets, a wealth of green things, and a bright fringe of fruit and flowers. All this and much more the artist finds at hand, and what does the architect discover? First of all, that if he had only come here before, he might have saved himself much thought and trouble, for he would have found such suggestions for ornament in wood-carving, for panels, doorways, and the like, of so good a pattern, and so old, that they are new to the world of to-day; he would have found houses built out over the rivers, looking like pieces of old furniture, rich in color and wonderfully preserved, with their wooden gables carved in oak, of the fifteenth century, supported by massive timbers sound and strong, of even older date. He would see many of these houses with windows full of flowers, and creepers twining round the old eaves; and long drying-poles stretched out horizontally, with gay-colored clothes upon them, flapping in the wind-all contrasting curiously with the dark buildings. But he would also find some houses on the verge of ruin.. If he explored far enough in the dark, narrow streets, where the rivers flow under the windows of empty dwellings, he might see them tottering, and threatening downfall upon each other-leaning over and casting shadows black and mysterious upon the water-no line perpendicular, no line horizontal, the very beau-ideal of picturesque

YOUNG FRANCE.

OFF DUTY.

does the tax-collector often take money for imaginary honors? It would seem reserved for the nineteenth century to create a state of society where the question "Who is he?" has to be perpetually asked and not always easily answered; in a word, to foster and increase to its present almost overwhelming dimensions a great middle-class of society without a name or a title, or even a home to call its own. It was assuredly a good time when men's lives and actions were handed down, so to speak, from father to son, and the poor man had his locum tenens as well as the rich; and how he decked it with ornament according to his taste or his means, how he watched over it and preserved it from decay, how, in short, his pride was in his own hearth and home, these old buildings can tell us.

Let us stay quietly at Lisieux, if we have time, and see the place, for we shall find nothing in Normandy to exceed it in interest; and the way to see it best is, undoubtedly, to

sketch.

Let us make out all these curious 'bits," these signs and emblems in wood and stone-twigs and moss, birds with delicate wings, a spray of leaves, the serene head of a Madonna, the rampant heraldic griffin-let us copy, if we can, their color and the marks of age. We may sketch them, and we may dwell upon them, here, with the enthusiasm of an artist who returns to his favorite picture again and again.

But more interesting, perhaps, to the traveler who sees these things for the first time, more charming than the most exquisite Gothic lines, more fascinating than their quaint aspect, more attractive even than their color or their age, are associations connected with them, and the knowledge that they bear upon them the direct impress of the hands that built them centuries ago, and that every house is stamped, as it were, with the hall-mark of individuality. The historian is nowhere so eloquent as when he can point to such examples as these. We may learn from them much of the method of working in the fourteenth century, and, indeed, of the habits of the people, and the secret of their great success.

The quiet contemplation of the old buildings in such towns as Pont-Audemer, Lisieux and Bayeux, must, we should think, convince the most enthusiastic admirers of the archaic school, that the mere isolated reproduction of these houses in the midst of modern streets (such as we are accustomed to in London or Paris) is of little use, and is, in fact, beginning at the wrong end. It might occur to them, when examining the details of these buildings, and picturing to themselves the lives of their inhabitants, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, that the forcing system is a mistake that art never flourished as an exotic, and assuredly never will-that before we live again in medieval houses and realize the true meaning of what is "Gothic" and appropriate in architecture, we must begin at the beginning, our lives must be simpler, our costumes more graceful and appropriate, and the education of our children more in harmony with a true feeling for art.

The next town on our route is Caen, described by Froissart in the fourteenth century as "large, strong, full of draperies and all sorts of merchandise, rich citizens, noble dames, damsels and fine churches." It is now the chief town of the Department of Calvados, with a population of nearly 50,000, the center of the commerce of lower Normandy, and of the district for the production of black lace. It has a busy and thriving aspect, and the