view, respecting which little or no information was afforded us by the generality of books and travels; and, having our objects so plainly before us, we were saved the tediousness and disappointment of an unguided search after what was interesting. The road from Boulogne to Abbeville is hilly, and sometimes woody, reminding me of the less attractive parts of Oxfordshire, about Wallingford and the Chiltern hills. Montreuil was the only town of any importance through which we passed. The castle on the hill, above the river Canche, and the ruined church of Notre Dame, are both striking objects; the latter especially. Abbeville itself has nothing very striking about it; but, like most continental towns, it is not wanting in street-picturesque; and the remnant of a church, with its three towers, is also interesting.

It was very late on Saturday night when we arrived at Amiens, and the greater part of the ensuing day was spent in the cathedral. It is, indeed, a most wonderful pile, and we had no cause to repent of our having turned out of our way in order to see it. The view of the nave from the gallery above the organ-loft is the finest thing in architecture I have ever seen. The east windows are 366 feet from where you stand, and, looking over the gorgeous carved-work of the choir to the Altar, or letting the eye wander among the one hundred and twenty-six beautiful pillars which stand about, or gazing upwards to the roof, which rises 132 feet from the pavement,

the impression of wonder and delight keeps increasing continually. I have never, either before or since, seen such a miracle of Christian art, justifying to the full that deep and forcible remark, that the Homeric poems and Gothic architecture were the highest births of the human intellect. It seems a little thought, yet pardonable, to remember that Amiens cathedral was built by the English, during the regency of the duke of Bedford, who governed great part of France for Henry VI., in the early part of the fifteenth century. When we had satisfied ourselves somewhat with the interior of the cathedral, we mounted to the top, and rambled all over the roofs, among the exquisite pinnacles and carved work with which they are adorned. The roofs of great cathedrals generally deserve quite as narrow an inspection as the interiors; and the inspection is often as full of wonder as that of the inside, for the beauty and sumptuousness of parts of the building hidden from every eye but His, to Whose glory all was built, and the ken, perhaps, of Angels, are so alien to any thing in our modern temper, and are so frequently screened, as if with a jealous purpose, from man's praise, that they strike us even more forcibly than when lavished upon the nave or choir, where they could elevate the devotions of the worshipper, and redound to the glory of the artist, or the honor of the founder. The roofs of Amiens realized very

2

Vaughan's Oxford Prize Essay,-quoted memoriter.

vividly to my mind, (not a very ecclesiastical association,) the description of Notre Dame in Victor Hugo's Hunchback, much more indeed than Notre Dame itself has since done. On descending and going into the streets, I was struck with the apparent smallness of the vast building; an effect, probably, of the extreme simplicity of the design. The country about the city looks, to all appearance, from the roof of the cathedral, very sterile; but we were assured by the verger, that it was very much the contrary, for that it was so valuable as corn-land, that they would not allow any space to be occupied by trees. The only trees apparent, except those on the boulevards, are colonies of poplar, planted geometrically, in the valley of the Somme. I like both poplars, and the formal way of planting them, so that my eye was not offended by them. Many of the families about Amiens are said to be legitimists; but they have spent so much money on Spain, that they are cramped in their movements in France: and yet Charles V. has been compelled to abandon even his Pyrenean fastnesses, and is now (there may perhaps

politer phrase in diplomatic language to describe his position) a French prisoner. It is really difficult to interest one's self in the royal families of Spain and France, there is so little about them to which any rightly-directed sympathies can cling. They are not like the exiled Stuarts, and yet allowance enough must be demanded even for that destinyhunted family, whose restoration seems, in more than

one instance, to have been prevented by occurrences so trivial, and so little likely to be fraught with great consequences, that they must seem, to a thoughtful man, to have been providential, a mercy or a chastisement, as the case may be.

Paris has surpassed all our expectations in magnificence. It is, indeed, a most wonderful city. The view from the Pont des Arts is, perhaps, taken altogether, the finest in the place. The public buildings in Paris have, many of them, a history peculiarly their own. The Madeleine, for example, was begun twice by the Bourbons for a church. It was commenced again by Napoleon for a Temple of Fame or Glory, I forget which; and it was afterwards continued by the Bourbons for a church, at the Restoration. It is certainly an exquisite building; but nothing has yet reconciled me to the adaptation of the clear, definite, intelligible unity of Greek or Italian architecture, to the uses of a religion of light and shade, such as the Gospel is. I wait to see St. Peter's before I declare myself irrevocably Gothic, yet it is not difficult now to find persons whom St. Peter's has failed to surprise, delight, or overawe. The Pantheon, as well as the Madeleine, has a very Parisian history. It was begun by Louis XV. or XVI. for a church of St. Genevieve. It was made heathen at the Revolution. It was consecrated by the Bourbons at the Restoration; and finally, the clergy were driven from it after the "glorious" Three Days. The magnificence of the Pantheon is miserably depressing.

It has been remarked in some recent sermons on Antichrist, that the worship of Reason in the French revolution, curiously illustrates the apparent contradiction in prophecy, that Antichrist was to have no god, and yet to have a new worship. Now we were struck at the Pantheon, with the use of the word "translation." Its ecclesiastical sense, as applied to the removal of the bodies of Saints from their original graves to churches built in memory of them, and through their memory to God's glory, was familiar enough; but one starts as if one had been stung, on hearing it applied to Voltaire, Rousseau, and Napoleon. We were taken to the tombs of those "enemies of the Most High," Voltaire and Rousseau; and the Alpha and Omega, and carved all over the vaults, only made the darkness visible, and rendered the heathen character of the building more obvious and hateful. Of the crowds who daily see these tombs, how few remember that those two men are still alive, and in a place, a waiting-place, where, perchance, they now see-Merciful Heavens! the very thought is horrible-the continual generation of sin and misery and unchaste disbelief by their own works. What a retinue of foul deeds is gathering round to accompany them to judgment, for "some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after!" I was compelled to turn my thoughts away to the Place Louis Quinze, and think of Marie Antoinette, and the last end of a Christian queen; over light