open at the sides, save a low stone parapet, breast high. Hollowed out in this parapet is a measure of peculiar form, said to have served for meting out in kind the Seignorial dues in days anterior to the Revolution. A third street, at a lower level stillprecipitous, roughly paved, and winding by many a sharp twist-leads up from the base of the mountain to the little town that hugs its flank. Following the course of this thoroughfare, and passing beneath an arched gateway more quaint than archi. tectural, and thence to the church, with an irregular and diminutive piazza in front of it, you find yourself in the centre of the straggling collection of rickety tenements of which the place is for the most part composed. A carriage way was, unhappily, in contemplation which, while leading right up to this central point, would cut ruthlessly through a group of buildings, venerable from their antiquity, and thus mar the effect of one of the most unique and medieval-looking spots that the wanderer in unbeaten paths could have the luck to stumble upon.

Conques is in some respects a typical example of the French bourgade or big village. A very townlet in scale, yet a tiny local capital-the residence of a paid justice of the peace and a station of constabulary—with a colossal church, that dates from the eleventh century, in the heart of an artistic>

pile of tumbledown habitations, you have presented to you a fair specimen of that smaller type of country-town suggested by the term bourgade, such at least as it is to be seen in secluded mountainous districts. At the same time, however, that to a certain extent it may be called typical of a class of mountain townlets, this is a place bristling with distinctive characteristics of its own at every step and turn. Built on successive low-lying ledges of rock dominated by an amphitheatre of overtopping hills, its series of sparsely inhabited lanes and alleys are so steep as to be practically impervious to wheeled vehicles, and not a little rugged even for the pedestrian. An unmistakable air of mediavalism, too, hangs over its antique houses, some even of the better sort being without glass to the windows, and displaying gabled roofs, projecting storeys and walls which, with massive beams of oak let into them, seem as if built to weather the storms of time and chance. The irregularity they present is heightened by the narrow slips of streets standing on such different levels, the view from the uppermost among them—that of the Hospital—as you look down upon the buildings below, being hardly less precipitous than the Roman Forum seen from the Tarpeian Rock. Several antiquated and crumbling gateways-the one on the north set off by a neighbouring tower or two-fill up the

picture of a hill town of the feudal ages; while on every hand rise hills and mountains, capped here and there by rocky peaks, but yet with sides verdant with vineyards or long stretches of chestnut woods. And, in the valley beneath, the rushing torrent of the Louche discharges itself with fret and foam into the broader Dourdou. The latter more considerable stream flows past Conques in a strong current from south to north, joining the better known waters of the Lot a league or two lower down.

1

Though in size and population but a village, Conques lends its name to a Canton, or group of parishes, and thus claims to rank as the petty provincial capital already indicated, containing the only shops, few and unpretending enough, to be found for miles round, and one or two government officials. The scant population, as well of bourg as of surrounding country, depend mainly on the vine culture; and we shall presently see them in the heyday of the vintage assembled in bands garnering the fruit of their labours. The harvest is, indeed, one of the few events that bring the peasantry of these quiet valleys together in company; the other chief occasion of the kind being when they flock on a Sunday into the vast

1 Conques in Rouergue is not to be confounded with another and larger place of the same name in Languedoc.

minster of Ste.-Foy, and contribute their share to complete the picture of a Church Interior during divine service: a picture well worth the observation of any traveller as he draws nigh to Southern Europe, Iwith its wealth of artistic forms and colour. It may suffice to remark of this church in passing that it presents the singular feature, so far as France is concerned, of being at once conventual and parochial, the incumbent of the parish being also Provost of the House of canons regular adjoining the minster. Le curé blanc' he is sometimes called in the neighbourhood, from his offering the unwonted spectacle of a parish clergyman habited from head to foot in white. Of both the church and its adjacent monastery we shall have more to say anon.

Almost the only noteworthy specimen of domestic architecture save the Hospital is a curious fifteenth-century house near the northern gateway, with some balustrading of carved wood built into. the wall, the remains apparently of an external staircase. Nearly opposite to this old building stands a domicile of more modern type, the residence of the doctor of the place. Its white stone is relieved, as usual in France, by outside shutters painted green; and at one end of the buildingneither in front nor behind-an umbrageous, irregular, and not too trim garden, fenced in by a

tall well-proportioned iron railing and wicket, likewise of a greenish hue, looks thoroughly picturesque, spite of a limited area; and in its shady seclusion and romantic suggestiveness-set, as it is moreover, amid a confused cluster of antique tenements, o'ercapped by hill slopes and mountain heights-almost recalls an ideal garden of some Spanish or Troubadour's lay, with the appropriate serenade of song and guitar. Nor is this outcome of modern French rural taste by any means out of accord with the example over the way (referred to above) of the timber architecture of four centuries since. And the effect of the scene as a whole is heightened by the uneven broken outlinebuildings, old and new, garden, street; the latter being of the narrowest, and, at this point, roughpaved, of sharp ascent, and sinuous. In a word, many of the elements of a picture are brought together in this characteristic corner of a remote townlet among the highlands of Rouergue; a dash of colour, moreover, being thrown in by the dull brown of the old oak timbers, the grey of the rugged street pavement underfoot, and the blue of Nature's all-embracing canopy overhead, thus bringing out in relief the white and green of the bourgeois mansion opposite, flanked by its miniature garden resembling a vignette from an illustrated copy of a romance.