es; who
abide in their land always, blossoming as the trees in summer,
enduring as the rocks in snow. Over this deep-rooted heart of humanity
sweeps the living hail and thunder of the armies of the earth. These
are the warp and first substance of the nations, divided not by
dynasties but by climates, strong by unalterable privilege or weak by
elemental fault, unchanged as Nature's self.

In the city of to-day, and in such thoroughfares as the Rue de
l'Epicerie, you may look for a moment into that humbler and less
spacious form of habitation in which the people and the workers lived
their days, making up for the poverty of their own surroundings by the
magnificence of that great Cathedral which rose above the low horizon
of their roofs, and opened its doors to poor and rich alike. The
buildings that have so long outlived their inhabitants may be taken as
the background--like the permanent stone scenery in a Greek
theatre--to the shifting kaleidoscope of many-coloured life in the old
city.

In the place itself you will see scarcely a trace of the great
personages whose names have glittered in its list of sieges, battles,
massacres, pageants, and triumphal entries. The story of a town is not
a drum-and-trumpet chronicle of the Kings and Queens. It is the tale
of all those domestic and municipal details which from their very
unimportance have well-nigh disappeared. To hear it you must follow me
from the Crypte St. Gervais to the Cathedral, from the Hotellerie des
Bons Enfants to the Maison Bourgtheroulde, and it is to the voices of
the people that I shall ask you to listen, and to the life of the
people that I shall point you among the streets they lived in. Thus,
and thus only, may you possibly realise the spirit of the place, that
calls out first to every stranger in the bells that sound through the
silence of his first night in a foreign town. These you shall know
better soon in Rouen, by name even, "Rouvel" and "Cache-Ribaut," if
you be worldly-minded, "Georges d'Amboise" and "Marie d'Estouteville"
for your hours of prayer. Before you pass beyond their sound again,
their ancient voices shall bring to you something of the centuries
that had died when they were young, something of the individuality of
the city above which they have been swinging for so long.

"Spirit of Place," writes the most charming of our living essayists:--

"It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and
where it is a strong