ham, Raphael, the Magi, and
the other saintly patrons of journeys. The appropriate provincial
character of the bourgeoisie of Champagne is still to be seen, it would
appear, among the citizens of Troyes. Its streets, for the most part in
timber and pargeting, present more than one unaltered specimen of the
ancient hotel or town-house, with forecourt and garden in the rear; and
its more devout citizens would seem even in their church-building to
have sought chiefly to please the eyes of those occupied with mundane
affairs and out of doors, for they have finished, with abundant outlay,
only the vast, useless portals of their parish churches, of surprising
height and lightness, in a kind of wildly elegant Gothic-on-stilts,
giving to the streets of Troyes a peculiar air of the grotesque, as if
in some quaint nightmare of the Middle Age.

At Sens, thirty miles away to the west, a place of far graver aspect,
the name of Jean Cousin denotes a more chastened temper, even in these
sumptuous decorations. Here all is cool and composed, with an almost
English austerity. The first growth of the Pointed style in
England--the hard "early English" of Canterbury--is indeed the creation
of William, a master reared in the architectural school of Sens; and
the severity of his taste might seem to have acted as a restraining
power on all the subsequent changes of manner in this place--changes in
themselves for the most part towards luxuriance. In harmony with the
atmosphere of its great church is the cleanly quiet of the town, kept
fresh by little channels of clear water circulating through its
streets, derivatives of the rapid Vanne which falls just below into the
Yonne. The Yonne, bending gracefully, link after link, through a
never-ending rustle of poplar trees, beneath lowly vine-clad hills,
with relics of delicate woodland here and there, sometimes close at
hand, sometimes leaving an interval of broad meadow, has all the
lightsome characteristics of French river-side scenery on a smaller
scale than usual, and might pass for the child's fancy of a river, like
the rivers of the old miniature-painters, blue, and full to a fair
green margin. One notices along its course a greater proportion than
elsewhere of still untouched old seignorial residences, larger or
smaller. The range of old gibbous towns along its banks, expanding
their gay quays upon the water-side, have a common character--Joigny,
Villeneuve, Julien-du-Sault--yet tempt us to t