o teaches, not Athena. And of all wisdom, chiefly the
Politician's must consist in this divine Prudence; it is not, indeed,
always necessary for men to know the virtues of their friends, or
their masters; since the friend will still manifest, and the master
use. But woe to the Nation which is too cruel to cherish the virtue of
its subjects, and too cowardly to recognize that of its enemies!

THE BIBLE OF AMIENS.

CHAPTER I.

BY THE RIVERS OF WATERS.

The intelligent English traveller, in this fortunate age for him, is
aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, there is a complex
railway-station, into which his train, in its relaxing speed, rolls
him with many more than the average number of bangs and bumps
prepared, in the access of every important French _gare_, to startle
the drowsy or distrait passenger into a sense of his situation.

He probably also remembers that at this halting-place in mid-journey
there is a well-served buffet, at which he has the privilege of "Dix
minutes d'arret."

He is not, however, always so distinctly conscious that these ten
minutes of arrest are granted to him within not so many minutes' walk
of the central square of a city which was once the Venice of France.

Putting the lagoon islands out of question, the French River-Queen was
nearly as large in compass as Venice herself; and divided, not by slow
currents of ebbing and returning tide, but by eleven beautiful trout
streams, of which some four or five are as large, each separately, as
our Surrey Wandle, or as Isaac Walton's Dove; and which, branching out
of one strong current above the city, and uniting again after they have
eddied through its streets, are bordered, as they flow down, (fordless
except where the two Edwards rode them, the day before Crecy,) to the
sands of St. Valery, by groves of aspen, and glades of poplar, whose
grace and gladness seem to spring in every stately avenue instinct with
the image of the just man's life,--"Erit tanquam lignum quod plantatum
est secus decursus aquarum."

But the Venice of Picardy owed her name, not to the beauty of her
streams merely, but to their burden. She was a worker, like the
Adriatic princes, in gold and glass, in stone, wood, and ivory; she
was skilled like an Egyptian in the weaving of fine linen; dainty as
the maids of Judah in divers colours of needlework. And of these, the
fruits of her hands, praising her in her own gates, she sent also
portions to stra