is spot the eye takes leave, for some
time, of every thing agreeable. The view here consists of a high dull
flat, with hardly a tree, and the road of rolling stones and dust; and a
high wind prevailed, which seemed a combination of the Bise and Mistral,
aided by all the bottled stores of a Lapland witch, and very nearly blew
poor Durand off his box. After passing Fouzay and Demazan, two Little
villages, adorned each a la Provencale, with a ruined castle, we turned
out of the road to Nismes at Remoulin, where the features of the country
somewhat improve. Another mile and a half brought us to an indifferent
inn within a ten minutes' walk of the Pont du Gard. It is adapted for
nothing more than a baiting-place for a few hours, and not at all of
that description which so well-known a ruin would be in most cases
capable of maintaining. The landlord, however, "a sallow, sublime sort
of Werter-faced man," was civil, and inclined to do his best, and
gathered us some double yellow roses, of a sort we had never seen
before, to season his bad fare.

The Pont du Gard, which we were not long in visiting, is seen to the
greatest advantage on the side on which we approached it from the inn.
The deep mountain glen, inhabited only by goats, whose entrance it
crosses from cliff to cliff, forms a striking back-ground, and serves as
a measure to the height of the colossal arches which appear to grow
naturally, as it were, out of the gray rocks on which they rest.[38]
There is certainly something more poetical in the stern and simple style
of architecture of which this noble aqueduct is a specimen, than in the
more florid and graceful school of art. The latter speaks more to the
eye, but the former to the mind, possessing a superiority analogous to
that which the great style of painting (as it is termed) boasts over the
florid and ornamental Venetian school. Our own Stonehenge is too much,
perhaps, in the rude extreme of this branch of architecture to be quoted
as a favourable instance of it; but few persons can come suddenly in
sight of Stonehenge on a misty day without being struck by its peculiar
effect; and the Pont du Gard, placed in as lonely a situation, exhibits
materials almost as gigantic in detail, and knit into a towering mass
which seems to require no less force than an earthquake, or a battery of
cannon, to change the position of a single stone. A large and solid
bridge which has been built against it by the states of Languedoc