immense length, fenced off from the town by a grassy
embankment; a _Casino_ of a bold and unsociable aspect; a principal inn,
with an interminable brown facade, suggestive somehow of an asylum or an
almshouse--such are the most striking features of this particular
watering-place. There are magnificent cliffs on each side of the bay,
but, as the French say, without impropriety, it is the devil to get to
them. There was no one in the hotel, in the Casino, or on the beach; the
whole town being in the act of climbing the further cliff, to reach the
downs on which the races were to be held. The green hillside was black
with trudging spectators and the long sky line was fretted with them.
When I say there was no one at the inn, I forget the gentleman at the
door who informed me positively that he would give me no breakfast; he
seemed to have staid at home from the races expressly to give himself
this pleasure. But I went further and fared better, and procured a meal
of homely succulence, in an unfashionable tavern, in a back street,
where the wine was sound, the cutlets tender, and the serving-maid rosy.
Then I walked along--for a mile, it seemed--through a dreary, gray
_grand rue_, where the sunshine was hot, the odors portentous, and the
doorsteps garnished with aged fishwives, retired from business, whose
plaited linen coifs looked picturesquely white, and their faces
picturesquely brown. I inspected the harbor and its goodly basin--with
nothing in it--and certain pink and blue houses, which surround it, and
then, joining the last stragglers, I clambered up the side of the cliff
to the downs.

The races had already begun, and the ring of spectators was dense. I
picked out some of the smallest people, looked over their heads, and saw
several young farmers, in parti-colored jackets, and very red in the
face, bouncing up and down on handsome cart-horses. Satiated at last
with this diversion, I turned away and wandered down the hill again; and
after strolling through the streets of Fecamp, and gathering not a
little of the wayside entertainment that a seaport and fishing town
always yields, I repaired to the Abbey church, a monument of some
importance, and almost as great an object of pride in the town as the
Casino. The Abbey of Fecamp was once a very rich and powerful
establishment, but nothing remains of it now save its church and its
_trappistine_. The church, which is for the most part early Gothic, is
very stately and p