ubble
goose'--another type of town altogether from your thriving Lilles and
Rouens.

The pleasure in surveying this extraordinary combination of beautiful
objects, the richness and variety of the work, the long lines broken
by the charming and, as they are called, 'escalloped' gables, the
Spanish balconies, the pillars, light and shade, and shops, made it
almost incredible that such a thing was to be found in a poor obscure
French town, visited by but few travellers. On market-day, when the
whole is filled up with country folks, their wares and their stalls
sheltered from the sun by gaily-tinted awnings, the bustle and
glinting colours, and general _va et vient_, impart a fitting dramatic
air. Then are the old Spanish houses set off becomingly.

This old town has other curious things to exhibit, such as the
enormous old Abbey of St. Vaast--with its huge expansive roof, which
somehow seems to dominate the place, and thrusts forward some fragment
or other--where a regiment might lodge. Its spacious gardens are
converted to secular uses. Then I find myself at the old-new
cathedral, begun about a century ago, and finished about fifty years
since--a 'poorish' heartless edifice in the bald Italian manner, and
quite unsuited to these old Flemish cities. I come out on a terrace
with a huge flight of steps which leads to a lower portion of the
city. This, indeed, leads down from the _haute_ to the _basse ville_;
and it is stated that a great portion of this upper town is supported
upon catacombs or caves from which the white stone of the belfry and
town-hall was quarried. It is a curious feeling to be shown the house
in which Robespierre was born, which, for the benefit of the curious
it may be stated, is to be found in the Rue des Rapporteurs, close to
the theatre. Arras was a famous Jacobin centre, and from the balcony
of this theatre, Lebon, one of the Jacobins, directed the executions,
which took place abundantly on the pretty _place_.

[Illustration: BETHUNE.]

Thus much, then, for Arras, where one would have liked to linger, nay,
to stay a week or a few days. But this wishing to stay a week at a
picturesque place is often a dangerous pitfall, as the amiable
Charles Collins has shown in his own quaint style. Has anyone, he
asks, ever, 'on arriving at some place he has never visited before,
taken a sudden fancy to it, committed himself to apartments for a
month certain, gone on praising the locality and all that belongs