small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman
rigour the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would be a great
injustice, however, not to insist upon its

[Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD.]

beauty--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object constructed not to
please but to serve, and impressive simply from the scale on which it
carries out this intention. The number of arches in each tier is
different; they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend. The
preservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has crumbled or
collapsed; every feature remains, and the huge blocks of stone, of a
brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provencal sun for
eighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement, as
evenly as the day they were laid together. All this to carry the water
of a couple of springs to a little provincial city! The conduit on the
top has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it was
lined. When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed
to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the mighty
empire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct; and it was
open to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe that
no people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, as
we measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they gave to what
they undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest
impressions they have left; it speaks of them in a manner with which
they might have been satisfied.

I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the whereabouts of
the chateau of the obliging young man I had met on the way from Nimes; I
must content myself with saying that it nestled in an enchanting
valley--_dans le fond_, as they say in France--and that I took my course
thither on foot after leaving the Pont du Gard. I find it noted in my
journal as "an adorable little corner." The principal feature of the
place is a couple of very ancient towers, brownish-yellow in hue, and
mantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. One of these towers, reputed to be
of Saracenic origin, is isolated, and is only the more effective; the
other is incorporated in the house, which is delightfully fragmentary
and irregular. It had got to be late by this time, and the lonely
_castel_ looked crepuscular and mysterious. An old housekeeper was sent
for, who showed me the rambling interior; and