ever, that were more than commonly rustic and picturesque,
and in which the dwellings seemed to be of mud, and were thatched. As
they were mostly very irregular in form, the street winding through them
quite prettily, they would have been good in their way, had there been
any of the simple expedients of taste to relieve their poverty. But the
French peasants of this province appear to think of little else but
their wants. There was occasionally a venerable and generous old vine
clinging about the door, however, to raise some faint impressions of
happiness.

We passed through, or near, the field of Cressy. By the aid of the
books, we fancied we could trace the positions of the two armies; but it
was little more than very vague conjecture. There was a mead, a breadth
of field well adapted to cavalry, and a wood. The river is a mere brook,
and could have offered but little protection, or resistance, to the
passage of any species of troops. I saw no village, and we may not have
been within a mile of the real field, after all. Quite likely; no one
knows where it is. It is very natural that the precise sites of great
events should be lost, though our own history is so fresh and full, that
to us it is apt to appear extraordinary. In a conversation with a
gentleman of the Stanley family, lately, I asked him if Latham-House, so
celebrated for its siege in the civil wars, was still in the possession
of its ancient proprietors. I was told it no longer existed, and that,
until quite recently, its positive site was a disputed point, and one
which had only been settled by the discovery of a hole in a rock, in
which shot had been cast during the siege, and which hole was known to
have formerly been in a court. It is no wonder that doubts exist as to
the identity of Homer, or the position of Troy.

We have anglicised the word Cressy, which the French term Crecy, or, to
give it a true Picard orthography, Creci. Most of the names that have
this termination are said to be derived from this province. Many of them
have become English, and have undergone several changes in the spelling.
Tracy, or Tracey; de Courcy, or de Courcey; Montmorency; and Lacy, or
Lacey, were once "Traci," "Courci," "Montmorenci," and "Laci." [35] The
French get over the disgrace of their ancient defeats very ingeniously,
by asserting that the English armies of old were principally composed of
Norman soldiers, and that the chivalrous nobility which performed such
wo