of passengers, with the conductor in front, looking down through the dust upon the world beneath them, not very comfortable when the sun was hot, still less comfortable of a rainy day, but just in the place which of all others a real traveller would wish to be in at morning or evening or of a moonlight night.  The remainder of the top was reserved for the baggage, carefully packed and covered up securely from dust and rain.

I had taken the precaution to engage a seat in the coupe the day before I set out.  Of my companions, I am sorry to say, I have not the slightest recollection.  But the road was good,—­bordered, as so many French roads are, with trees, and filled with a thousand objects full of interest to a young traveller.  There was the roulage:  an immense cart filled with goods of all descriptions, and drawn by four or five horses, ranged one before another, each decked with a merry string of bells, and generally rising in graduated proportions from the full-sized leader to the enormous thill horse, who bore the heat and burden of the day.  Sometimes half a dozen of them would pass in a row, the drivers walking together and whiling away the time with stories and songs.  Now and then a post-chaise would whirl by with a clattering of wheels and cracking of whip that were generally redoubled as it came nearer to the diligence, and sank again, when it was passed, into comparative moderation both of noise and speed.  There were foot travellers, too, in abundance; and as I saw them walking along under the shade of the long line of trees that bordered the road, I could not help thinking that this thoughtful provision for the protection of the traveller was the most pleasing indication I had yet seen of a country long settled.

While I was thus looking and wondering, and drawing perhaps the hasty comparisons of a novice, I saw a gentleman coming towards us with a firm, quick step, his blue surtout buttoned tight over his breast, a light walking-stick in his hand, and with the abstracted air of a man who saw something beyond the reach of the bodily eye.  It was Cooper, just returning from a visit to the General, and dreaming perhaps of his forest-paths or the ocean.  His carriage with his family was coming slowly on behind.  A day earlier and I should have found them all at La Grange.

It was evident that the good people of Rosay were accustomed to the sight of travellers on their way to La Grange with a very small stock of French; for I had hardly named the place, when a brisk little fellow, announcing himself as the guide of all the Messieurs Americains, swung my portmanteau upon his back and set out before me at the regular jog-trot of a well-trained porter.  The distance was but a mile, the country level, and we soon came in sight of the castle.  Castle, indeed, it was, with its pointed Norman towers, its massive walls, and broad moat,—­memorials of other days,—­and already gray with age