The church of Pont-de-l’Arche, though greatly dilapidated, is a building worth notice, in a fine style of the decorated gothic.  The nave is very lofty; the high altar richly carved and gilt; the oak pulpit embossed with saints; and the font covered with curious, though not ancient, sculpture.  Rich tracery abounds in the windows, which are also filled with painted glass, some of it of very good quality.  Scripture history and personages occupy, as usual, the principal part; but in one of the windows we noticed a representation of the Seine full of islands, and the town of Pont-de-l’Arche, with a number of persons quitting it with their horses, baggage, &c. in apparent confusion.  So shattered, however, is the window, that the story is no longer intelligible in its details; and fragments, quite illegible, are all that remain of the inscriptions formerly beneath it.  It is probable, that the intention of the artist was to give a picture of the miseries experienced by the inhabitants at the burning of the town by our troops under Edward IIIrd.—­On the south side of the church the buttresses are enriched with canopies and other sculpture; and there was originally a highly-wrought balustrade, ornamented with figures of children, a part of which remains.—­Pont-de-l’Arche claims the merit of having been the first town in France, which acknowledged Henry IVth as its lawful sovereign, after the assassination of his predecessor, in 1589.

On leaving this place, we passed through the forest of the same name, an extensive tract covered with young trees, principally beech, oak, and birch.  The soil, a mixture of chalk and gravel, is poor, and offers but little encouragement to the labors of the plough.  All around us, the distant prospect was pleasantly varied with gentle hills, upon one of which, nearly in front, we soon saw Louviers, a busy manufacturing town, of about seven thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly employed in making the fine cloth of the district, which is considered superior in quality to any other in France.  Spanish wool is almost exclusively used for the purpose.

Throughout the vicinity of Louviers, are the most undoubted symptoms of commercial prosperity; new houses every where erecting, and old ones undergoing improvement.  But the streets of the town itself are, as usual, dirty and narrow, and the people of the lower orders more than commonly ragged and beggarly.  It was impossible to mistake the nature of their occupations; so many of them had their faces and hands, and every part of their limbs and bodies that was visible, died of a bright blue.—­The church at Louviers is very much injured, but very handsome; and though reduced to a nave with its four aisles it is still a spacious edifice.  The south porch, which projects boldly in the form of a galilee, is scarcely to be excelled as a specimen of pointed architecture at its highest pitch of luxuriant beauty.  Yet, even in this, the saints have been torn from their pedestals