our own counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, is degraded from its station.  The great house is used merely as a granary, though, by a very small expence, it might be put into habitable repair.  The stone retains its clear and polished surface; and the massy timbers are undecayed.—­The inside corresponds with the exterior, in decorations and grandeur:  the chimney-pieces are large and elaborate, and there is abundance of sculpture on the ceilings and other parts which admit of ornament.

The French, in speaking of Andelys, commonly use the plural number, and say, les Andelys, there being a smaller town of the same name, within the distance of a mile:  hence, the larger, all inconsiderable as it is, and though it scarcely contains two thousand inhabitants, is dignified by the appellation of le Grand Andelys.

As the French seldom neglect the memory of their eminent men, I was rather disappointed at not finding any tribute to the glory of Poussin, nor any object which could recal his name.—­The great master of the French school was born at Andelys, in 1594, of poor but noble parents.  The talents of the painter of the Deluge overcame all obstacles.  Young Poussin, with barely a sufficiency to buy his daily bread, found means of making his abilities known in the metropolis to such advantage, as enabled him to proceed to Rome, where the patronage of the Cavaliere Marino smoothed his way to that splendid career, which terminated only with his life.—­And yet I doubt if the example of Poussin has, on the whole, been favorable to the progress of French art.  Horace Walpole, in his summary of the excellencies and defects of great painters, observed with much justice, that “Titian wanted to have seen the antique; Poussin to have seen Titian.”  The observation referred principally to the defective coloring, which is admitted to exist in the greater part of the works of the painter of Andelys.  But Poussin, considered as a model for imitation, and especially as a model for the student, is liable to a more serious objection.—­He was a total stranger to real nature:—­classical taste, indeed, and knowledge, and grace, and beauty, pervade all his works; but it is a taste, and a knowledge, and a grace, and a beauty, formed solely upon the contemplation of the antique.  Horace’s adage, that “decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile,” has been remarkably verified in the case of Poussin; and I am mistaken, if the example set by him, which has been rigorously followed in the French school, even down to the present day, has not contributed more than any thing else to that statuary style in forms, and that coldness in coloring, which every one, who is not born in France, regrets to see in the works of the best of their artists.—­The learned Adrian Turnebus was also a native of Andelys; and the church is distinguished as the burial-place of Corneille.

[Illustration:  Distant View of Chateau Gaillard]