From Pont-Audemer we proceeded to Honfleur:  it was market-day at the place which we had quitted, and the throng of persons who passed us on the road, gave great life and variety to the scene.  There was scarcely an individual from whom we did not receive a friendly smile or nod, accompanied by a bon jour; for the practice obtains commonly in France, among the peasants, of saluting those whom they consider their superiors.  Almost all that were going to market, whether male or female, were mounted on horses or asses; and their fruit, vegetables, butchers’ meat, live fowls, and live sheep, were indiscriminately carried in the same way.

About a league before we arrived at Honfleur, a distant view of the eastern banks of the river opened upon us from the summit of a hill, and we felt, or fancied that we felt, “the air freshened from the wave.”  As we descended, the ample Seine, here not less than nine miles in width, suddenly displayed itself, and we had not gone far before we came in sight of Honfleur.  The mist occasioned by the intense heat, prevented us from seeing distinctly the opposite towns of Havre and Harfleur:  we could only just discern the spire of the latter, and the long projecting line of the piers and fortifications of Havre.  The great river rolls majestically into the British Channel between these two points, and forms the bay of Honfleur.  About four miles higher up the stream where it narrows, the promontories of Quilleboeuf and of Tancarville close the prospect.—­Honfleur itself is finely situated:  valleys, full of meadows of the liveliest green, open to the Seine in the immediate vicinity of the town; and the hills with which it is backed are beautifully clothed with foliage to the very edge of the water.  The trees, far from being stunted and leafless, as on the eastern coast of England, appear as if they were indebted to their situation for a verdure of unusual luxuriancy.  A similar line of hills borders the Seine on either side, as far as the eye can reach.

It was unfortunate for us, that we entered the town at low water, when the empty harbor and slimy river could scarcely fail to prepossess us unfavorably.  The quays are faced with stone, and the two basins are fine works, and well adapted for commerce.  This part of Honfleur reminded us of Dieppe; but the houses, though equally varied in form and materials, are not equally handsome.—­Still less so are the churches; and a picturesque castle is wholly wanting.—­In the principal object of my journey to Honfleur, my expectations were completely frustrated.  I had been told at Rouen, that I should here find a very ancient wooden church, and our imagination had pictured to us one equally remarkable as that of Greensted, in Essex, and probably constructed in the same manner, of massy trunks of trees.  With the usual anticipation of an antiquary, I imagined that I should discover a parallel to that most singular building; which, as every body knows, is one of the