JOURNEY TO GRANVILLE.  GRANVILLE.  VILLE DIEU.  ST. SEVER.  TOWN AND CASTLE OF
VIRE.

Vire.

Since my last, I have been as much gratified by the charms of nature and of art, as during any one period of my tour.  Prepare, therefore, for miscellaneous intelligence; but such as, I will make bold to predict, cannot fail to afford you considerable gratification.  Normandy is doubtless a glorious country.  It is fruitful in its soil, picturesque in the disposition of its land and water, and rich in the architectural relics of “the olden time.”  It is also more than ordinarily interesting to an Englishman.  Here, in the very town whence I transmit this despatch—­within two hundred and fifty yards of the hotel of the Cheval Blanc, which just now encloses me within its granite walls—­here, I say, lived and revelled the illustrious family of the DE VERES.[157] Hence William the Conqueror took the famous AUBREY DE VERE to be a spectator of his prowess, and a sharer of his spoils, in his decisive subjugation of our own country.  It is from this place that the De Veres derive their name.  Their once-proud castle yet towers above the rushing rivulet below, which turns a hundred mills in its course:  but the warder’s horn has long ceased to be heard, and the ramparts are levelled with the solid rock with which they were once, as it were, identified.

I left Coutances with something approaching to reluctance; so completely anglicised seemed to be the scenery and inhabitants.  The evening was beautiful in the extreme:  and upon gaining the height of one of the opposite hills, within about half a league of the town, on the high Granville route, I alighted—­walked, stopped, and gazed, alternately, upon the lovely landscape around—­the cathedral, in the mean time, becoming of one entire golden tint from the radiance of the setting sun.  It was hardly possible to view a more perfect picture of its kind; and it served as a just counterpart to the more expansive scene which I had contemplated, but the preceding evening, from the heights of that same cathedral.  The conducteur of the Diligence rousing me from my rapturous abstraction, I remounted, and descended into a valley; and ere the succeeding height was gained, a fainter light floated over the distant landscape ... and every object reminded me of the accuracy of those exquisite lines of Collins—­descriptive of the approach of evening’s

  ... gradual, dusky veil.

For the first time, I had to do with a drunken conducteur.  Luckily the road was broad, and in the finest possible condition, and perfectly well known to the horses.  Every turning was successfully made; and the fear of upsetting began to give way to the annoyance experienced from the roaring and shouting of the conducteur.  It was almost dark when I reached GRANVILLE—­about twelve miles from Coutances; when I learnt that the horses had run six miles before they started with