The walk round the town upon the walls is extremely interesting.  Gradually making way, the scene changes like the shifting slides of a panorama.  Now the harbour lies before you, with its busy quays, its docks, its small crowd of shipping; very crowded we have never seen it.  The old Castle rises majestically, looking all its three centuries of age and royal dignity; its four towers unspoilt by restoration.

Onward still and the walls rise sheer out of the rocks and the water.  At certain tides, the sea dashes against them and breaks back upon itself in froth and foam and angry boom.  Sight and sound are a wonderful nerve tonic.  Countless rocks rise like small islands in every direction, stretching far out to sea.  On a calm day it is all lovely beyond the power of words.  The sky is blue and brilliant with sunshine.  The sea receives the dazzling rays and returns them in a myriad flashes.  The water seems to have as many tints as the rainbow, and they are as changing and beautiful and intangible.  A distant vessel, passing slowly with all her sails set, almost becalmed, suggests a dreamy and delicious existence that has not its rival.  The coast of Normandy stretches far out of sight.  In the distance are the Channel Islands, visible possibly on a clear day and with a strong glass.  I know not how that may be.

Turn your gaze, and you have St. Malo lying within its grey walls.  The sea on the right is all freedom and broad expanse; the town on the left is cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d.  Extremes meet here, as they often do elsewhere.

It is a succession of slanting roofs, roof above roof, street beyond street.  Many of the houses are very old and form wonderful groups, full of quaint gables and dormer windows, whilst the high roofs slant upwards and fall away in picturesque outlines.  An artist might work here for years and still find fresh material to his hand.  The streets are narrow, steep and tortuous; the houses, crowding one upon another, are many stories high; not a few seem ready to fall with age and decay.  Only have patience, and all yields to time.

On one of the islets is the tomb of Chateaubriand, who was born in St. Malo and lived here many years.  It was one of his last wishes to be buried where the sea, for ever playing and plashing around him, would chant him an everlasting requiem.  Many will sympathise with the feeling.  No scene could be more in accordance with the solemnity of death, the long waiting for the “eternal term;” more in unison with the pure spirit that could write such a prose-poem as Atala.

Nothing could have been lovelier than the day of our arrival at St. Malo; the special day of which I write; for St. Malo has seen our coming and going many times and in all weathers.