Crossing the Channel from Southampton to Havre by night, or from Newhaven to Dieppe by day, we proceed at once to the town of PONT AUDEMER, situated about six miles from Quillebeuf and eight from Honfleur, both on the left bank of the Seine.  From Havre, Pont Audemer may be reached in a few hours, by water, and from Dieppe, Rouen or Paris there is now railway communication.  From Pont Audemer we go to LISIEUX (by road or railway), from Lisieux to CAEN, BAYEUX and ST. LO, where the railway ends, and we take the diligence to COUTANCES, GRANVILLE, and AVRANCHES.  After a visit to the island of Mont St. Michael, we may return (by diligence) by way of MORTAIN, VIRE, and FALAISE; thence to ROUEN, and by the valley of the Seine, to the sea-coast.[1]

The whole journey is a short and inexpensive one, and may occupy a fortnight, a month, or three months (the latter is not too long), and may be made a simple voyage de plaisir, or turned to good account for artistic study.

But there is one peculiarity about it that should be mentioned at the outset.  The route we have indicated, simple as it seems, and most easily to be carried out as it would appear, is really rather difficult of accomplishment, for the one reason that the journey is almost always made on cross-roads.  The traveller who follows it will continually find himself delayed because he is not going to Paris.  ‘Paris is France’ under the Imperial regime, and at nearly every town or railway station he will be reminded of the fact; and, if he be not careful, will find himself and his baggage whisked off to the capital.[2] If he wishes to see Normandy, and to carry out the idea of a provincial tour in its integrity, he must resist temptation, have nothing to do with Paris, and put up with slow trains, creeping diligences, and second-rate inns.

The network of roads and railways in France converge as surely to the capital as the threads of a spider’s web lead to its centre, and in pursuing his route through the bye-ways of Normandy the traveller will be much in the position of the fly that has stepped upon its meshes—­every road and railway leading to the capital where ’M. d’Araignee’ the enticing, the alluring, the fascinating, the most extravagant—­is ever waiting for his prey.

From the moment he sets foot on the shores of Normandy, Paris will be made ever present to him.  Let him go, for example, to the railway station at any port on his arrival in France, and he will find everything—­people, goods, and provisions, being hurried off to the capital as if there were no other place to live in, or to provide for.  Let him (in pursuit of the journey we have suggested) tread cautiously on the fil de fer at Lisieux, for he will pass over one of the main lines that connect the world of Fashion at Paris with another world of Fashion by the sea.[3] Let him, when at St. Lo, apply for a place in the diligence for Avranches, and he will be told by a polite official