We have not spoken of the castle first, because there is little of it left besides the keep; and the part that remains seems no longer old.  The bold promontory on which it stood is now neatly kept and ‘tidied’ with smooth slopes, straight walks, and double rows of trees, pleasant to walk upon, but more suggestive of the Bois de Boulogne than the approach to a ruin.

It is from this promontory, or rather from what Murray calls ’this dusty pleasure ground,’ that we obtain our best view of the country westward, towards Avranches; and from whence we can see the bold granite formation of the rocks in the neighbourhood.  We may see where the manufacturers of cloth and paper have established their mills; and also where, in some cases, they have had to widen out the valleys, and to cut roads through the rocks to their works.  All the streams turn waterwheels, and many of the surrounding rocks are disfigured with cloth ‘tenters.’

There are some curious half-timbered houses at Vire, and some old streets tempting to sketch; including the house of Basselin, the famous originator of ’vaux de Vire’—­or, as they are now called, vaudevilles.

The inhabitants number about 9000, they are for the most part engaged in the manufactories of the place, too busy apparently to modernise either their costume or their dwellings; but the railway is now bringing others to the town who will work these changes for them.  Happily for them and for us, the hills are of granite and their sides most precipitous, and the innovators make slow progress in modernisation.  At the hotels everyone drinks cider, rather than vin ordinaire; and at night we are awoke with the clatter of sabots and the voice of the watchman.

The ancient town of FALAISE, to which so many Englishmen make a pilgrimage, as being the reputed birthplace of William the Conqueror, can now be reached, either from Caen, Vire, or Paris, by railway; but we who come from the west, will do well to keep to the old road; and (if we wish to preserve within us any of the associations connected with the place) should not have the sound of ‘Falaise’ first rung in our ears by railway porters.  Both the town and castle of Falaise are situated on high ground; and the latter, being on the side of a precipitous eminence, may be seen for a long distance before we approach it by the road.  At Falaise, as at Lisieux, the traveller who arrives in the town by railway, is generally surprised and disappointed, at first sight, with its modern aspect.

‘The castle of Falaise,’ says M. Leduc, ’consists of a large square Norman keep of the tenth and eleventh centuries, standing at the steepest and highest part of a rocky eminence, with a lofty and exceedingly fine circular tower, connected with it on the south-west by a passage; and round the whole, a long irregular line of outer wall following the sinuosities of the hill, fortified by circular towers and enclosing various detached buildings used