[2] The same remark applies to Mantes, familiar to us from its historical associations, and by its graceful towers, which so many have seen from the railway in going to Paris.  “All the world goes by Mantes, but very few stop there,” writes a traveller.  “The tourist, on his way to Paris, generally has a ticket which allows him to stop at Rouen but not at Mantes.  People very anxious to stop at Mantes, and to muse, so to speak, amongst its embers, have had great searchings of heart how to get there, and have not accomplished their object until after some years of reflection.”

[3] Trouville and Deauville-sur-mer.

[4] The architecture of Rouen, which is better known to our countrymen than that of any other town in Normandy, is later than that of Caen or Bayeux.  Notwithstanding the magnificence of its cathedral, we venture to say that there is nothing in all Rouen to compare with the norman romanesque of the latter towns.

[5] ’I am not enthusiastic about gutters and gables, and object to a population composed exclusively of old women,’ wrote the author of ’Miss Carew;’ but she could not have seen Pont Audemer.

[6] The brightness and cleanliness of the peasant and market-women, is a pleasant feature to notice in Normandy.

[7] It is worthy of note that the very variety and irregularity that attracts us so much in these buildings does not meet with universal approval in the French schools.  In the ’Grammaire des Arts du Dessin,’ M. Charles Blanc lays down as an axiom, that “sublimity in architecture belongs to three essential conditions—­simplicity of surface, straightness, and continuity of line.”  Nevertheless we find many modern French houses built in the style of the 13th and 14th century; especially in Lower Normandy.

[8] There is a great change in the aspect of Pont Audemer during the last year or two; streets of new houses having sprung up, hiding some of the best old work from view; and one whole street of wooden houses having been lately taken down.

[9] There is one peculiarity about the position of Pont Audemer which is charming to an artist; the streets are ended by hills and green slopes, clothed to their summits with trees, which are often in sunshine, whilst the town is in shadow.

[10] We, human creatures, little know what high revel is held at four o’clock on a summer’s morning, by the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; when their tormentors are asleep.

[11] The approach to Lisieux from the railway station is singularly uninteresting; a new town of common red brick houses, of the Coventry or Birmingham pattern, having lately sprung up in this quarter.

[12] There is something not inappropriate, in the printed letters in present use in France, to the ‘Haussmann’ style of street architecture; some inscriptions over warehouses and shops could scarcely indeed be improved.  We might point as an illustration of our meaning to the successful introduction of the word NORD, several times repeated, on the facade of the terminus of the Great Northern Railway at Paris.