More than even last night, we were impressed by the wonderful outlines of the Grand’ Rue, where the lattice had been lighted up and the mysterious vision had received a revelation in gazing upon H.C.  To-day behind the lattice there was comparative darkness, and the vision had descended to a lower region, and the unromantic occupation of opening a roll of calico and displaying its advantages to a market woman who was evidently bent upon driving a bargain.  The vision caught sight of H.C., and for the moment calico and everything else was forgotten; the market woman no doubt had her calico at her own price.

The street itself is one of the most wonderful in France.  As you stand at the end and look down towards Les Halles, you have a picturesque group, an assemblage of outlines scarcely to be equalled in the world.  The street is narrow, and the houses, more and more overhanging as they ascend floor by floor, approach each other very closely towards the summit.  The roofs are, some of them, gabled; others, slanting backwards, give room for picturesque dormer windows.  Wide lattices stretch across some of the houses from end to end; in others the windows are smaller and open outwards like ordinary French windows, but always latticed, always picturesque.

Below, on the ground floor, many of the houses are given up to shops, but, fortunately, they have not been modernised.

The whole length of the front is unglazed, and you gaze into an interior full of mysterious gloom, in which you can scarcely see the wares offered for sale.  The rooms go far back.  They are black with age:  a dark panelling that you would give much to be able to transport to other scenes.  The ceilings are low, and great beams run across them.  The doors admitting you to these wonderful old-world places match well their surroundings.  They are wide and substantial, with beams that would effectually guard a prison, and wonderful old locks and keys and pieces of ironwork that set you wild with longings to turn housebreaker and carry away these ancient and artistic relics.

You feel that nothing in the lives of the people who live in these wonderful tenements can be commonplace.  However unconscious they may be of the refining influence, it is there, and it must leave its mark upon them.

At least, you think so.  You know what the effect would be upon yourself.  You know that if you could transport this street bodily to some quiet nook in England and surround it by velvety lawns and ancient trees that have grown and spread with the lapse of ages, your existence would become a long and romantic daydream, and you would be in danger of living the life of a recluse and never separating yourself from these influences.  Custom would never stale their infinite variety; familiarity would never breed contempt.  Who tires of wandering through a gallery of the old masters? who can endure the modern in comparison?  It is not the mere antiquity of all these things that charm; it is that they are beautiful in themselves, and belong to an age when the Spirit of Beauty was poured out upon the world from full vials held in the hands of unseen angels, and what men touched and created they perfected.