t
remained.

"Like the Venus of Milo in the Louvre," said H.C., "what remains of it
is all the more precious for what is not."

It was not so very long since we had visited the Louvre together, and he
had remained rapt before the famous Venus for a whole hour,
contemplating her from every point of view, and declaring that now he
should never marry: he had seen perfection once, and should never see it
again. This I knew to be nothing but the enthusiasm of the moment. The
very next pretty face and form he encountered, animated with the breath
of life, would banish from his mind all allegiance to the cold though
faultless marble image.

The exterior of the house of the Duchesse Anne was as remarkable as the
interior for its wonderful antiquity, its carvings, its statues and
grotesques, its carved pilasters between the windows, each of different
design and all beautiful, its gabled roofs and its latticed panes that
had long fallen out of the perpendicular. Both this and the next house
were closed; and it was heartbreaking to think that perhaps on our next
visit to Morlaix empty space would here meet our gaze, or, still worse,
a barbarous modern aggression.

Few towns now, comparatively speaking, possess fifteenth century
remains, and those few towns should preserve them as amongst their most
cherished treasures.

Morlaix is still amongst the most favoured towns in this respect. Go
which way you will, and amongst much that is modern, you will see
ancient houses and nooks and corners that delight you and take you back
to the Middle Ages. Now it will be an old house in the market-place that
has escaped destruction; now a whole court up some narrow turning, too
out-of-the-way to have been worthy of demolition; and now it will be a
whole street, like the Grand' Rue, which has been preserved, no doubt
of deliberate intent, as being one of the most typical fifteenth century
streets in the whole of France, an ornament and an attraction to the
town, raising Morlaix out of the commonplace, and causing antiquarians
and many others to visit it.

For if all the houses of the Grand' Rue are not actually fifteenth
century--and they are not--they all look of an age; they all belong to
the same school of architecture, and the harmony of the whole street is
perfect. Looking upwards, the eye is delighted at the outlines of the
gabled roofs that stand out so clearly and sharply against the
background of the sky; and you return to it ov