tinctly the graceful sweep of the Loire, and the spires and roofs
of the city far below me.

The city of Tours and the delicious plain in which it lies have been
too often described by other travelers to render a new description,
from so listless a pen as mine, either necessary or desirable. After a
sojourn of two cloudy and melancholy days, I set out on my return to
Paris, by the way of Vendome and Chartres. I stopt a few hours at
the former place, to examine the ruins of a chateau built by Jeanne
d'Albret, mother of Henry the Fourth. It stands upon the summit of a
high and precipitous hill, and almost overhangs the town beneath. The
French Revolution has completed the ruin that time had already begun;
and nothing now remains, but a broken and crumbling bastion, and here
and there a solitary tower dropping slowly to decay. In one of these
is the grave of Jeanne d'Albret. A marble entablature in the wall
above contains the inscription, which is nearly effaced, tho enough
still remains to tell the curious traveler that there lies buried the
mother of the "Bon Henri." To this is added a prayer that the repose
of the dead may be respected.

Here ended my foot excursion. The object of my journey was
accomplished; and, delighted with this short ramble through the valley
of the Loire, I took my seat in the diligence for Paris, and on the
following day was again swallowed up in the crowds of the metropolis,
like a drop in the bosom of the sea.

AMBOISE[A]

[Footnote A: From "Old Touraine." Published by James Pott & Co.]

BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK

The Castle of Amboise stands high above the town, like another
Acropolis above a smaller Athens; it rises upon the only height
visible for some distance, and is in a commanding position for holding
the level fields of Touraine around it, and securing the passage of
the Loire between Tours and Chaumont, which is the next link in the
chain that ends at Blois.

The river at this point is divided in two by an island, as is so often
the case where the first bridge-builders sought to join the wide banks
of the Loire, and on this little spot between the waters Clovis is
said to have met Alaric before he overthrew the power of the Visigoths
in Aquitaine.

Amboise gains even more from the river than the other chateaux of
the Loire. The magnificent round tower that springs from the end of
Charles VIII.'s facade completely commands the approaches of the
bridge, and the extraord