out to describe to
you, can rarely, in all probability, be the production of a London artist.
It is called "_Notre-Dame de la bonne Delivrande_," and is necessarily
confined to the religion of the country. You have here, first of all, a
reduced form of the original: probably about one-third--and it is the more
appropriate, as it will serve to give you a very correct notion of the
dressing out of the figures of the VIRGIN and CHILD which are meant to
grace the altars of the chapels of the Virgin in most of the churches in
Normandy. Is it possible that one spark of devotion can be kindled by the
contemplation of an object so grotesque and so absurd in the House of God?

[Illustration: SAINTE MARIE, MERE DE DIEU, priez pour nous]

To describe all the trumpery which is immediately around it, in the
original, would be a waste of time; but below are two good figures to the
right, and two wretched ones to the left. Beneath the whole, is the
following _accredited_ consoling piece of intelligence:

L'AN 830, _des Barbares descendent dans les Gaules, massacrent les
Fideles, profanent et brulent les Eglises. Raoul, Duc de Normandie, se
joint a eux; l'image de la Ste. Vierge demeure ensevelie sous les
ruines de l'ancienne chapelle jusqu'au regne de Henri I. l'an 1331.
Beaudouin, Baron de Douvres, averti par son berger qu'un mouton de son
troupeau fouillait toujours dans le meme endroit, fit ouvrir la terre,
et trouva ce tresor cache depuis tant d'annees. Il fit porter
processionnellement cette sainte image dans l'Eglise de Douvres: mais
Dieu permit qu'elle fut transportee par un Ange dans l'endroit de la
chapelle ou elle est maintenant reveree. C'est dans cette chapelle
que, par l'intercession de Marie, les pecheurs recoivent leur
conversion, les affliges leur consolation, les infirmes la sante, les
captifs leur delivrance, que ceux qui sont en mer echappent aux
tempetes et au naufrage, et que des miracles s'operent journellement
sur les pieux Fideles_.

A word now for BIBLIOPOLISTS--including _Bouquinistes_, or venders of "old
and second-hand books." The very morning following my arrival in Caen, I
walked to the abbey of St. Stephen, before breakfast, and in the way
thither stopped at a book stall, to the right,--and purchased some black
letter folios: among which the French version of _Caesar's Commentaries,_
printed by Verard, in 1488, was the most desirable acquisiti