y, without any great
effort of imagination, that, like the bed-ridden Giant Pope in honest
John Bunyan, it was grinning a ghastly smile of envy at the prosperity
which it could no longer interrupt. Or, if this idea should seem
extravagant, at least the two opposite neighbours present as lively a
personification as stone and mortar can afford, of their respective
inhabitants; the town of Valence flourishing in industrious
cheerfulness, and the castle domineering, savage, poverty-stricken, and
formed only for purposes of plunder and mischief.

In the suburbs of Valence we found an excellent inn, called the Croix
d'Or, worthy to be recommended both for comfort, civility, and fair
charges. A walk into the town of Valence itself has very little in it to
repay the traveller, with the exception of the Champ de Mars, a sort of
public garden bordering on the Rhone. Certainly no place ever united
such a degree of dirt and closeness to so smiling an exterior. Its old
Gothic walls still remain, and the streets therefore are probably built
on the same scale as in those times when they crowded together for
security against feudal aggressors.

May 9.--To Loriol five miles. The road passes through a country as
beautiful and diversified as before, seldom deviating above a mile or
two from the course of the river: corn and hay-fields, the latter fit
for cutting, mulberry, almond, and fig-trees, cover every inch of
ground. About a mile before we reached Loriol, and just after passing a
small town called Livron, we crossed the Drome, over a noble bridge of
three arches, constructed of a rough sort of whitish marble, and
reminding us somewhat of a reduced section of the Strand bridge. Its
massy solidity is not misplaced, as a view up the mountain glen to the
left of it convinced us. Though the river was at this time low, the
immense extent of dry beds of gravel showed what its volume and force
must be when swoln by rain; and the cluster of gloomy mountains which
close the valley from whence it issues, seem the perpetual abode of
storms. In one of them I recognised the Montagne de Midi, whose form is
so remarkably perpendicular when seen from Tain; and altogether, I have
no idea of forms more wild and extraordinary upon so large a scale. The
rocks of St. Michel, in Savoy, near St. Jean de Maurienne, are a
miniature resemblance of them; but a better idea as to size and
wildness, may be formed by those who recollect the mountains of Nant
Fra