Picards, whose very horses show the effects of their
abundant corn harvests.

From Joigny to Auxerre, twenty-one miles. We arrived too late to visit
the interior of the cathedral, which was not mentioned to us as
containing any thing remarkable. Its exterior, however, is fine and
venerable, and affords a beautiful evening study, viewed from the
opposite bank of the Yonne, about half a mile on the Vermanton road. The
rest of the town, seen from this point, is broken into fine masses of
conventual and other old buildings; and the river and bridge complete a
landscape very well worthy of an accurate sketch.

The excellence of the Hotel de Beaune, at Auxerre, "tenu par Boillet,
gendre Mineau," as his cards inform us, deserves notice. This is one of
those palm-islands among a desert of dirty pothouses, most treacherously
adapted to lure onward a certain class of fair weather pilgrims, whom
one wonders to meet with beyond Paris, and whose dolorous complaints of
thin milk and large coffee-spoons, have afforded me no small amusement
in casual rencounters. The most fastidious, however, of this class of
smelfungi, would find but little to carp at under the roof the civil Mr.
Boillet; and would do well to lay in a stock of comfortable
recollections in this place, on which to feast as far as Chalons; for
the interval between Auxerre and the latter city will prove but a dreary
one to a traveller of the gastronomic school.

The general air of Auxerre is ancient and respectable; but conveys no
ideas of populousness or commerce. In the opinion, however, of an old
sub-matron of the Enfans Trouvees (who looked over my shoulder while
sketching, and whom, by way of something to say, I ignorantly
complimented on her fine family of grandchildren), there is nothing, or,
according to Malthus, much to complain of in the former respect. "Ah,
Monsieur, que voulez vous? ce sont les militaires, ils vont par ci, ils
vont par la, et puis--voila des enfans, et ou chercher les peres?"

April 29.--To Vermanton, our first stage, eighteen miles: a succession
of fine vineyards and square steep hills, such as Uncle Toby might have
constructed for his amusement, with Gargantua for an assistant instead
of the corporal. About six miles short of Vermanton, at the bottom of a
long descent, we remarked Cravant, a little town to the right, fortified
in an ancient and picturesque manner, and which, the peasants said, had
been the seat of much fighting in days of