und it, and so bare of soil, that the eye is surprised by the
flourishing state of its corn and fruit-trees. The heat reflected from
the rocks upon the thin gravel which supports its vineyards, must boil
their juices to a liqueur; at least such was its effect on ourselves,
while winding along a series of these natural forcing-houses, through
which the road is conducted into the great plain of Chalons. From the
ridges which border these valleys, the wide extent of the latter, and
its border of Alps, are visible, though not so finely as from the
elevation which we had descended. "Mont Blanc, the monarch of
mountains," was however more plainly discernible than before, like a
thin distinct fabric of vapour, with his "diadem of snow faintly lighted
up by the sun;" and I never recollect to have seen this white-headed
patriarch of the Alps before in any position which gave so fully the
effect of his enormous height, I will not even except the spot near
Merges, where from a gap in the intervening mountains, he appears almost
to rest his base upon the lake of Geneva.

On emerging from the hilly country near Rochepot, the road to Chalons
passes along a dead flat, cheerful from its richness, but rather
monotonous. To the right, we looked back upon a semicircular range of
well wooded hills, in front of which, on an eminence, stands a stately
old chateau belonging to the Count de Rouilly. It answers very much to
the beau ideal of what a French chateau ought to be, but seldom is. I
say "ought to be," premising that most of us have formed our first ideas
of French chateaux, from those works of imagination which endow such
places so liberally with gothic architecture and haunted woods. The
mansion of the Count de Rouilly would not greatly disappoint a reader of
Mrs. Ratcliffe's romances; and bears a strong resemblance to Westwood,
near Ombersley, in Worcestershire, the seat of Sir John Packington,
which is said to have been once a conventual building.

With no small pleasure did we arrive at the handsome town of Chalons,
our patience being nearly exhausted by the tiresome running base with
which our Noah's ark accompanied the driver's abuse of his clumsy grey
mares. _Grand chameau, sacre vache_, and _canaille_, where the most
genteel and decent terms with which he favoured them, and his
perverseness was in proportion. For this precious commodity, selected I
should conceive from the most consummate ragamuffins on the road, we
were inde