arious directions,
to say nothing of others for which none of the many railways of Normandy
has as yet done anything. In the journey now recorded it served as a
centre for Falaise and Seez, and for what will to most people be the
less familiar names of Exmes and Almeneches, and it might easily have
been made a centre for other places.

Argentan is a kind of town to which it would be hard to find an exact
fellow in England. It is not the head of any district; it is not the
seat of any great ecclesiastical foundation; such importance as it has
in history seems to have come from the presence of a castle which not
uncommonly received princely sojourners. Yet it is plainly something
more than one of those towns which have simply sprung up at the gate of
a castle. It has one main characteristic of a class of towns much
greater than its own: the fortress and the great church stand side by
side in its most prominent quarter. That in the general view the church
is far more conspicuous than the fortress is the result of later havoc;
but we are surprised to find that a church of such dignity in itself
and placed in such a position as the chief church of Argentan was never
the seat of abbot or dean. Falaise is now a larger town than Argentan;
but we feel that at Falaise the town has simply grown up at the foot of
the castle hill. Saint Gervase at Falaise is no fellow to the mighty
fortress on the _felsen_, as Saint German of Argentan must have been to
the _donjon_ of Argentan, even when that _donjon_ was better seen than
it is now. The name of Argentan does not at once lead us to some Gaulish
tribe or to some Roman prince; but it does not, like that of Falaise, at
once carry its own meaning with it in the speech of some or other of the
Teutonic conquerors of Gaul. We feel that Falaise, looking up to the
great keep and to the tower of Talbot, is merely a magnificent Dunster
or Richmond--we cannot say Windsor; for the _sainte chapelle_ of Saint
George has no fellow there. But Argentan is a miniature, a very small
miniature certainly, but still a miniature, of Durham and Lincoln and
Angers. That is, church and fortress stand together on the highest point
in the town.

Is Argentan therefore to be set down among the hill-towns? Falaise, of
all places in the world, assuredly is not; the castle is set on a hill,
but not the town. But can we give the name to Argentan? Some scruple may
be felt by one who has come from Saint-Lo, from Coutan