he vast dull corn-flats to
the north of the great river and the vines and acacias to the south.
There is the same contrast in an ethnological point of view, for one is
traversing the watershed that parts two different races, and enough of
difference still remains in dialect and manner to sever the Acquitanian
from the Frank. And historically every day brings one across some
castle or abbey or town that has been hitherto a mere name in the pages
of Lingard or Sismondi, but which one actual glimpse changes into a
living fact. There are few tracts of country indeed where the historical
interest ranges equally over so long a space of time. The river which
was the "revolutionary torrent" of Carrier had been the highway for the
Northmen into the heart of Carolingian France. Saumur blends the tenth
century and the sixteenth together in the names of Gelduin and Du
Plessis; Chinon brings into contact the age of the Plantagenets and the
age of Joan of Arc. From the mysterious dolmen and the legendary well to
the stone that marks the fusillade of the heroes of La Vendee there is a
continuous chain of historic event in these central provinces. Every
land has its pet periods of history, and the brilliant chapters of M.
Michelet are hardly needed to tell us how thoroughly France identifies
the splendour and infamy of the Renascence with the Loire. Blois,
Amboise, Chenonceaux, embody still in the magnificence of their ruin the
very spirit of Catherine de Medicis, of Francis, of Diana of Poitiers.
To Englishmen the relics of an earlier period have naturally a greater
charm. Nothing clears one's ideas about the character of the Angevin
rule, the rule of Henry II. or Richard or John, so thoroughly as a
stroll through Anjou.

There the Angevin Counts are as vivid, as real, as the Angevin Kings are
on English soil unreal and dim. Hardly a building in his realm preserves
the memory of Henry II.; Richard is a mere visitor to English shores;
Beaulieu alone and the graven tomb at Worcester enable us to realize
John. But along the Loire these Angevin rulers meet us in river-bank and
castle and bridge and town. Their names are familiar words still through
the length and breadth of the land. At Angers men show you the vast
hospital of Henry II., while the suburb around it is the creation of his
son. And not only do the men come vividly before us, but they come
before us in another and a fresher light. To us they are strangers and
foreigners, ster