n administrators, exactors of treasure, tyrants to whose
tyranny, sometimes just and sometimes unjust, England was destined to
owe her freedom. But for Anjou the period of their rule was the period
of a peace and fame and splendour that never came back save in the
shadowy resurrection under King Rene. Her soil is covered with
monuments of their munificence, of their genuine care for the land of
their race. Nine-tenths of her great churches, in the stern grandeur of
their vaulting, their massive pillars, their capitals breaking into the
exquisite foliage of the close of the century, witness to the pious
liberality of sovereigns who in England were the oppressors of the
Church, and who when doomed to endow a religious house in their realm
did it by turning its inhabitants out of an already existing one and
giving it simply a new name. As one walks along the famous Levee, the
gigantic embankment along the Loire by which Henry saved the valley from
inundation, or as one looks at his hospitals at Angers or Le Mans, it is
hard not to feel a sympathy and admiration for the man from whom one
shrinks coldly under the Martyrdom at Canterbury. There is a French side
to the character of these Kings which, though English historians have
disregarded it, is worth regarding if only because it really gave the
tone to their whole life and rule. But it is a side which can only be
understood when we study these Angevins in Anjou.

To the English traveller Angers is in point of historic interest without
a rival among the towns of France. Rouen indeed is the cradle of our
Norman dynasty as Angers of our Plantagenet dynasty; but the Rouen of
the Dukes has almost vanished while Angers remains the Angers of the
Counts. The physiognomy of the place--if we may venture to use the
term--has been singularly preserved. Few towns have it is true suffered
more from the destructive frenzy of the Revolution; gay boulevards have
replaced "the flinty ribs of this contemptuous city," the walls which
play their part in Shakspere's 'King John'; the noblest of its abbeys
has been swept away to make room for a Prefecture; four churches were
demolished at a blow to be replaced by the dreariest of squares; the
tombs of its later dukes have disappeared from the Cathedral. In spite
however of new faubourgs, new bridges, and new squares, Angers still
retains the impress of the middle ages; its steep and narrow streets,
its dark tortuous alleys, the fantastic woodwork