of its houses, the
sombre grimness of the slate-rock out of which the city is built, defy
even the gay audacity of Imperialist prefects to modernize them. One
climbs up from the busy quay along the Mayenne into a city which is
still the city of the Counts. From Geoffry Greygown to John Lackland
there is hardly one who has not left his name stamped on church or
cloister or bridge or hospital. The stern tower of St. Aubin recalls in
its founder Geoffry himself; the nave of St. Maurice, the choir of St.
Martin's, the walls of Roncevray, the bridge over Mayenne, proclaim the
restless activity of Fulc Nerra; Geoffry Martel rests beneath the ruins
of St. Nicholas on its height across the river; beyond the walls to the
south is the site of the burial place of Fulc Rechin; one can tread the
very palace halls to which Geoffry Plantagenet led home his English
bride; the suburb of Roncevray, studded with buildings of an exquisite
beauty, is almost the creation of Henry Fitz-Empress and his sons.

But, apart from its historical interest, Angers is a mine of treasure to
the archaeologist or the artist. In the beauty and character of its site
it strongly resembles Le Mans. The river Mayenne comes down from the
north, from its junction with the Sarthe, edged on either side by low
ranges of _coteaux_ which approaching it nearly on the west leave room
along its eastern bank for vast level flats of marshy meadow land, cut
through by white roads and long poplar-rows--meadows which in reality
represent the old river-bed in some remote geological age before it had
shrunk to its present channel. Below Angers the valley widens, and as
the Mayenne coils away to Ponts de Ce it throws out on either side broad
flats, rich in grass and golden flowers, and scored with rhines as
straight and choked with water-weeds as the rhines of Somersetshire. It
is across these lower meadows, from the base of the abbey walls of St.
Nicholas, that one gets the finest view of Angers, the colossal mass of
its castle, the two delicate towers of the Cathedral rising sharp
against the sky, the stern belfry of St. Aubin. Angers stands in fact on
a huge block of slate-rock, thrown forward from one of the higher
plateaux which edge the marshy meadows, and closing up to the river in
what was once a cliff as abrupt as that of Le Mans. Pleasant boulevards
curve away in a huge semicircle from the river, and between these
boulevards and the Mayenne lies the dark old town pier