tered in the sunshine, and their well-made sabots clicked cheerfully
on the hard, clean roads. Touraine is a land of old chateaux,--a gallery
of architectural specimens and of large hereditary properties. The
peasantry have less of the luxury of ownership than in most other parts
of France; though they have enough of it to give them quite their share
of that shrewdly conservative look which, in the little chaffering
_place_ of the market-town, the stranger observes so often in the
wrinkled brown masks that surmount the agricultural blouse. This is,
moreover, the heart of the old French monarchy; and as that monarchy was
splendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendour still glitters
in the current of the Loire. Some of the most striking events of French
history have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it waters
bloomed for a while with the flowering of the Renaissance. The Loire
gives a great "style" to a landscape of which the features are not, as
the phrase is, prominent, and carries the eye to distances even more
poetic than the green horizons of Touraine. It is a very fitful stream,
and is sometimes observed to run thin and expose all the crudities of
its channel--a great defect certainly in a river which is so much
depended upon to give an air to the places it waters. But I speak of it
as I saw it last; full, tranquil, powerful, bending in large slow curves
and sending back half the light of the sky. Nothing can be finer than
the view of its course which you get from the battlements and terraces
of Amboise. As I looked down on it from that elevation one lovely Sunday
morning, through a mild glitter of autumn sunshine, it seemed the very
model of a generous, beneficent stream. The most charming part of Tours
is naturally the shaded quay that overlooks it, and looks across too at
the friendly faubourg of Saint Symphorien and at the terraced heights
which rise above this. Indeed, throughout Touraine it is half the charm
of the Loire that you can travel beside it. The great dyke which
protects it, or protects the country from it, from Blois to Angers, is
an admirable road; and on the other side as well the highway constantly
keeps it company. A wide river, as you follow a wide road, is excellent
company; it brightens and shortens the way.

The inns at Tours are in another quarter, and one of them, which is
midway between the town and the station, is very good. It is worth
mentioning for the fact tha