utness of the human
composition in the Middle Ages and the tranquillity of nerve of people
to whom the groaning captive and the blackness of a "living tomb" were
familiar ideas which did not at all interfere with their happiness or
their sanity. Our modern nerves, our irritable sympathies, our easy
discomforts and fears, make one think (in some relations) less
respectfully of human nature. Unless indeed it be true, as I have heard
it maintained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad--every one
_was_ mad. The theory that this was a period of general dementia is not
altogether untenable.

Within the old walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has
built itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil was
covered having been, i suppose, a quarry of material. There are no
streets; the small, shabby houses, almost hovels, straggle at random
over the uneven ground. The only important feature is a convent of
cloistered nuns, who have a large garden (always within the walls)
behind their house, and whose doleful establishment you look down into,
or down at simply, from the battlements of the citadel. One or two of
the nuns were passing in and out of the house; they wore grey robes with
a bright red cape. I thought their situation most provincial. I came
away and wandered a little over the base of the hill, outside the walls.
Small white stones cropped through the grass, over which low olive-trees
were scattered. The afternoon had a yellow brightness. I sat down under
one of the little trees, on the grass--the delicate grey branches were
not much above my head--and rested and looked at Avignon across the
Rhone. It was very soft, very still and pleasant, though I am not sure
it was all I once should have expected of that combination of elements:
an old city wall for a background, a canopy of olives, and for a couch
the soil of Provence. When I came back to Avignon the twilight was
already thick, but I walked up to the Rocher des Doms. Here I again had
the benefit of that amiable moon which had already lighted up for me so
many romantic scenes. She was full, and she rose over the Rhone and made
it look in the distance like a silver serpent. I remember saying to
myself at this moment that it would be a beautiful evening to walk
round the walls of Avignon--the remarkable walls which challenge
comparison with those of Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, and which it was
my duty, as an observer of the picturesque