abor, without breaking the bond between them and their
children, whom, under such circumstances, they could visit often, and
see them taken care of as they, brought up to know nothing except how
to weave, cannot take care of them. Here, again, how is one reminded
of Fourier's observations and plans, still more enforced by the recent
developments at Manchester as to the habit of feeding children on
opium, which has grown out of the position of things there.

Descending next day to Avignon, I had the mortification of finding the
banks of the Rhone still sheeted with white, and there waded through
melting snow to Laura's tomb. We did not see Mr. Dickens's Tower and
Goblin,--it was too late in the day,--but we saw a snowball fight
between two bands of the military in the castle yard that was gay
enough to make a goblin laugh. And next day on to Arles, still
snow,--snow and cutting blasts in the South of France, where everybody
had promised us bird-songs and blossoms to console us for the
dreary winter of Paris. At Arles, indeed, I saw the little saxifrage
blossoming on the steps of the Amphitheatre, and fruit-trees in flower
amid the tombs. Here for the first time I saw the great handwriting of
the Romans in its proper medium of stone, and I was content. It looked
us grand and solid as I expected, as if life in those days was thought
worth the having, the enjoying, and the using. The sunlight was warm
this day; it lay deliciously still and calm upon the ruins. One old
woman sat knitting where twenty-five thousand persons once gazed down
in fierce excitement on the fights of men and lions. Coming back, we
were refreshed all through the streets by the sight of the women of
Arles. They answered to their reputation for beauty; tall, erect, and
noble, with high and dignified features, and a full, earnest gaze of
the eye, they looked as if the Eagle still waved its wings over their
city. Even the very old women still have a degree of beauty, because
when the colors are all faded, and the skin wrinkled, the face
retains this dignity of outline. The men do not share in these
characteristics; some priestess, well beloved of the powers of old
religion, must have called down an especial blessing on her sex in
this town.

Hence to Marseilles,--where is little for the traveller to see, except
the mixture of Oriental blood in the crowd of the streets. Thence
by steamer to Genoa. Of this transit, he who has been on the
Mediterranean in