ay obtain a pretext for criminal
proceedings against them. The fact has fallen under my personal
observation. To estimate the character of these practices, and of the
present attempt to tamper with the extradition treaty, we must remember
that Louis Napoleon himself long enjoyed, as a political refugee, the
shelter of the asylum which he is now endeavoring to subvert.

Jersey is studded with fortifications. England and France frown at each
other in arms from the neighboring coasts. I thought of poor Cobden, and
of the day when his policy shall finally prevail, as it begins to
prevail already, over these national divisions and jealousies; and when
there shall be at once a better and a cheaper security for the peace of
nations than fortresses bristling with the instruments of mutual
destruction. The Norman islands are of no use to England, while they
involve us in a large military expenditure. In a maritime war, we should
find it very difficult to defend dependencies so far from our coast and
so close to that of the enemy. But the people are loyal to England, and
very unwilling to be annexed to France.

Granville, where I landed in Normandy, is a hideous seaport; but its
hideousness was almost turned to beauty, on that golden afternoon, by
the bright French atmosphere, which can do for bad scenery what French
cookery does for bad meat. The royal and imperial roads of France are as
despotically straight as those of the Roman Empire. But it was a
pleasant evening drive to Avranches, through the rich champaign,--the
active little Norman horses trotting the sixteen miles merrily to the
jingling of their bells. The figure of the _gendarme_, in his cocked hat
and imposing uniform, setting out upon his rounds, tells me that I am in
France.

Avranches stands on the steep and towering extremity of a line of hills,
commanding a most magnificent and varied view of land and sea, with
Mont St. Michel in the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a
site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium.
But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a
stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the
Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of
the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare
area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept
feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the l