life of our country, spots where artists of all nations love to
linger.

We stayed anon at slow, sedate Caen, as still as the stone for which it
is celebrated, and that furnished the building material of Winchester
Cathedral; Bayeux, boastful of its antique tapestry; and Dol and Saint
Servan, and away beyond, Sainte Michel, so like and yet unlike the like-
named Saint Michael's Mount of Cornwall, in our own sea-girt isle that
it might have been chipped out of the same block by its grand
handycraftsman to serve as a replica; until, entering brighter
Bretaigne, in the sunny south of France, where the landmarks of the past
seem to stand out in bolder relief, we visited Nantes and other places
of interest, and jogging on thence through Angouleme and Poictiers,
halting a day at Poictiers to fight our Plantagenet battles o'er again,
we finally ended our pilgrimage at Bordeaux.

At this wonderfully picturesque port, whose semi-ancient, quaintly
modern aspect strangely attracted us both, we anchored awhile, remaining
many weeks in excess of the customary limit of the traditional
honeymoon, ours being an indefinite one and only to be completed we
trust, when Elsie and I cease to breathe.

Late in the autumn, when the leaves had begun to turn russet and brown,
and the air of a morning assumed a crisper and more bracing tone,
telling us plainly as these signs tell that summer had fled for good and
aye, and winter was coming by-and-by, we bade adieu to dear old
Bordeaux, and taking a steamer there bound for the Thames, having had
enough of railways and land travel, we started to voyage home by sea, my
native element.

On the evening of the second day that had elapsed since losing sight of
Pointe de Graves at the mouth of the Garonne, towards sunset, we had
weathered Ushant and were shaping a course up Channel, north east, so as
to clear the dangerous Casquettes rocks of Guernsey, when I noticed a
large ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack, steaming inwards for the
French coast, as if heading for Brest, her nearest port.

At that moment the tired sun, which previously appeared to linger above
the horizon, uncertain whether to go or to stay, dipped suddenly as we
were looking at him, a pale, yellow radiance succeeding the dazzling
beams that had well-nigh blinded us, shining straight in our eyes, while
the afterglow, mounting rapidly into the western sky, became more and
more vivid each moment, two purple islands of cloud wh