but knows how to avoid the doubtful parts.

An itinerary that follows not only the ridges, but occasionally plunges
down into the hollows and turns up or down such crossroads as may have
chanced to look inviting, is perhaps more interesting than one laid out
on conventional lines. A shadowy something, which for a better name may
be called sentiment, if given full play encourages these side-steps, and
since they are generally found fruitful, and often not too fatiguing,
the procedure should be given every encouragement.

Not all the interesting royal palaces and chateaux of France are those
with the best known names. Not all front on Paris streets and quays, no
more than the best glimpses of ancient or modern France are to be had
from the benches of a sight-seeing automobile.

Versailles, and even Fontainebleau, are too frequently considered as but
the end of a half-day pilgrimage for the tripper. It were better that
one should approach them more slowly, and by easy stages, and leave them
less hurriedly. As for those architectural monuments of kings, which
were tuned in a minor key, they, at all events, need to be hunted down
on the spot, the enthusiast being forearmed with such scraps of historic
fact as he can gather beforehand, otherwise he will see nothing at
Conflans, Marly or Bourg-la-Reine which will suggest that royalty ever
had the slightest concern therewith.

Dealing first with Paris it is evident it is there that the pilgrim to
French shrines must make his most profound obeisance. This applies as
well to palaces as to churches. In all cases one goes back into the past
to make a start, and old Paris, what there is left of it, is still old
Paris, though one has to leave the grand boulevards to find this out.

Colberts and Haussmanns do not live to-day, or if they do they have
become so "practical" that a drainage canal or an overhead or
underground railway is more of a civic improvement than the laying out
of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and
embellishment of a public edifice--at least with due regard for the best
traditions. When the monarchs of old called in men of taste and culture
instead of "business men" they builded in the most agreeable fashion. We
have not improved things with our "systems" and our committees of
"_hommes d'affaires_."

It is the fashion to-day to decry the cavaliers and the wearers of
"love-locks," but they had a pretty taste in art and an eye