the rites, when we know and feel that we are standing in a
nave that has echoed with orisons to God, for a thousand years! This of
Montmorency is not quite so old, however, having been rebuilt only three
centuries since.

Dulaure, a severe judge of aristocracy, denounces the pretension of the
Montmorencies to be the _Premiers Barons Chretiens_, affirming that they
were neither the first barons, nor the first Christians, by a great
many. He says, that the extravagant title has most probably been a
war-cry, in the time of the crusaders. According to his account of the
family it originated, about the year 1008, in a certain Borchard, who,
proving a bad neighbour to the Abbey of St. Denis, the vassals of which
he was in the habit of robbing, besides, now and then, despoiling a
monk, the king caused his fortress in the Isle St. Denis to be razed;
after which, by a treaty, he was put in possession of the mountain hard
by, with permission to erect another hold near a fountain, at a place
called in the charters, Montmorenciacum. Hence the name, and the family.
This writer thinks that the first castle must have been built of wood!

We took a road that led us up to a bluff on the mountain, behind the
town, where we obtained a new and very peculiar view of Paris and its
environs. I have said that the French towns have no straggling suburbs.
A few winehouses (to save the _octroi_) are built near the gates,
compactly, as in the town itself, and there the buildings cease as
suddenly as if pared down by a knife. The fields touch the walls, in
many places, and between St. Ouen and the guinguettes and winehouses, at
the Barriere de Clichy, a distance of two miles, there is but a solitary
building. A wide plain separates Paris, on this side, from the
mountains, and of course our view extended across it. The number of
villages was absolutely astounding. Although I did not attempt counting
them, I should think not fewer than a hundred were in sight, all grey,
picturesque, and clustering round the high nave and church tower, like
chickens gathering beneath the wing. The day was clouded, and the
hamlets rose from their beds of verdure, sombre but distinct, with their
faces of wall, now in subdued light, and now quite shaded, resembling
the glorious _darks_ of Rembrandt's pictures.

LETTER XVII.

Rural Drives.--French Peasantry.--View of Montmartre.--The Boulevards.
--The Abattoirs.--Search for Lodgings.--A queer Breakfast.--Royal
P