that, had any one been taken in the act of thieving, he would have been instantly shot.

The time fixed for the conclusion of the truce granted by General Cavaignac was now approaching, and as the insurgents did not appear desirous of profiting by the offers made by that able commander, although they were full of generosity and moderation, it was evident that the attack upon the barricades would be recommenced. The insurgents, who up to this time had some of them freely mixed with the soldiers of the advanced posts, began to return behind the shelter of their fortifications. Several attempts were made to induce them to lay down their arms, but all was in vain, and hostilities were renewed.

Some field-pieces, placed at the further end of the Place de la Bastille, now began to play upon the enormous barricade and the houses at the entrance of the faubourg. A detachment of Mobile then advanced towards the barricade, when a well-sustained fire from its loopholes, and from the windows of the adjoining houses, began to literally sweep many of the brave little fellows away; still their comrades came boldly on, some of them actually attempting to scale the barricade, although none succeeded in so doing. The Garde Mobile were gallantly supported by some regiments of the line, and by the Garde Républicaine. Some of the National Guards also behaved bravely, but the greater portion seemed dreadfully out of their element, and appeared to consider that "discretion is the better part of valour."

The defenders of the barricades fired with the surest aim, scarcely a shot from their muskets failing to take effect, and in a short time that portion of the Place de la Bastille near the faubourg was covered with corpses and wounded men.

But I must draw to a hasty conclusion, or I should fill volumes with the description of the barricades I saw attacked; of the waggon-loads of corpses that passed along the Boulevarts; of the wounded generals, officers, and soldiers carried by me; of the streets literally flowing with blood; of innumerable traits of courage shewn by the line and the Garde Mobile in general, and by the National Guards in individual cases.

I must, by the bye, observe, that deeds of courage were not confined entirely to the harder sex. I will mention one instance, at least, of female gallantry. On passing by the theatre of the Porte St. Martin on the last day of the insurrection, I observed a Garde Mobile lying asleep upon some straw; on perceiving the cross of the Legion of Honour upon his coat, I asked who he was. "He!" said a bystander, "why, it is a woman." This was perfectly true; her husband had been a Garde Mobile, and was killed during one of the first attacks made against the barricades; his wife, who was cantinière to the battalion, put on the fallen man's uniform, and for three whole days was continually in the thickest of the fight. She had taken with her own hands nine banners, and eight prisoners, and was at the storming of no less than forty-three barricades, yet, strange to say, she had received only one slight wound in the arm. General Lamoricière had decorated this heroine with his own cross, upon one of the barricades, the banner of which had been taken by her after a most furious struggle.

Wayside Pictures

THROUGH

FRANCE, BELGIUM, AND GERMANY.

IV. AN OLD NORMAN CITY.

THE appearance of Rouen from the Seine is highly imposing. The grand expanse of quay which lies between it and the river throws it back far enough to enable the eye to take in the whole at once, with its fantastical varieties of roof and gable, spires and towers, clustering in charming confusion amongst the dimples of the hills. The spacious quay, which is a grand modern improvement, interferes a little with the old-world tone of the place, it looks so new and fine; but, balancing the advantages of the open view against the provoking interruption of the crumbling and unsightly walls which formerly screened the city, the picturesque is a clear gainer by the change. The situation of Rouen is exactly what the French call riant-lying up the sides of a broad valley, backed by a chain of hills, broken into wooded ravines, and looking down upon the pleasant islands of the Seine, and its moving panorama of ships, boats, and streamers of all nations and colours. Never was a spot more happily selected for a great inland city, commanding the sea through a noble river, which can float vessels of two hundred tons burthen to its quays, and possessing, by its position, immediate communication with all parts of France. On the opposite bank of the river is the suburb of St. Sever, a densely populated place, horribly thronged and dirty in the interior, but making an effective picture across the water. At the extremity of the city, in a deep green dell, the pretty faubourg of Martinville, buried in trees on the border of the Champ de Mars, forms the romantic entrance to the old Paris road.

There are two bridges at Rouen close to each other. Cui bono? One is a suspension-bridge, handsomely built, and the other a solid stone structure, ornamented with a bronze statue of Peter Corneille. The necessity for these two bridges is by no means apparent, and the only satisfaction I could obtain on the point was, that they were designed as termini to the two principal streets,-a design which they by no means fulfil.

English travellers have a habit of abusing French towns for their dirt and stench. Rouen has had more than its fair share of this sort of criticism. Miss Costello says that Caen "surpasses all other towns, except Rouen, in unpleasing odours and filthy streets." This is rather a hasty verdict. The streets are narrow, and, from that circumstance, not very clean; but they are neither so narrow (except in the old quarters, where we should be sorry to see a foot of their ragged timbers removed) nor so filthy as they are described. Rising against an amphitheatre of hills, there is plenty of room for the sun and air to play upon the streets, and the rapid descent of the rains through these narrow conductors supplies a constant drainage, which offers by no means an indifferent substitute for sewers. The

health of the town is still further secured by the streams of the Aubette and the Robee, which flow through its environs,-a circumstance which appears to have escaped the notice of casual travellers.

But the imagination is so richly feasted in traversing these quaint streets, that one hardly thinks of anything but the wonderful combinations of forms that surprise you at every turn. From whatever point of view you look at the streets of Rouen, they are ready to sit to the artist. The broken lines, the projecting windows, the curious doors and dim interiors, the pendant ornaments that topple out over your head, the strange roofs, eaves, and corbels, and odd mixture of beams, stones, slates, and rubbish, with the dark mystery of antiquity brooding over all, suggest a perpetual succession of pictures. We involuntarily exclaim at every step, 66 Here is a scene for Prout!" You may repeat this a thousand times without exhausting the wonders of Rouen. And this is one of the pleasures of visiting an old continental city, which cannot be conveyed by any art of description. It realizes before our eyes all that which had been hitherto little more to us than the dreams of poets and painters, giving us in addition the actual life of the scene, of which we knew nothing beyond its costume.

Rouen has profited more than any other town by the introduction of gas-lights, in consequence of the peculiarity of its architecture. The effect of the lamps at night is very striking, lighting up the irregular masses of buildings, the roofs and upper stories of which almost meet across the narrower streets, and shut in the glare upon the stream of pedestrians below; bringing out into strong relief the single lumbering waggon that nearly fills the whole breadth of the causeway, with its huge horse covered with leather-housings and sheep-skins, dyed blue or red, fringed with cotton tassels, and a ring of bells round its great neck. The multitude of shadows, and endless diversities of outlines and patches of light produced by the inequalities of the façades, exceed in their startling variety all one's previous notions of the architectural romance of an ancient Norman town. The stranger who would enjoy this curious sight in full perfection, may be recommended to stand on the quay at the corner of the Rue Grand Pont, where he can get his view according to the angle he chooses; shewing the street apparently suspended in the air, and running in a straight line towards the côte of Ingouville, with the clear blue sky looking serenely down upon it-or taking an oblique direction, and emptying its flickering lights and shadows into utter darkness.

The impressions you get in these old towns at night may be more vague, but I am not sure, after all, that they are not, upon the whole, more true and characteristic than the literal revelations of daylight. You carry away, at all events, a profounder feeling of the strange style of such places, after exploring them through the uncertain light that falls about you in their mazy recesses; the very shadows help your imagination, and the vagueness itself is an element of wonder and enjoyment. Daylight is excellent for statistics, -excellent, too, for the ulterior business of the artist; but the poetry of the place, and all that imperfect picturesqueness which is so suggestive in its dimness, can only be got at when darkness has fallen over the scene, and given its deep tone to the odd nooks

and corners and inner life which the sun lays bare in palpable prose.

Wandering idly one night through the tortuous passages of the town, I found myself in a small square, ignorant that it was the Place de la Pucelle, and that I was standing close to the statue of the Maid of Orleans, and on the very spot where, to the disgrace alike of the English and the French, the fair enthusiast was executed. All around there rose into the air dark and heavy, roofs various in outline, and cutting against the sky in the oddest chaos of forms. As I passed a projecting corner, taking the direction of the quay, my attention was arrested by a vast Gothic arch inserted in a large ambiguous building. For a moment I was startled by the obscurity of the extensive interior, which lay quite open, and which would have been a mass of undistinguishable gloom, but for a single lamp suspended from the roof at a considerable distance within. It threw out just sufficient light, when the eye became accustomed to the darkness, to reveal a remarkable group. There were two horses caparisoned for the road; a girl occupied a position in front, firmly grasping the head of one of the horses, while with uplifted arm she menaced the other. Farther back, and scarcely discernible, stood a rugged man preparing some rude garments, apparently for the purpose of going abroad, although the night was already far advanced, and close to him a woman watching his motions with eager eyes: the rest of the scene was lost in darkness, even to the walls. My curiosity was excited, I hardly know why, unless it was by the odd association between the great Gothic arch and the curious group within. I examined the building a little closer, and discovered in the side three beautifully mullioned windows, with niches for the Madonna and Child, and an exquisite variety of tracery on the screen that ascended in front of the roof. It was impossible to mistake the original uses of this building-it had evidently been a church. With a view to ascertain whether my conjecture was correct, I entered into conversation with the owner, a woman. She was quite ready to accommodate me with post-horses; they had a capital stud, and carriages also for hire-the place was a stable. It had formerly been the church of St. George. Another church at the opposite corner had been converted partly into a café, and partly into a watch-house.

I turned away, musing, as an unenlightened stranger might be supposed to do, upon such a piece of intelligence communicated with indescribable sang-froid. A grand and noble tower sprang up before me in the next narrow street through which I passed. It was crusted over with elaborate devices, a perfect fretwork of carving, through which the moonlight played in gushes of silver. It also had belonged to a church-but what had become of the church now? I groped onward to the base of the tower, and found that it was occupied as a cotton-warehouse. Rouen is crowded with such instances, bedded in the densest parts of the town, and very likely to escape observation. This was the work of the first Revolution. There were then thirty-six churches in Rouen; now, with a population very nearly doubled, there are only fourteen. In the church of St. Ouen they shew you to this day the marks in the flooring of the nave where Robespierre set up stands for melting all the lead he could procure into bullets.

No incident in the history of Rouen, of which memorials are yet

extant, seize so forcibly upon the mind of the visitor as this secularization, or annihilation, of the old churches. This fact-for it is a fact in the driest and most oppressive sense-comes silently and gradually upon you, until at last, by repeated instances, the whole extent of the desecration grows painfully apparent. The profanation of these master-pieces of art, and their degradation to such base uses, appeals pathetically to our admiration of the beautiful and the antique, and to that devotional feeling which, whatever may be our differences of creed, unites us all in the common recognition of a Faith of some sort. The daily contemplation of the sacrilege has rendered the thing a matter of indifference in France. Happy the country where the integrity of the religious sentiment has never been exposed to such deadening experiences!

It is needless to say much about the existing churches of Rouen : the subject has been exhausted by pen and pencil. The Cathedral, as all the world knows, is a marvellous specimen of architecture, covered over with ornaments, and running into excess in the florid character of its embellishments, from which censure, however, the nave must be honourably excepted. The amateur of stained glass will be enchanted with the specimens he will find here, and at the church of St. Vincent. But the tower!-they have erected a castmetal tower, one hundred and fifty feet in height, to replace the old tower which was destroyed by lightning. It looks like an extraordinary experiment in confectionary-like spun sugar running up to a point into the sky. It might harmonize somewhat better with the rest of the building if it were painted stone-colour; but it is impossible by any contrivance to reconcile it to the structure it surmounts. The ascent reckons some five hundred and sixty steps, and it is matter of absolute astonishment that the weight of such a mass of metal does not crush the whole building upon which it is erected. A glance at the exterior of the pile will be sufficient to shew that it could bear a still heavier burthen. It is as solid as a rock. The view from this tower of the river and the surrounding country, at such a depth below that a man becomes reduced to the dimensions of a filbert, will abundantly reward the toil of the ascent; but it is fearful work to get up these five hundred and sixty steps. The tower is composed to the top of open iron work, resembling lace at a distance; and while you ascend the wind whistles awfully round you, as it is caught in the numerous loops and forces itself out again. The vibration, real or imaginary, seems to shake the whole fabric, and at every step the fragile threads shiver round you, and you expect nothing less than that this gigantic piece of filigree will be swept away under your feet.

The most remarkable monument in the cathedral is that of Cardinal d'Amboise and his nephew. The devout calm of the figures, taken in the attitude of prayer, is very truthful; and the elaborate sculpture, partly in alabaster and partly in marble, spread over the surface of the monument, is full of power and variety. In the bas relief at the back we have St. George in the act of slaying the dragon; in the compartments above the whole company of the Apostles, and the Cardinal Virtues in a similar series below.

The Church of St. Ouen is infinitely grander than the cathedral. Some people doubt this-others are divided. The surprise is that there should exist any doubt on the subject. St. Ouen is, perhaps,