A Little Tour In France [44]
of taste, re- vealed by such work. After that, I only hope that Giuseppe Garibaldi may have a monument as fair.
XVI.
To go from Nantes to La Rochelle you travel straight southward, across the historic _bocage_ of La Vendee, the home of royalist bush-fighting. The country, which is exceedingly pretty, bristles with copses, orchards, hedges, and with trees more spread- ing and sturdy than the traveller is apt to deem the feathery foliage of France. It is true that as I pro- ceeded it flattened out a good deal, so that for an hour there was a vast featureless plain, which offered me little entertainment beyond the general impression that I was approaching the Bay of Biscay (from which, in reality, I was yet far distant). As we drew near La Rochelle, however, the prospect brightened con- siderably, and the railway kept its course beside a charming little canal, or canalized river, bordered with trees, and with small, neat, bright-colored, and yet old-fashioned cottages and villas, which stood back on the further side, behind small gardens, hedges, painted palings, patches of turf. The whole effect was Dutch and delightful; and in being delightful, though not in being Dutch, it prepared me for the charms of La Rochelle, which from the moment I entered it I perceived to be a fascinating little town, a most original mixture of brightness and dulness. Part of its brightness comes from its being extra- ordinarily clean, - in which, after all, it _is_ Dutch; a virtue not particularly noticeable at Bourges, Le Mans, and Angers. Whenever I go southward, if it be only twenty miles, I begin to look out for the south, pre- pared as I am to find the careless grace of those lati- tudes even in things of which it may, be said that they may be south of something, but are not southern. To go from Boston to New York (in this state of mind) is almost as soft a sensation as descending the Italian side, of the Alps; and to go from New York to Philadelphia is to enter a zone of tropical luxuriance and warmth. Given this absurd disposition, I could not fail to flatter myself, on reaching La Rochelle, that I was already in the Midi, and to perceive in everything, in the language of the country, the _ca- ractere meridional._ Really, a great many things had a hint of it. For that matter, it seems to me that to arrive in the south at a bound - to wake up there, as it were - would be a very imperfect pleasure. The full pleasure is to approach by stages and gradations; to observe the successive shades of difference by which it ceases to be the north. These shades are exceedingly fine, but your true south-lover has an eye for them all. If he perceive them at New York and Philadelphia, - we imagine him boldly as liberated from Boston, - how could he fail to perceive them at La Rochelle? The streets of this dear little city are lined with arcades, - good, big, straddling arcades of stone, such as befit a land of hot summers, and which recalled to me, not to go further, the dusky portions of Bayonne. It contains, moreover, a great wide _place d'armes_, which looked for all the world like the piazza of some dead Italian town, empty, sunny, grass-grown, with a row of yellow houses overhanging it, an unfrequented cafe, with a striped awning, a tall, cold, florid, uninteresting cathedral of the eighteenth century on one side, and on the other a shady walk, which forms part of an old rampart. I followed this walk for some time, under the stunted trees, beside the grass-covered bastions; it is very charming, wind- ing and wandering, always with trees. Beneath the rampart is a tidal river, and on the other side, for a long distance, the mossy walls of the immense garden of a seminary. Three hundred years ago, La Rochelle was the great French stronghold of Protestantism; but to-day it appears to be a'nursery of Papists.
The walk upon the rampart led me round to one of the gatesi of the town, where I found some small modern, fortifications and sundry red-legged soldiers, and, beyond the fortifications, another shady walk, - a _mail_,
XVI.
To go from Nantes to La Rochelle you travel straight southward, across the historic _bocage_ of La Vendee, the home of royalist bush-fighting. The country, which is exceedingly pretty, bristles with copses, orchards, hedges, and with trees more spread- ing and sturdy than the traveller is apt to deem the feathery foliage of France. It is true that as I pro- ceeded it flattened out a good deal, so that for an hour there was a vast featureless plain, which offered me little entertainment beyond the general impression that I was approaching the Bay of Biscay (from which, in reality, I was yet far distant). As we drew near La Rochelle, however, the prospect brightened con- siderably, and the railway kept its course beside a charming little canal, or canalized river, bordered with trees, and with small, neat, bright-colored, and yet old-fashioned cottages and villas, which stood back on the further side, behind small gardens, hedges, painted palings, patches of turf. The whole effect was Dutch and delightful; and in being delightful, though not in being Dutch, it prepared me for the charms of La Rochelle, which from the moment I entered it I perceived to be a fascinating little town, a most original mixture of brightness and dulness. Part of its brightness comes from its being extra- ordinarily clean, - in which, after all, it _is_ Dutch; a virtue not particularly noticeable at Bourges, Le Mans, and Angers. Whenever I go southward, if it be only twenty miles, I begin to look out for the south, pre- pared as I am to find the careless grace of those lati- tudes even in things of which it may, be said that they may be south of something, but are not southern. To go from Boston to New York (in this state of mind) is almost as soft a sensation as descending the Italian side, of the Alps; and to go from New York to Philadelphia is to enter a zone of tropical luxuriance and warmth. Given this absurd disposition, I could not fail to flatter myself, on reaching La Rochelle, that I was already in the Midi, and to perceive in everything, in the language of the country, the _ca- ractere meridional._ Really, a great many things had a hint of it. For that matter, it seems to me that to arrive in the south at a bound - to wake up there, as it were - would be a very imperfect pleasure. The full pleasure is to approach by stages and gradations; to observe the successive shades of difference by which it ceases to be the north. These shades are exceedingly fine, but your true south-lover has an eye for them all. If he perceive them at New York and Philadelphia, - we imagine him boldly as liberated from Boston, - how could he fail to perceive them at La Rochelle? The streets of this dear little city are lined with arcades, - good, big, straddling arcades of stone, such as befit a land of hot summers, and which recalled to me, not to go further, the dusky portions of Bayonne. It contains, moreover, a great wide _place d'armes_, which looked for all the world like the piazza of some dead Italian town, empty, sunny, grass-grown, with a row of yellow houses overhanging it, an unfrequented cafe, with a striped awning, a tall, cold, florid, uninteresting cathedral of the eighteenth century on one side, and on the other a shady walk, which forms part of an old rampart. I followed this walk for some time, under the stunted trees, beside the grass-covered bastions; it is very charming, wind- ing and wandering, always with trees. Beneath the rampart is a tidal river, and on the other side, for a long distance, the mossy walls of the immense garden of a seminary. Three hundred years ago, La Rochelle was the great French stronghold of Protestantism; but to-day it appears to be a'nursery of Papists.
The walk upon the rampart led me round to one of the gatesi of the town, where I found some small modern, fortifications and sundry red-legged soldiers, and, beyond the fortifications, another shady walk, - a _mail_,