I Am Delighted To Have An Opportunity Of Quoting Stendhal, Whose Two Volumes Of The "Memoires D'un Touriste" Every Traveller In France Should Carry In His Port- Manteau.

I have had this opportunity more than once, for I have met him at Tours, at Nantes, at Bourges; and everywhere he is suggestive.

But he has the de- fect that he is never pictorial, that he never by any chance makes an image, and that his style is per- versely colorless, for a man so fond of contemplation. His taste is often singularly false; it is the taste of the early years of the present century, the period that produced clocks surmounted with sentimental "sub- jects." Stendhal does not admire these clocks, but he almost does. He admires Domenichino and Guer- cino, and prizes the Bolognese school of painters be- cause they "spoke to the soul." He is a votary of the new classic, is fond of tall, squire, regular buildings, and thinks Nantes, for instance, full of the "air noble." It was a pleasure to me to reflect that five-and-forty years ago he had alighted in that city, at the very inn in which I spent a night, and which looks down on the Place Graslin and the theatre. The hotel that was the best in 1837 appears to be the best to-day. On the subject of Touraine, Stendhal is extremely refresh- ing; he finds the scenery meagre and much overrated, and proclaims his opinion with perfect frankness.

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