Seated On The North Bank Of The Loire, It Presents A Bright, Clean Face To The Sun, And Has That Aspect Of Cheerful Leisure Which Belongs To All White Towns That Reflect, Themselves In Shining Waters.

It is the water-front only of Blois, however, that exhibits, this fresh complexion; the in- terior is of a proper brownness, as befits a signally historic city.

The only disappointment I had there was the discovery that the castle, which is the special object of one's pilgrimage, does not overhang the river, as I had always allowed myself to understand. It overhangs the town, but it is scarcely visible from the stream. That peculiar good fortune is reserved for Amboise and Chaurnont.

The Chateau de Blois is one of the most beautiful and elaborate of all the old royal residences of this part of France, and I suppose it should have all the honors of my description. As you cross its threshold, you step straight into the brilliant movement of the French Renaissance. But it is too rich to describe, - I can only touch it here and there. It must be pre- mised that in speaking of it as one sees it to-day, one speaks of a monument unsparingly restored. The work of restoration has been as ingenious as it is pro- fuse, but it rather chills the imagination. This is perhaps almost the first thing you feel as you ap- proach the castle from the streets of the town. These little streets, as they, leave the river, have pretensions to romantic steepness; one of them, indeed, which resolves itself into a high staircase with divergent wings (the _escalier monumental_), achieved this result so successfully as to remind me vaguely - I hardly know why - of the great slope of the Capitol, beside the Ara Coeli, at Rome.

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