Touraine, from its central position, its pleasant air, and its fertile soil, was ever a favourite residence of the earlier French monarchs, and down to the days of the Bourbons the seat of government continually vacillated between the banks of the Seine and those of the Loire. The vintages that ripen along the river have had their day of court favour too; for if Henri of Andelys sneeringly describes the wine of Tours as turning sour, in his famous poem of the _Bataille des Vins_, the sweet white wines of Anjou were greatly esteemed throughout the Middle Ages, and, with those of Orleans, were highly appreciated in Paris down to the seventeenth century. The cult of the 'dive Bouteille' and the fashion of Pantagruelic repasts have always found favour in the fat and fertile 'garden of France;' and the spectacle of citizens, courtiers, and monks staggering fraternally along, 'waggling their heads,' as Rabelais describes them, after a night of it at the tavern, was no uncommon one in the streets of its old historic towns during the period of the Renaissance. [Illustration: TAVERN ROYSTERERS AT EARLY MORNING IN THE TOURAINE.] On proceeding to Vouvray from Tours, we skirt a succession of poplar-fringed meadows, stretching eastward in the direction of Amboise along the right bank of the Loire; and after a time a curve in the river discloses to view a range of vine-clad heights, extending some distance beyond the village of Vouvray. Our route lies past the picturesque ruins of the abbey of Marmoûtier, immortalised in the piquant pages of the _Contes Drôlatiques_, and the Château des Roches--one of the most celebrated castles of the Loire--the numerous excavations in the soft limestone ridge on which they are perched being converted as usual into houses, magazines, and wine-cellars. We proceed through the village of Rochecorbon, and along a road winding among the spurs of the Vouvray range, past hamlets, half of whose inhabitants live in these primitive dwellings hollowed out of the cliff, and finally enter the charming Vallé Coquette, hemmed in on all sides with vine-clad slopes. Here a picturesque old house, half château, half homestead, was pointed out to us as a favourite place of sojourn of Balzac, who held the wine of Vouvray in high esteem, and who speaks of this rocky ridge as 'inhabited by a population of vine-dressers, their houses of several stories being hollowed out in the face of the cliff, and connected by dangerous staircases hewn in the soft stone. Smoke curls from most of the chimneys which peep above the green crest of vines, while the blows of the cooper's hammer resound in several of the cellars. A young girl trips to her garden over the roofs of these primitive dwellings, and an old woman, tranquilly seated on a ledge of projecting rock, supported solely by straggling roots of ivy spreading itself over the disjointed stones, leisurely turns her spinning-wheel, regardless of her dangerous position.' The foregoing picture, sketched