The sight of several of the most admired and important towns in France, has reconciled me, in a singular degree, with that of Tours, whose fame appeared to me, when I first saw it, to be undeserved. I judged, as one accustomed to English splendour, and English neatness, and I scarcely gave Tours all the credit it deserved. When I compare the clear, rapid, sparkling Loire--shallow though it be--with the ugly waters of the sluggish Garonne, I feel that it is indeed superior to most other French rivers; and when I recollect the long, broad, extensive street which divides Tours into two parts, is paved throughout, and connects it with a bridge of noble proportions and most splendid approach, I am not surprised that Tours is so much the object of a Frenchman's pride; and I confess, that, if I had seen it after the boasted city of Bordeaux, its river, and its bridge, I should have found little to find fault with; for though it lies in a plain, it is not a marsh; and though it is glaring and flat, it is dry and sandy, and not damp and unwholesome. Bordeaux is--notwithstanding that it failed to impress me with a sense of admiration of its _beauty_--full of interest in every way, and worthy of the most minute inspection and examination. We scarcely neglected a single street, of all its mazes, and scarcely left unvisited a single monument. As in all other French towns, building is actively going on, and new public works are in progress: some on a very grand scale. The antique buildings, so curious from their history, have, in spite of repeated wars and the efforts of time, preserved a great deal of their original appearance, and some of them are as fine as any to be found in France. Amongst these, is the Portal of St. Seurin, and the façade of St. Michel and St. André. Bordeaux is a city which seems to belong to two periods, totally unlike each other. The old town, full of old houses--one of which, called _Le Bahutier_, is a specimen of others--is an historical monument of the Middle Ages, while the new is an epitome of La Jeune France, with all its ambitious aspirations, its grand conceptions, and its failures. There is no attempt, in the restoration of French towns in general, to bring the new style as near the old as possible; on the contrary, it would seem that modern architects were only glad of the vicinity of antique fabrics, in order that they might show how superior was their own skill, and how far they could deviate from the original model. In Bordeaux, this is very striking. It appears as if the new city ought to have been built by itself on another site, leaving the gloomy recesses of the ancient city to themselves, for all that now surrounds it is incongruous and inharmonious. Taken by itself, modern Bordeaux is to be admired; but, backed and flanked as it is by a dense mass of blackened buildings belonging to another age, it is singularly out of keeping.