La Rochelle of to-day is perhaps little known to the casual traveller. Inland France has so many attractions that most travellers never get so far as the sea-coast; great churches and great rivers draw them elsewhere, and if they want sea breezes there is always Trouville or Etretat ready to hand. Nevertheless, La Rochelle is one of the most beautiful of sea-ports in France; and this is no faint praise, for all towns of this kind are bound to have a peculiar charm of their own--that kind of charm which belongs to a harbour, and the coming and going of ships, and the open sea beyond. To this the town adds certain attractions of its own, among which are the beautiful colours of the boat-sails, and the old grey forts guarding the harbour on either side. These ancient sentinel towers are relics of the prosperity of La Rochelle, and date back to a day before Buckingham sailed up to the port, before the name of Huguenot had ever been heard in France. On the left hand the Tour Saint-Nicolas, built at the end of the fourteenth century, raises four round crenellated turrets above the harbour; on the other side stands the Tour de la Chaîne, a grim, solid-looking round fortress; and farther on still may be seen the stone _flèche_ of the Tour de la Lanterne, looking from a distance like the spire of a church. And the mention of churches brings us naturally to the Cathedral, which, built in the middle of the eighteenth century, has so very little to say for itself that one cannot help feeling it to be a poor set-off to the sea-board of the town; though perhaps it might in any case be useless to look for beauty of this kind in a town whose inhabitants ranked the adorning of churches as one of the deadly sins of Rome. This cathedral was, it is true, built long after La Rochelle had ceased to be a Huguenot stronghold; but when we remember that the beauty of any former church would have fallen a victim to the fanatic’s hammer, we can forgive the architect, and cease to mourn for what might have been. The Cathedral of La Rochelle is not a thing of beauty, but at any rate it has not displaced anything that might have pleased us better. From La Rochelle to Bordeaux the road runs by heavy-leafed plantations of every kind of tree, notably acacias, whose great size is particularly apparent to an English eye. Then, as the Bordelais comes nearer, we run down to the smooth, peaceful Charente, winding quietly through its meadow lands, not unlike the upper reaches of the Thames, and yet very unlike in one respect, since the water is completely deserted, and even in the height of summer few pleasure boats disturb its smooth surface. Boating as an amusement _per se_ has very little place in the programme of a French country gentleman, though bathing and fishing are both included in it; and the same thing is noticeable nearer Paris, on the Marne, where a pair-oar gig, if ever it got there, would part its timbers through sheer neglect, and break up in a few months.