“Chartres,” says Mr. Henry James, “gives us an impression of extreme antiquity, but it is an antiquity that has gone down in the world.” It may be this very decadence that has kept Chartres within itself and prevented it from growing out into a large pretentious city. Many other places which rival it in age and association have either swept away all traces of their antiquity, or else preserved it in dignified contrast to the modern mushroom town. Chartres has done neither. It is scarcely more at the present day than a quaint country town with a very old-fashioned air, a place of steep, twisting streets and quiet little market-squares, the cathedral rising like a giant from the very midst of the houses. Round the town runs a boulevard, known as the Tour-de-Ville, and interesting for the fact that it follows the line of the mediæval defences--ramparts that kept many enemies at bay when Chartres was a power in the kingdom of France. Here and there parts of these defences are still standing, and one fragment in particular forms the foundations of an old convent. Another remnant of the old fighting days is the Porte Guillaume, one of the city gates, built when the march of the English forced every French town to keep itself under bolt and bar. Two round towers, embattled and machicolated, flank a low archway, and to complete the mediæval effect, the ancient fosse still remains before the gate, not grass-grown or choked with rubbish, but filled with a clear stream, just as it might have been in old days. [Illustration: CHARTRES FROM THE NORTH]