Above the present town rises the monument known as the “Colonne de la Grande Armée,” a memorial of the first Napoleon’s encampment at Boulogne in 1804, and of his magnificent preparations for the invasion of England. In the Château, which dates from the thirteenth century and is now used as barracks, Napoleon III. was confined after his abortive descent upon the town in 1840. It was the second of these desperate attempts to dethrone the “constitutional king” Louis Philippe and reinstate the Imperial dynasty. The expedition to Strasburg four years before had at least been attended by this much success, that the young aspirant was enthusiastically welcomed by the military portion of the population; but the descent upon Boulogne, planned at the time when the body of the first Emperor was being brought from St. Helena to Paris, was a failure from first to last. The little band of conspirators, about fifty in number, with their tame eagle--a symbol of the Imperial power--landed at the port, but found no adherents, and within a few hours of their landing were under arrest. Napoleon himself underwent trial before the Chamber of Peers, and after a short imprisonment, as we have seen, in the Château, was sent to the castle of Ham-sur-Somme. Three out of the four original gates of the ancient city still remain, notably the Porte Gayole, the rooms in whose flanking towers were at one time used as prisons. In the room above the gateway were formerly held the meetings of the _Guyale_, a _réunion_ of ancient associations of merchants--what would now be called a chamber of commerce--and from this the gate-house was called Porte Gayole. Of the cathedral at Boulogne it is difficult to speak with any enthusiasm. It stands as a memorial of the Renaissance work of that period which we should call early Victorian; but like so many modern churches, it possesses an ancient crypt, part of which belongs to the twelfth century, showing that the foundations at least are those of a Gothic church, which was probably destroyed during the Revolution. On the journey to Amiens the train passes through Abbeville on the Somme, a place some sixty years ago sacred to geologists, who, led by the distinguished Boucher de Perthes, Prestwick and Evans, extracted from the river bed and neighbouring peat and undisturbed gravels, not only remains of beaver, bear, &c., but also innumerable hand-fashioned flints and stone hatchets, and made the valley of the Somme up to Amiens and St. Acheul classic ground to the antiquary and an object of pilgrimage to the student of pre-historic man.