Two of the most interesting places in the Pas-de-Calais are St.-Omer, once a name of terror to the worthy Englishmen who went in constant fear of the Pope and wooden shoes, and Aire-sur-la-Lys, which now embraces within its communal limits all that remains to-day of the once famous and important city of Therouanne, the ancient capital of Morinia, and for thirty years the episcopal seat of the great Swiss bishop, St.-Omer, who made North-Eastern Gaul Christian in the seventh century. St.-Omer still preserves a certain grave and austere physiognomy, half-Spanish and half-scholastic; and it is easy for the imagination to people its quiet streets with the English and Irish students who frequented its collegiate halls from the days of Guy Faux to the days of Daniel O'Connell. But its importance is now military, not theological. M. Pierre de la Gorce, the accomplished historian of the Revolution of 1848, who lived here seven years as a magistrate, and who still resides here because he finds in the place 'a still air of delightful studies' congenial to his tastes and favourable to his historical labours, told me, in the course of a most interesting afternoon which I passed here with him, that the town is full of families living here on their incomes; and in going about the streets I was struck with the general air of quiet and unobtrusive well-being which marks the people. In his position as a magistrate, M. de la Gorce had the best possible opportunities for gauging the moral character of the inhabitants, and he assured me that during the whole period of his residence in St.-Omer, extending now over twelve or thirteen years, he has never known more than one serious domestic scandal to disturb the even tenour of its social life. Of how many towns of twenty thousand inhabitants could the same thing be truly said in England or the United States? During all these years, too, M. de la Gorce tells me, only two cases of alleged misconduct on the part of priests have occurred in St.-Omer, and in one of these cases the allegation was proved malignant and unfounded. Politically, St.-Omer seems to be strongly Republican. In 1886 it gave the Government candidate a majority of 1,281 votes on a total of 6,623, whereas in Boulogne at the same election the Republicans were beaten in the southern division, and carried the whole city by only a majority of 1,331 votes out of a total of 8,233.