One’s first advent to such a town, however, can never be particularly gay. The circumstances which brought me there, and detained me there for a long time, could not be matters of interest for the general public, but I will own that the first day-light view of the city, though striking and in some degree beautiful—and there are few towns for which I have such a lingering love; perhaps on the same motives which made De Coucy love Fontenoy—was in some degree dull and monotonous; and before I delivered the few letters of introduction which I brought with me, I took a stroll through the streets, with no very pleasant feeling or anticipation. I had previously passed through that deeply interesting part of France, the Bocage, where deeds of heroism enough were enacted to have made ancient Rome really great—where heroes fought and died, with a constancy and a quiet fortitude which would have shamed warriors of old, and have put the stoic to the blush. It is a bright and beautiful land, notwithstanding the desolation which the fierce wrath of the multi-form tyranny of republicanism inflicted upon it—notwithstanding the decimation of its inhabitants, and the spilling of the noblest blood that France had ever produced. The dim embowering lanes, deep cut between the fields; the arching boughs over head, the vineyards, and the orchards, the quiet little villages, nooked in bosky shade; the frequent farm-houses, and the châteaux great and small, which thickly dot the whole of that peculiar region, had produced an effect—strange to say—gay—cheerful—and pleasant, rather than sad, notwithstanding all the gloomy memories of glorious deeds unfruitful, and heroic courage rewarded by death, with which the whole air is loaded. France may boast of her conquests—of the successes which were obtained by the fierce irruption of the barbarous hordes into dismayed and unconnected lands—of the talent of her generals—of the courage of her plundering troops—of triumph, bitterly atoned by forgotten humiliation; but her real glory lies in La Vendee. I had gone through this beautiful country—this country dear to the heart of every one who loves honor more than success, and I had come to the extreme point of the frontier, where a great city had possessed the means, and never used them, of rendering gallant devotion triumphant. The feeling with which I viewed it was, perhaps, not that of disappointment; but a sort of gloom pervaded my mind, a sensation of solitariness—of isolation, not common in French cities, where every one usually seems ready to take upon himself the character of acquaintance, if not of friend. On entering my inn, which was one where dinner was served _à la carte_. I chose from the bill of fare, such viands as I thought proper, and sat down to read the newspaper in the public room till the meal was served.