We walked about here a great deal. The situation is one of the finest I have ever seen; it inspires a sort of elevation in the mind. Beyond the church a caserne is building, and a fort already made--a bad exchange for the tower of Louis d'Outremer. The church of St. Martin is very disappointing inside, being very low. As the diligence was full for the night, we hired a cab, to take us to St. Quentin. It took us from 5½ to 11½, stopping half an hour at La Fère. Road generally flat, and very bad indeed, having no pavé to La Fère. We saw a village church or two, Norman in style. Our conveyance was one of the most uncomfortable I ever experienced; besides that we were overwhelmed with bags and coats. Our driver served at eighteen in one of Napoleon's battles, and had carried off a token in a sabre cut on the cheek; it was the battle of Fleury, where, he said, "L'Empereur était trahi." So the French guide-book says of the battle of Crecy: "Les Français perdirent 30,000 par la faute du Comte d'Alençon." _Thursday, July 24._--We are at l'Hôtel du Cygne: comfortable enough. The church is of first-rate beauty; the nave, from its great height and purity of style, even more striking than that of Reims _inside_; and so the transept: but the choir and many parts of the church have swerved from the perpendicular, and are braced with iron,--a sad drawback. The architect has raised his central building, with extreme boldness, to an enormous height; but he has not thrown strength and breadth enough into his aisles to resist the pressure. The windows throughout of geometric tracery, remarkably beautiful; and the pillars of the nave spring from the ground to the roof without capital at the lower arches, and are of great beauty, an advance certainly on Reims, and in one respect on Amiens, in that they are not merely cylinders, with columns at the four corners, but have two colonnettes introduced again between these, which produces an effect of great lightness. Beautiful end of north transept, a decorated window below, an open triforium of eight lights, and a vast decorated window terminating in a great rosace above--stained glass. The apse of seven windows, with most brilliant stained glass, beginning from a second transept of great beauty, making a double cross, the southern part flamboyant. I think the nave of this church, and the apse and arrangements of its chapels might be profitably studied as an almost perfect specimen; it may compete with Amiens and St. Ouen, and undoubtedly surpasses Reims. Height, 128 English feet; vaulting of roof very beautiful. We went in at 11 o'clock, and found preparations for a funeral of some importance: presently all the choir was filled with well dressed persons; and the body being deposited under a catafalque, surrounded with burning tapers, in the centre of the nave and transept, mass was chanted. The black velvet chasuble, and the copes and other robes to match, like all the dresses of the Roman clergy, are very handsome.