The Englishman travelling southwards for the first time is chiefly struck with the entire change in the aspect of the scenery, the vegetation, the style of the buildings, the colour of the soil and hills, the brilliant sunshine, and the clear blue sky, which everywhere meet the view in descending the Rhone. This is especially the case in going south by the night train from Paris. Soon after leaving Lyons daylight commences, when the traveller awakes to find himself in a new zone. All the surroundings are transformed: instead of the sombre sun and foggy atmosphere of the North, he enjoys the bright light and breathes the clear air of the South, and finds around him, instead of bare trees and frozen herbage, vineyards and gardens still rich with the lovely tinted foliage of autumn. The buildings in these gardens and fields particularly strike the eye of the architect. They are so unlike what he has been accustomed to, and left behind only a few hours ago. The houses of timber-framed work, with their steep roofs covered with slates or flat tiles, and the snug homesteads of England and the North of France, have entirely vanished; and in their stead only small square or oblong erections are to be seen scattered here and there through the fields, with plastered and tinted walls, and covered with tiled roofs of the ribbed Italian pattern, all laid at flat slopes, and generally having one side of the roof much longer than the other. At Avignon the change of aspect is even more complete. “On arriving at Avignon,” says Prosper Mérimée, “it appeared to me that I had left France behind. Landing from the steamboat I had not been prepared by a gradual transition for the novelty of the spectacle which presented itself; the language, the costumes, the aspect of the country, everything appears strange to one coming from the centre of France. I believed myself in the middle of a Spanish town. The crenellated walls, the towers furnished with machicolations, the country covered with olives and plants of a tropical vegetation, recalled Valencia, &c.” Not less great than the differences in climate and in the aspects of nature, are those of the arts of the North and South; and these diversities in nature and art, although now all embraced within the compass of one great and united country, are indications of the political differences which, in former times, existed between the various portions of it. The growth of France as a kingdom has been slow and gradual. Not to refer to changes which have occurred in our own times to modify the extent of her surface, it should be remembered that Provence was no part of France till the fifteenth century. It was not till 1481, in the time of Louis XI., that Provence passed under the rule of the King of France.