In the departments of Lozère, Puy de Dôme, Gard and Auvergne and Dordogne, the true, unspoiled Gallic flavour abides in all its intensity. As Touraine, or at least Tours, claims to speak the purest French tongue, so this region of streams and mountains, of volcanic remains, of Protestantism, and of an--as yet--unspoiled old-worldliness, possesses more than any other somewhat of the old-time social independence and disregard of latter-day innovations. Particularly is this so--though perhaps it has been remarked before--in that territory which lies between Clermont-Ferrand and Valence in one direction, and Vienne and Rodez in another, to extend its confines to extreme limits. Here life goes on gaily and in animated fashion, in a hundred dignified and picturesque old towns, and the wise traveller will go a-hunting after those which the guide-books complain of--not without a sneer--as being dull and desultory. French, and for that matter the new régime of English, historical novelists are too obstinately bent on the study of Paris, "At all events," says Edmund Gosse, "since the days of Balzac and George Sand, and have neglected the provincial boroughs." They should study mid-France on the spot; and read Stevenson and Mérimée while they are doing it. It will save them a deal of worrying out of things--with possibly wrong deductions--for themselves. The climatic conditions of France vary greatly. From the gray, wind-blown shores of Brittany, where for quite three months of the autumn one is in a perpetual drizzle, and the equally chilly and bare country of the Pas de Calais, and the more or less sodden French Flanders, to the brisk, sunny climate of the Loire valley, the Cevennes, Dauphiné, and Savoie, is a wide range of contrast. Each is possessed of its own peculiar characteristics, which the habitant alone seems to understand in all its vagaries. At all events, there is no part of France which actually merits the opprobrious deprecations which are occasionally launched forth by the residents of the "garden spot of England," who see no topographical beauties save in their own wealds and downs. France is distinctly a self-contained land. Its tillers of the soil, be they mere agriculturists or workers in the vineyards, are of a race as devoted and capable at their avocations as any alive. They do not, to be sure, eat meat three times a day--and often not once a week--but they thrive and gain strength on what many an English-speaking labourer would consider but a mere snack. Again, the French peasant is not, like the English labourer, perpetually reminded, by the independence of the wealth surrounding him, of his own privations and dependence. On the contrary, he enjoys contentment with a consciousness that no human intervention embitters his condition, and that its limits are only fixed by the bounds of nature, and somewhat by his own industry.