Independent of individual associations, too, Tours is one of those places which has many recollections attached to it, especially since the Wizard of the North has raised again the fallen walls of Plessis les Tours, and conjured up the king of the people, Louis XI., the effects of whose hatred to the nobility were felt even in the eighteenth century. But his mulberry-trees are no more, and all that he did for the commerce of his favourite city is equally fallen to nothing. The abbey of St. Martin, whose abbots were once kings of France, is almost entirely destroyed, though there are two of the old towers still standing, at so great a distance from each other as to show the enormous extent of the ancient building. Besides all this, are there not a thousand shadowy visions come floating down the sea of time from the dreamy ages of chivalry and romance--Charles VII. and his knights, Alençon, Dunois, the Maid of Arc, and Agnes Sorrel? The beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrées too, owed her birth to Tours: but, unlike Agnes Sorrel, her best quality was her beauty, and for _that_ her countrywomen are still deservedly famed. In many respects it is a magnificent town. The Rue Royale, the Cathedral, the bishop's palace, and a fine bridge over the river, are the first objects the eye falls upon in entering the city; but before all, is the Loire itself, flowing on in calm majesty through the richest part of one of the most fertile countries in the world. Its banks were covered with all nature's choicest gifts at the time we entered Touraine, and, as if feeling the loneliness of the scene, the stream seemed to linger amidst the beauty that surrounded it. Long, long ago, it was the song of the troubadours. The Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil took its waters for a boundary, and many noble deeds have rendered it famous in history. It was the birth-place, too, of the Count of St. Maurice, whose fate, with all its curious turns of fortune, told over the glowing fruit and the sparkling wine of the land in which he dwelt, had deeper interest than it may have here. He who narrated the tale called it. THE FATE OF THE DUC DE BIRON.