If the character of Normandy is thus in considerable measure determined by geography, its boundaries and even its internal unity are chiefly the result of history. For good and ill, Normandy has, on the land side, no natural frontiers. The hills of the west continue those of Brittany, the plains of the east merge in those of Picardy. The watershed of the south marks no clear-cut boundary from Maine and Perche; the valleys of the Seine and the Eure lead straight to the Ile-de-France, separated from Normandy only by those border fortresses of the Avre and the Vexin which are the perpetual battle-ground of Norman history--Normandy’s Alsace-Lorraine! Within these limits lie two distinct physiographic areas, one the lower portion of the Paris basin, the other a western region which belongs with Brittany and the west of France. These districts are commonly distinguished as Upper and Lower Normandy, terms consecrated by long use and representing two contrasted regions and types, but there is no general agreement as to their exact limits or the limits of the region of Middle Normandy which some have placed between them. Even the attempt to define these areas in terms of cheese--as the land respectively of the creamy Neufchâtel, the resilient Pont-l’Évêque, and the flowing Camembert--is defective from the point of view of geographical accuracy! The most distinctive parts of Upper Normandy are the valley of the Seine and the region to the north and east, the _pays de Caux_, fringed by the coast from Havre to the frontier of Picardy. Less monotonous than the bare plains farther east, the plateau of Caux is covered by a rich vegetation, broken by scattered farmsteads, where house and orchard and outbuildings are protected from the wind by those rectangular earthworks surmounted by trees which are the most characteristic feature of the region. It is the country of _Madame Bovary_ and of Maupassant’s peasants. Equally typical is the valley of the Seine, ample, majestic, slow, cutting its sinuous way through high banks which grow higher as we approach the sea, winding around ancient strongholds like Château Gaillard and Tancarville or ruined abbeys like Jumièges and Saint-Wandrille,--where Maeterlinck’s bees still hum in the garden,--catching the tide soon after it enters Normandy, reaching deep water at Rouen, and meeting the “longed-for dash of waves” in the great estuary at its mouth. Halfway from the Norman frontier to the river’s end stands Rouen, mistress of the Seine and capital, not only of Upper Normandy, but of the whole Norman land. Celtic in name and origin, like most French cities, chief town of the Roman province of _Lugdunensis Secunda_ and of the ecclesiastical province to which this gave rise, the political and commercial importance of Rouen have made it also the principal city of mediæval and modern Normandy and the seat of the changing political authority to which the land has bowed. As