Le Mans has the honour of having given birth to Henry II., the first Plantagenet king of England; and we suppose we ought here to mention, what every one on earth must know, that his father Geoffroi always wore in his cap a sprig of genêt, or broom, which grows luxuriantly throughout Maine and Anjou, and hence the name of a race of kings--Plante-a-genêt. From Le Mans we took the railway to Tours. Upon nearing that city we passed an old red château, where Louis XI. shut himself up, dreading, like Oliver Cromwell and many great criminals, daily assassination. Gates within gates, castle within castle, like a remarkably strong Chinese ball-puzzle; such is the interior. On a plain near Tours--an old story--Charles Martel beat the Saracens in 731. No one writes on Tours who does not say, "If the Saracens had beaten Charles Martel, we should all be keeping harems, smoking tchibouques, and praying on bits of square carpets, or, whenever we had a moment or two to spare, on turnpike roads," &c. After we had passed Tours the country was flat, ugly, and very uninteresting. Poitiers, which we reached in due course, is a picturesque, battlemented old town, built on the tops of precipices, the sides of hills, rocks, and ravines, with green slopes, gardens, and river. We say nothing about the Black Prince, Lord Chandos, and King John, at the battle of Poitiers. We wonder, indeed, if they were ever there; for was there not a man who once wrote a book to prove that there had been no such person as Napoleon? After passing Angoulême, at which we stopped for a short interval, it became too dark to see or read, and we tried to sleep; but soon discovered what a quantity of hitherto unknown and extraordinary bumps and sharp angles the human form possesses. In spite, however, of our discomforts, the train rattled on, and we arrived at Bordeaux. After a good night's rest, the disagreeable effects of our journey disappeared; and getting up fresh and active in the morning, we set out to explore the city. But what did we see? Docks, _et præterea nihil_!