shines on us the whole year round; our rains are short, and all confined to their season; we know nothing of the northern damps: a piece of muslin or fine linen hung in one of those caves for six months, would be dry and unsullied when removed. Those caves, moreover, bad as they are, belong to their inhabitants; the property is their own. Can your peasantry say the same? Believe me, Monsieur, there are many very happy, aye and very lovely faces, under those turf dwellings." We reached Amboise in good time, and as we intended leaving it on the following morning, Mr. Younge and myself walked over the town, in the interval between dinner and tea. The ladies reserved themselves for the promenade, which in the provincial towns usually begins at seven, and continues till nine. Amboise, like all the towns on the Loire, is very pleasantly situated, but has nothing in its structure to recommend it to particular notice. It consists of two streets and a chateau. Before the Revolution it was very singularly divided into two parishes and two churches: all gentlemen, all military officers, all landed proprietors who possessed honorary fiefs, and all strangers who were temporary residents, were considered as belonging to one parish, and the people and the bourgeois were attached to the other. The Revolution has annihilated these absurd distinctions, and every one now belongs to the parish in which he resides, or has property. We visited the chateau, or castle, which is indeed well worthy of the particular attention of travellers. It is built upon a lofty and craggy rock, and overhangs the Loire, which flows at the bottom; the side on the Loire is perpendicular, and of great height, so as to render it almost inaccessible. This vast structure was not all the work of one time, or of one author. The present castle was built upon the ruins of one which was destroyed by the Normans in the year 882, but having gone into decay, was repaired and enlarged by Francis the First and Charles the Eighth. The latter prince was born in this castle, and during his whole reign it was the constant summer residence of the court. The most remarkable part of this structure is what is called the oratory of Louis the Wicked; it is at a great depth beneath the foundation of the castle, and the descent to it is by spiral or well-stairs. It is literally nothing more than a dungeon, on a platform, in which is a prostrate statue representing the dead body of our Lord, as taken from the Cross, covered with streaks of blood, and the skin in welts, as if fresh from the scourge. According to the tradition of the neighbourhood, this was the daily scene of the private devotions of Louis the Eleventh; and the character of the place and of the images around, have certainly some symphony with the known disposition of that monarch. No one, even in the horrible Revolution, has disturbed these relics; it is still exhibited as the tyrant's dungeon, and no one enters or leaves it without feeling