country, he never saw any signs of wealth or gentlemen's property. I
think he didn't want to admire anything French, but I wonder in what
part of France he has travelled. Besides the well-known historic
chateaux of Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, Maintenon, Dampierre,
Josselin, Valencay, and scores of others, there are quantities of small
Louis XV chateaux and manoirs, half hidden in a corner of a forest,
which the stranger never sees. They are quite charming, built of red
brick with white copings, with stiff old-fashioned gardens, and trees
cut into all sorts of fantastic shapes. Sometimes the parish church
touches the castle on one side, and there is a private entrance for the
seigneurs. The interior arrangements in some of the old ones leave much
to be desired in the way of comfort and modern improvements,--lighting
very bad, neither gas nor electricity, and I should think no baths
anywhere, hardly a tub. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire, near
the great forests, in all the departments near Paris there are
quantities of chateaux--some just on the border of the highroad,
separated from it by high iron gates, through which one sees long
winding alleys with stone benches and vases with red geraniums planted
in them, a sun-dial and stiff formal rows of trees--some less
pretentious with merely an ordinary wooden gate, generally open, and
always flowers of the simplest kind, geraniums, sunflowers, pinks,
dahlias, and chrysanthemums--what we call a jardin de cure, (curate's
garden)--but in great abundance. With very rare exceptions the lawns are
not well kept--one never sees in this country the smooth green turf that
one does in England.

Some of the old chateaux are very stately--sometimes one enters by a
large quadrangle, quite surrounded by low arcades covered with ivy, a
fountain and good-sized basin in the middle of the courtyard, and a big
clock over the door--sometimes they stand in a moat, one goes over a