It is just eleven o'clock, and here we are coming to a charming town,
which few travellers have probably visited, and of which that genial
and experienced traveller, Charles Dickens, wrote in astonished
delight, and where in 1862 he spent his birthday. 'Here I find,' he
says, 'a grand _place_, so very remarkable and picturesque, that it is
astonishing how people miss it.' This is old Arras; and I confess it
alone seems worth a long day's, not to say night's, journey, to see.
It is fortified, and, as in such towns, we have to make our way to it
from the station by an umbrageous country road; for it is fenced, as a
gentleman's country seat might be, and strictly enclosed by the usual
mounds, ditches, and walls, but all so picturesquely disguised in rich
greenery as to be positively inviting. Even low down in the deep
ditches grew symmetrical avenues of straight trees, abundant in their
leaves and branches, which filled them quite up. The gates seem
monumental works of art, and picturesque to a degree; while over the
walls--and what noble specimens of brickwork, or tiling rather, are
these old Vauban walls!--peep with curious mystery the upper stories
and roofs of houses with an air of smiling security. I catch a glimpse
of the elegant belfry, the embroidered spires, and mosque-like
cupolas, all a little rusted, yet cheerful-looking. Dickens's _place_,
or two _places_ rather--for there is the greater and the less--display
to us a really lovely town-hall in the centre, the roof dotted over
with rows of windows, while an airy lace-work spire, with a ducal
crown as the finish, rises lightly. On to its sides are encrusted
other buildings of Renaissance order, while behind is a mansion still
more astonishingly embroidered in sculptured stone, with a colonnade
of vast extent. Around the _place_ itself stretches a vast number of
Spanish mansions, with the usual charmingly 'escalloped' roof, all
resting on a prolonged colonnade or piazza, strange, old-fashioned,