_Alabama_ and the _Kearsage_, which took place a few miles from the
shore.

The _Port Militaire_ and the _Arsenal de Marine_ at Cherbourg (which are
said to be five times as large as Portsmouth), and its basins, in which
a hundred sail of the line can be accommodated at one time, are sights
which we scarcely realize in description, but which almost overwhelm us
with their magnitude and importance, when seen from this vantage ground.

In three hours after leaving Cherbourg we may find ourselves settled in
the little old-fashioned inn, called the _Hôtel du Soleil Levant_, at
ST. LO, which we shall probably have entirely to ourselves.

St. Lo, although the _chef-lieu_ of the department of La Manche, appears
to the traveller a quiet, second-rate manufacturing town, well-situated
and picturesquely built, but possessing no particular objects of
interest excepting the cathedral; although visitors who have spent any
time in this neighbourhood find it rich in antiquities, and a good
centre from which to visit various places in the environs. In no part of
this beautiful province do we see the country to better advantage, and
nowhere than in the suburbs of St. Lo, shall we find better examples of
buildings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

But St. Lo is dull, and there is a gloom about it that communicates
itself insensibly to the mind; that finds expression in the worship of
graven images by little children, and in the burning of innumerable
candles in the churches. There is an air of untidiness and neglect
about the town that no trim military regulations can alter, and a repose
that no amount of chattering of the old women, or even the rattle of
regimental drums, seems able to disturb. They do strange things at St.