elms of France than with the sturdy oaks of England.[27]

Let us not be thought to disparage Avranches; if it is our lot to live
here we may enjoy life well; and if we are not deterred by the dull and
'weedy' aspect of some of the old chateaux, we may also make some
pleasant friends amongst the French families in the neighbourhood.

In summer time we may almost live out of doors, and ramble about in the
fields and sketch, as we should do in England; the air is fresh and
bracing, and the sea breeze comes gratefully on the west wind. We may
stroll through shady lanes and between hedgerows, and we shall hear the
familiar sound of bells, and see through the trees a church tower, such
as the following (which is indeed the common type throughout Normandy);
but here the similarity to England ceases, for we may enter the building
at any hour, and find peasant women at prayers.

[Illustration]

And we may see sometimes a party of English girls from a French school,
with their drawing master; sketching from nature and making minute
studies of the brandies of trees. They are seated on a hill-side, and
there is a charming pastoral scene before them,--wood and water,
pasture-land and cattle grazing,--women with white caps, and little
white houses peeping through the trees.

But the trees that they are studying are small and characterless
compared with our own, they are scattered about the landscape, or set in
trim lines along the roads: our fair artists had better be in England
for this work. There is none of the mass and grandeur here that we see
in our forest trees, none of the suggestive groups with which we are so