as fantastic and romantic as you please. The approach
I mention here leads to the gate that looks toward
Toulouse, - the Porte de l'Aude. There is a second,
on the other side, called, I believe, the Porte Nar-
bonnaise, a magnificent gate, flanked with towers thick
and tall, defended by elaborate outworks; and these
two apertures alone admit you to the place, - putting
aside a small sally-port, protected by a great bastion,
on the quarter that looks toward the Pyrenees.

As a votary, always, in the first instance, of a
general impression, I walked all round the outer en-
ceinte, - a process on the very face of it entertaining.
I took to the right of the Porte de l'Aude, without
entering it, where the old moat has been filled in.
The filling-in of the moat has created a grassy level
at the foot of the big gray towers, which, rising at
frequent intervals, stretch their stiff curtain of stone
from point to point. The curtain drops without a
fold upon the quiet grass, which was dotted here and
there with a humble native, dozing away the golden
afternoon. The natives of the elder Carcassonne are
all humble; for the core of the Cite has shrunken and
decayed, and there is little life among the ruins. A
few tenacious laborers, who work in the neighboring
fields or in the _ville-basse_, and sundry octogenarians
of both sexes, who are dying where they have lived,
and contribute much to the pictorial effect, - these
are the principal inhabitants. The process of con-
verting the place from an irresponsible old town into