pact rectangular town, which looks hardly bigger than
a garden-patch, mapped out beneath you, and follow
the plain configuration of its defences. You take
possession of it, and you feel that you will remember
it always.



XXVIII.

After this I was free to look about me at Nimes,
and I did so with such attention as the place appeared
to require. At the risk of seeming too easily and too
frequently disappointed, I will say that it required
rather less than I had been prepared to give. It is a
town of three or four fine features, rather than a town
with, as I may say, a general figure. In general,
Nimes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman re-
mains, which are of the first order. The new French
fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses
are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside
my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which
had the oddest air of having been intended for
Brooklyn or Cleveland. It is true that this church
looked out on a square completely French, - a square
of a fine modern disposition, flanked on one side by a
classical _palais de justice_ embellished with trees and
parapets, and occupied in the centre with a group of
allegorical statues, such as one encounters only in the
cities of France, the chief of these being a colossal