tecture of the past. The dwelling to which the average
Anglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and
the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called
Maison de Tristan l'Hermite, - a gentleman whom the
readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten,
- the hangman-in-ordinary to the great King Louis XI.
Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of
Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled.
There are no illusions left, at all, in the good city of
Tours, with regard to Louis XI. His terrible castle of
Plessis, the picture of which sends a shiver through
the youthful reader of Scott, has been reduced to sub-
urban insignificance; and the residence of his _triste
compere,_ on the front of which a festooned rope figures
as a motive for decoration, is observed to have been
erected in the succeeding century. The Maison de
Tristan may be visited for itself, however, if not for
Walter Scott; it is an exceedingly picturesque old
facade, to which you pick your way through a narrow
and tortuous street, - a street terminating, a little be-
yond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant
Gothic doorway is let into the rusty-red brick-work,
and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the
windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated
gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large
surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street,
looks yellow and faded. The whole thing is disfigured
and decayed; but it is a capital subject for a sketch
in colors. Only I must wish the sketcher better luck
- or a better temper - than my own. If he ring the