overhangs the town, but it is scarcely visible from the
stream. That peculiar good fortune is reserved for
Amboise and Chaurnont.

The Chateau de Blois is one of the most beautiful
and elaborate of all the old royal residences of this
part of France, and I suppose it should have all the
honors of my description. As you cross its threshold,
you step straight into the brilliant movement of the
French Renaissance. But it is too rich to describe, -
I can only touch it here and there. It must be pre-
mised that in speaking of it as one sees it to-day,
one speaks of a monument unsparingly restored. The
work of restoration has been as ingenious as it is pro-
fuse, but it rather chills the imagination. This is
perhaps almost the first thing you feel as you ap-
proach the castle from the streets of the town. These
little streets, as they, leave the river, have pretensions
to romantic steepness; one of them, indeed, which
resolves itself into a high staircase with divergent
wings (the _escalier monumental_), achieved this result
so successfully as to remind me vaguely - I hardly
know why - of the great slope of the Capitol, beside
the Ara Coeli, at Rome. The view of that part of the
castle which figures to-day as the back (it is the only
aspect I had seen reproduced) exhibits the marks of
restoration with the greatest assurance. The long
facade, consisting only of balconied windows deeply
recessed, erects itself on the summit of a considerable
hill, which gives a fine, plunging movement to its