Now I do not say that this tragic site is to be visited thus. It was but
an accident, though an accident for which I am most grateful to my fate.
But what I have said here illustrates my meaning that the manner of
one's approach to any place in travel makes all the difference.

Thus one may note how very different is Europe seen from the water than
seen from any other opportunity for travel. So many of the great
cathedrals were built to dominate men who should watch them from the
wharves of the mediaeval towns, but I think it is almost a rule if you
have leisure and can take your choice to choose this kind of entry to
them. Amiens is quite a different thing seen from the river below it to
the north and east from what it is seen by a gradual approach along the
street of a modern town. The roofs climb up at it, and it stands
enthroned. So Chartres seen from the little Eure; but the Eure is so
small a river that he would be a bold man who would travel up it all
this way. Nevertheless it is a good piece of travel, and anyone who will
undertake it will see Louviers and will pass Anet, where the greatest
work of the Renaissance once stood, and will go through lonely but rich
pastures until at last he gets to Chartres by the right gate. Thence he
will see something astonishing for so flat a region as the Beauce. The
great church seems mountainous upon a mountain. Its apse completes the
unclimbable steepness of the hill and its buttresses follow the lines of
the fall of it. But if you do not come in by the river, at least come in
by the Orleans road. I suppose that nine people out of ten, even to-day
when the roads are in proper use again, come into Chartres by that
northern railway entry, which is for all the world like coming into a
great house by a big, neglected backyard.

Then if ever you have business that takes you to Bayonne, come in by
river and from the sea, and how well you will understand the little town