The streets are full of busy merchants, trim shopkeepers, and the usual crowd of blouses that we see in every city in France.  There are wide boulevards and trees round Rouen; and if we look down upon the city from the heights of Mont St. Catherine (perhaps the best view that we can obtain anywhere) it may remind us, with its broad river laden with ships and its cathedral towers, of the superb view of Lyons that we obtain from the heights near the cemetery:  the view so well known to visitors to that city.  The people of Rouen who have spread out into the enormous suburb of St. Sever, on the left bank of the Seine,[42] are busy by thousands in the manufactories,—­the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—­rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with the thinnest boots, who never even pass down the old streets if they can help it, but whom we shall find very pleasant and hospitable; and with whom we may sit down at a cafe under the trees and play at dominoes in the open street, in the middle of the day, without creating a scandal.

But if Rouen will not compare with Lyons in size, or commercial importance, it surpasses it in antiquarian interest; and we have chosen our illustrations to depict it rather as it was, than as it is.  We give a drawing of Joan of Arc’s house rather than of a building in the ’rue Imperiale;’ and a view of the old market-place in front of the cathedral rather than of the trim toy-garden at the west end of the church of St. Ouen; and we do this, not only because it is more picturesque, but because the modern aspect of Rouen is familiar to the majority of our readers.

But we must examine the old buildings whilst there is time, for (as in other towns of Normandy) the work of demolition grows fast and furious; and the churches, the Palais de Justice, the courts of law, and the tower of the Grosse Horloge will soon be all that is left to us.  The narrow winding streets of gable-ended houses, with their strange histories, will soon be forgotten by all but the antiquary; for there is a ruthless law that no more half-timbered houses shall be built, and another that everything shall be in line.

We are surrounded by old houses, but cannot easily find them, and when discovered they almost crumble at the touch—­they fade away as if by magic; and there is a halo of mystery, we might almost say of sanctity, about them which is indescribable; it is as if the blossoms of an early age still clung to the old walls and garlanded with time-wreaths their tottering ruins.

Rouen is disappearing like a dissolving view—­a few more slides in the magic lantern, a few more windows of plate-glass, a few more ’grandes rues’ and the picture of old Rouen fades away.