[33] The latest, and perhaps the most complete, description of Mont St Michael, will be found in the ‘People’s Magazine’ for August, 1869.

[34] French artists flock together in the valleys of the Seine and the Somme, like English landscape painters at the junction of the Greta and the Tees—­Mortain and Vire not being yet fashionable.  It is hard, indeed, to get English artists out of a groove; to those who, like ourselves, have had to examine the pictures at our annual Exhibitions, year by year, somewhat closely, the streams in Wales are as familiar on canvas, as ‘Finding the Body of Harold.’

[35] We speak of Mortain as we found it a few years ago; its sanitory arrangements have, we understand, been improved, but people are not yet enthusiastic about Mortain as a residence.

[36] Notwithstanding this apparent indifference to landscape, we remember finding at a country inn, the walls covered with one of Troyon’s pictures (a hundred times repeated in paper-hanging); a pretty pastoral scene which Messrs. Christie would have catalogued as ’a landscape with cattle.’

[37] The neatness and precision with which they make their piles of stones at the roadside will be remembered by many a traveller in this part of Normandy.  They accomplish it by putting the stones into a shape (as if making a jelly), and removing the boards when full; and, as there are no French boys, the loose pile remains undisturbed for months.

[38] Submitting to the exigencies of publishing expediency, we have been unable to have this drawing reproduced on wood; although we were anxious to draw attention to the bold forms of rocks which crown these heights, and to the line old trees which surround the castle.

[39] There are’ deeds of valour’ (according to the affiches) to be witnessed in these days at Falaise; we once saw a woman here, in a circus, turning somersaults on horseback before a crowd of spectators.  The people of Falaise cannot be accused of being behind the age; one gentleman advertises as his specialite,’ the cure of injuries caused by velocipedes’!

[40] Our peaceful proclivities may be noticed in small things; the fierce and warlike devices, such as an eagle’s head, a lion rampant, and the like, which were originally designed to stimulate the warrior in battle, now serve to adorn the panel of a carriage, or a sheet of note-paper.

[41] It is rather a curious fact that Prout, notwithstanding his love for historic scenes, seems to have had little sympathy with the poor ‘Maid of Orleans.’  In a letter which accompanied the presentation of this drawing, the following passage occurs:—­’I beg your acceptance of what is miserable, though perhaps not uninteresting, as it is part of the house in which Joan of Arc was confined at Rouen, and before which the English, very wisely, burnt her for a witch!’

Mr. Prout evidently differed in opinion from Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Bauvais, who presided at the tribunal which condemned Joan of Arc to death; for he founded a Lady Chapel at Lisieux, ’in expiation of his false judgment of an innocent woman.’