Blois 65 



have been built, nor decorated, nor furnished if the duke had not 

 been exiled. It was the same with the Duke d'Aguillon. These 

 ministers would have sent the country to the devil before they 

 would have reared such edifices or formed such establishments, 

 if they had not both been sent from Versailles. View the manu- 

 facture of steel at Amboise, established by the Duke de Choiseul. 

 Vineyards the chief feature of agriculture. — 37 miles. 



nth. To Blois, an old town, prettily situated on the Loire, 

 with a good stone bridge of eleven arches. We viewed the 

 castle for the historical monument it affords that has rendered 

 it so famous. They show the room where the council assembled. 

 and the chimney in it before which the Duke of Guise was 

 standing when the king's page came to demand his presence in 

 the royal closet; the door he was entering when stabbed; the 

 tapestry he was in the act of turning aside ; the tower where his 

 brother, the cardinal, suffered; with a hole in the floor into the 

 dungeon of Louis XL, of which the guide tells many horrible 

 stories, in the same tone, from having told them so often, in 

 which the fellow in Westminster Abbey gives his monotonous 

 history of the tombs. The best circumstance attending the 

 view of the spots or the walls within which great, daring, or im- 

 portant actions have been performed, is the impression they 

 make on the mind, or rather on the heart of the spectator, for 

 it is an emotion of feeling rather than an effort of reflection. 

 The murders or political executions perpetrated in this castle, 

 though not uninteresting, were inflicted on and by men that 

 command neither our love nor our veneration. The character 

 of the period, and of the men that figured in it, were alike dis- 

 gusting. Bigotry and ambition, equally dark, insidious, and 

 bloody, allow no feelings of regret. The parties could hardly 

 be better employed than in cutting each others' throats. Quit 

 the Loire and pass to Chambord. The quantity of vines is 

 very great ; they have them very flourishing on a flat poor blow- 

 ing sand. How well satisfied would my friend Le Blanc be if 

 his poorest sands at Cavenham gave him 100 dozen of good 

 wine per acre per annum ! See at one coup d'oeil 2000 acres of 

 them. View the royal chateau of Chambord, built by that 

 magnificent prince, Francis L, and inhabited by the late 

 Marechal de Saxe. I had heard much of this castle, and it 

 more than answered my expectation. It gives a great idea of 

 the splendour of that prince. Comparing the centuries and the 

 revenues of Louis XIV. and Francis I., I prefer Chambord in- 

 finitely to Versailles. The apartments are large, numerous, and 



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