A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE. 



TN coming over to France, I noticed that the chalk- 

 hills, which were stopped so abruptly by the sea on 

 the British side of the Channel, began again on the 

 French side, only they had lost their smooth, pastoral 

 character, and were more broken and rocky, and that 

 they continued all the way to Paris, walling in the Seine, 

 and giving the prevailing tone and hue to the country, 



— scrape away the green and brown epidermis of the 

 hills anywhere, and out shine their white frame-work, 



— and that Paris itself was built of stone evidently 

 quarried from this formation — a light, cream-colored 

 stone, so soft that rifle-bullets bury themselves in it 

 nearly their own depth, thus pitting some of the more 

 exposed fronts during the recent strife in a very notice- 

 able manner, and which, in building, is put up in the 

 rough, all the carving, sculpturing, and finishing being 

 done after the blocks are in position in the wall. 



Disregarding the counsel of friends, I braved the 

 Channel at one of its wider points, taking the vixen by 

 the waist instead of by the neck, and found her as 

 placid as a lake, as I did also on my return a week 

 later. 



