blended together harmoniously, with a beauty specific--a beauty
cisalpine and northern, yet at the same time quite distinct from the
massive German picturesque of Ulm, or Freiburg, or Augsburg, and of
which Turner has found the ideal in certain of his studies of the
rivers of France, a perfectly happy conjunction of river and town
being of the essence of its physiognomy--the town of Auxerre is
perhaps the most complete realisation to be found by the actual
wanderer. Certainly, for picturesque expression it is the most
memorable of a distinguished group of three in these parts,--Auxerre,
Sens, Troyes,--each gathered, as if with deliberate aim at such
effect, about the central mass of a huge grey cathedral.

Around Troyes the natural picturesque is to be sought only in the
rich, almost coarse, summer colouring of the Champagne country, of
which the very tiles, the plaster and brick-work of its tiny villages
and great, straggling, village-like farms have caught the warmth.
The cathedral, visible far and wide over the fields seemingly of
loose wild-flowers, itself a rich mixture of all the varieties of the
Pointed style down to the latest Flamboyant, may be noticed among the
greater French churches for breadth of proportions internally, and is
famous [49] for its almost unrivalled treasure of stained glass,
chiefly of a florid, elaborate, later type, with much highly
conscious artistic contrivance in design as well as in colour. In
one of the richest of its windows, for instance, certain lines of
pearly white run hither and thither, with delightful distant effect,
upon ruby and dark blue. Approaching nearer you find it to be a
Travellers' window, and those odd lines of white the long walking-
staves in the hands of Abraham, Raphael, the Magi, and the other
saintly patrons of journeys. The appropriate provincial character of
the bourgeoisie of Champagne is still to be seen, it would appear,