among the citizens of Troyes. Its streets, for the most part in
timber and pargeting, present more than one unaltered specimen of the
ancient hotel or town-house, with forecourt and garden in the rear;
and its more devout citizens would seem even in their church-building
to have sought chiefly to please the eyes of those occupied with
mundane affairs and out of doors, for they have finished, with
abundant outlay, only the vast, useless portals of their parish
churches, of surprising height and lightness, in a kind of wildly
elegant Gothic-on-stilts, giving to the streets of Troyes a peculiar
air of the grotesque, as if in some quaint nightmare of the Middle
Age.

At Sens, thirty miles away to the west, a place of far graver aspect,
the name of Jean [50] Cousin denotes a more chastened temper, even in
these sumptuous decorations. Here all is cool and composed, with an
almost English austerity. The first growth of the Pointed style in
England-the hard "early English" of Canterbury--is indeed the
creation of William, a master reared in the architectural school of
Sens; and the severity of his taste might seem to have acted as a
restraining power on all the subsequent changes of manner in this
place--changes in themselves for the most part towards luxuriance.
In harmony with the atmosphere of its great church is the cleanly
quiet of the town, kept fresh by little channels of clear water
circulating through its streets, derivatives of the rapid Vanne which
falls just below into the Yonne. The Yonne, bending gracefully, link
after link, through a never-ending rustle of poplar trees, beneath
lowly vine-clad hills, with relics of delicate woodland here and
there, sometimes close at hand, sometimes leaving an interval of
broad meadow, has all the lightsome characteristics of French river-
side scenery on a smaller scale than usual, and might pass for the