THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINTE CROIX.

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foreign language in our ear, a new costume before our eye, new manners, new features, new character, in men, their business, pleasures, customs, habitations.

On entering the town, we found, instead of a plain of houses, as it had appeared, a series of streets rising on gentle eminences. In one place, indeed, the inequality of the ground is so great, that a street is thrown like a bridge over the valley in which other streets run below. The effect here, however, is not so great as the same circumstance produces on the more gigantic proportions of Edinburgh. Many of the streets are narrow, winding, irregular, and picturesque; but, in general, they are well built, and apparently intended for the accommodation of the better middle orders of society. The doors and windows, as we passed, were all open, gasping for air, and the interior of the houses distinctly visible. On the shady side of the street the inhabitants sat, working languidly on the comparatively cool stones of the pavement.

We at length arrived at the cathedral, and were thankful that we had done so; for there is not a more delightful refuge from the glare of the sun than a cathedral aisle. In the distance, a priest was standing at the high altar, with four boys, dressed in white, kneeling on the steps behind him. The enclosed area was lined on either side with a rank of kneeling priests, in highly picturesque costume; and the whole of these figures were so absolutely motionless, as to resemble statues more than living men. Before the rails there was a coffin, with a plain black pall, and near it a few mourners on their knees, the men at one side, and the women at the other. The rite, therefore, in which they were engaged, was the service for the dead. The profound silence of all, both priests and laymen, the clasped hands, the eyes fixed on the ground, the utter

lifelessness of the figures, together with the gorgeous dresses of the ecclesiastics, the black weeds of the mourners, and the solemn and antique grandeur of the temple above and around them, formed in their union one of the most remarkable pictures we had ever beheld.

Suddenly a low, mournful chant, deepened and mellowed by wind instruments, broke from the lips of the priests, and, resounding for a few moments through the temple, died slowly away. It was answered by a shrill but sweet strain, in the voices either of women or boys; and as the singers were invisible-concealed, probably, by an immense black drapery which overhung the space behind the altar, it seemed like a reply from heaven. The whole ceremony was inexpressibly touching, from its solemnity, and the contrast afforded by its earnestness to the busy scene without.

The cathedral, called the church of Sainte Croix, was founded in the thirteenth century, ruined by the Calvinists in the sixteenth, and rebuilt by Henri Quatre, who laid the corner-stone in person, in 1601. The ancient towers remained till about a century ago, when they were demolished to make room for their successors, which, with the portico, also a modern erection, are the finest parts of an edifice supposed to be one of the most beautiful specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in France.

A short distance from the Sainte Croix is the Mairie-a jumble of old houses, surrounding a court not vastly unlike an English farm-yard. If the reader imagines himself standing with his back to the gate, he will comprehend the position of the artist while sketching the annexed view. On the left is the theatre, with two lower buildings, appearing as wings, one of which is the Café de Loiret, and the other the Café de la Comédie. The cathedral then appears, with its fine Gothic towers overtopping the

other houses; and the whole engraving gives as accurate an idea of the localities as it is possible for the pencil to convey. The living figures, the procession, the carriages -those adjuncts which the poetical imagination of Mr. Turner has so characteristically supplied-afford an admirable contrast to the still and silent scene from which we have just emerged.

Our attention was next attracted by a monument in the Place du Martroy-an irregular and somewhat awkwardlooking square, although the best in the town. It represented a female figure, standing on a massive pedestal of white marble, with a sword in one hand, and a standard in the other. We saw nothing but mediocrity, or something less, in the workmanship; but here, in the town of Orleans itself, was it possible to gaze without reverence on the statue of the heroic Maid? In spite of the indecencies of Voltaire-the clever, snappish, impudent, heartless, petit maître of French philosophy-and the sneers of even more superficial inquirers, we look upon this admirable enthusiast to be one of the finest characters presented in the history of her country. The statue, however, is quite unworthy of her, and was probably a hasty erection, substituted for the more ancient monument destroyed in the revolutionary fever of 1792.

The church of St. Aignan, where Louis XII officiated as canon, and received the alms, is worth seeing; the bridge is handsome and spacious-and this is absolutely all that the ancient capital presents in the way of public buildings or monuments.

Orleans is supposed to be the Genabum Carnatum mentioned in the Commentaries of Caesar, which afterwards took the name of Aurilianum, or Auriliana Civitas ; whence the modern corruption, Orleans. It was besieged