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ST. FLORENT-LE-VIEL.

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church also took its share, as usual, in fomenting disturbances; and it was owing to an incongruity of tastes or opinions between the respective bishops of Anjou and Brittany that the two sides of the town came to blows over the quarrel that one party breakfasted on bacon, and the other on pilchards.

The view of Ingrande from the river gives you the idea of a city-one hardly knows why. As you approach nearer and nearer the illusion diminishes, and you are at last greatly amazed to find so magnificent an object degenerated into a snug and compact little town of twelve or thirteen hundred inhabitants.

The river has now wholly changed its character. The first decided indication was Montjan; but this only strikes the voyager as a grand and solitary exception to the general rule. He is here undeceived. The rich and even magnificence of the scene is mingled with the wild and fantastic. The fertile plains of the Loire, no longer undulating into hills, are now studded with gigantic steeps, that fling their dark shadows upon the waters beneath. On the left bank, rising on one of these abrupt heights, there is a tower which fascinates irresistibly the traveller's attention. It commands the entire valley of the Loire; and, from the nature of the country beyond, appears to dominate all La Vendée. This is

SAINT FLORENT-LE-VIEL,

or the Montglonne, on the site of which a temple was built by Charlemagne, and destroyed by the Normans. Its latter history is still more memorable; for on this spot began the fatal war of La Vendée. Two hundred young men, assembled at the drawing of the militia, suddenly attacked the military, overcame them, obtained possession

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THE CAVALIER

VARADES-ANCENIS.

of two field-pieces, and, flushed with the victory, gave the signal of insurrection to the country.

Near Saint Florent is the bourg of Marillais, celebrated in former times for its sanctity. It is not very easy to say exactly to what was owing a reputation which, in the middle ages, drew so vast a concourse of pilgrims that one hundred oxen were required for their daily nourishment. We rarely find, however, that causes are proportionate in magnitude to their effects; and, as the most absurd trifle will in our own time turn the tide of fashion to a particular watering-place, so it frequently happened, in the triumphant days of Catholicism, that a miracle, which would be reckoned poor and paltry in one's own parish, drew the devout, the penitent, and the idle of all Christendom to the spot. From the steeps of Saint Florent, and more especially from their culminating point, called the Cavalier, the finest views of the Loire, so far as we have yet wandered, are obtained.

On the right bank of the river, a little lower down, the small town of Varades offers also some good points of view, particularly from the porch of the Magdaleine, which borders the valley, crowned with the ruins of an old château. Varades is seated in a vast area of meadows and pastures, with trees in the distance behind, and the river in front, broken by islands covered with groves.

Three leagues and a half from Varades by land is Ancenis, a town of four thousand inhabitants, which merits some attention. In modern history, beginning with the wars of the Plantagenets, it is one of the most celebrated places on the Loire, having suffered almost incredible vicissitudes, till the year 1488, when it was fairly blown to pieces by Louis VI, and the inhabitants scattered over the face of the country. It was fortified anew at the com

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mencement of the sixteenth century, and again demolished by Henry IV; and in 1700 the château was restored from its ruins, but with only the shadow of its ancient strength.

Ancenis, however, has other associations more attractive to the romantic and imaginative. It is supposed to have been the abiding place of that famous colony of Samnitæ mentioned by Strabo, with circumstances so strange, and unworldly. The two sexes, it appears, lived separately, the women inhabiting an island on the Loire, and only meeting their husbands at appointed times on the continent. On the island, supposed by M. Travers to be that of Bouin, there was a temple dedicated to Bacchus, in the service of which deity the women passed most of their time. On a certain day in the year they were accustomed to uncover the temple, and replace the roof before sunset; when each of the devotees took an equal share in the task, and carried her own portion of the materials. If it chanced that any one slipped in the course of the labour, and allowed her load to fall, the rest immediately threw themselves upon her, with frightful cries, tore her in pieces, and carried the mangled remains into the temple as an offering to the god. Strabo adds, that a year never passed without some victim falling a sacrifice to this terrible superstition.

At Ancenis the voyager on the river falls in with a very strange adventure. A steam-boat, resembling his own, puts out from the antique-looking port, advances boldly, runs alongside, throws out her grappling-irons, and boards him yard-arm and yard-arm. In vain the engineer goes on with his duty, the paddles work, and the vessel cuts through the water-the pertinacious privateer holds on like death. The hapless traveller is despoiled in a twinkling of his luggage and effects, and finally, his person is seized, and he is transferred, a prisoner of war, to the deck of the

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