"There," says the author of the "Studies of Nature," "There arise lofty battlemented towers, with trees growing from the summit like a head-dress. Gothic windows, resembling the entrances of caverns, open at intervals through the ivy. No living thing is seen in this desolate abode, save buzzards flying in silence round the walls; or, if you chance to hear the voice of a bird, it is that of some owl who builds here its hermit-nest. When I remember, in viewing this manor, that it was formerly the abode of petty tyrants, who there exercised their bandit-trade not only on their own vassals but on travellers, I think I see the carcass and bones of some huge wild beast."

"Alas!” exclaims M. Licquet, "who would recognise here the abode of the most formidable prince of his time? Roofless, floorless, nothing but fragments and ruins! Fern, nettles, and ivy, have usurped the palace of the Norman kings!"

To this Turner adds nothing in words; but behold how eloquent he is! That is a Study of Nature which would have been worthy the pencil of Saint Pierre himself.

CHAPTER VI.

SCENERY AND SENTIMENT.

RETURNING to the river-side, from which Lillebonne is distant nearly a league, we wandered on," thorough brake, thorough brier," for a considerable distance, without meeting with any thing worthy of note, except almost at every step an enchanting peep of the water. We looked out sharply for the "farm" mentioned by the compiler of a clever little guide-book published at Havre, but now out of print. It was invisible, however, to our eyes on the land, although the voyager will be more successful who employs his telescope as he sails up the river.

This "farm" (most vague and unsubstantial substantive!) was rendered illustrious, it seems, by the residence there of a gentleman whose adventure we should be anxious, with more time and space, to inquire into in detail.

In the year 1562, to be brief, when Rouen, in the hands of Montgommeri, was besieged by the Guise party, two lamentable accidents occurred. The King of Navarre was mortally wounded, and Monsieur Civille was struck in the face by a ball, which, passing straight through, re-entered the atmosphere at the back of his neck. He fell down in the ditch where he had been

fighting like a hero; and his comrades, although they had no time for an epitaph, covered the body up with a little loose earth, and left it to the worms.

A faithful servant of his house, however,- for Monsieur Civille was a knight and a gentleman-grieved that his master should lie thus undistinguished among the slain, obtained permission to search for the body, and, if successful, to bring it into the town for more befitting obsequies. He set out on the adventure in the dead of the night, hiding his lantern under his coat, till he had groped his way into the ditch, and was completely screened from the observation of the enemy on the surface of the earth. His heart was well fortified with the enthusiasm of loyalty and affection, or it must have failed him at that trying moment. The Golgotha in which he trod was heaped with the bodies of the slain; and as his foot now and then slipped on some blood-boltered corpse, he could not help fancying that it stirred and groaned.

No face that he saw resembled that of Monsieur Civille. Two or three, indeed, were so mangled that it would have been impossible to identify them, and among these, no doubt, was his master's; but how to discover which was the question. When at the very brink of despair, however, he saw the glitter of a gem, as it was touched by the rays of his lamp, on one of the dead men's fingers; and recognising a ring which Monsieur Civille was in the habit of wearing, he joyfully gathered up the owner, and, taking him on his back, made all the despatch in his power out of the ditch. More than once he stumbled among the bodies;