rocks; a cup of black coffee, with cognac, and a game of billiards, after dinner; and a long evening, with books or pen and paper, to wind up all. I can dress as I please, do what I please, be alone when I please. Few days pass without something human for the mind to ponder on. Even real physical inconveniences would be forgotten in so fine a spot. Stand with me in imagination on the sea-strand, at the mouth of the little valley, and look around. Behind you lies the village-the older houses of the perpetual inhabitants in the centre, close to the waters, and the fine new buildings of the Parisians on the ascents of either side. To your left, jutting far out into the sea, are L'Aiguille and the Porte d'Aval,—the former a huge needle-like pyramid rising out of the waters, the latter a great opening, like the door of a cathedral, through which one may pass at low tide; and behind them, inland, stretch the great white cliffs and precipices, fringed with grass and moss of exquisite hues. Passing close under those cliffs at low tide, standing upon a rocky pavement covered with many-coloured verdure, you find yourself in a vast natural cathedral, across whose blue roof ever and anon flies a black speck which you know to be a sea-gull. To the left of the village, you behold the tall cliffs on whose summit, solitary and open to the winds, stands the little chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde. At the foot of the cliffs, jutting into the waters, is the Porte d'Amont,— a natural gateway similar in structure to the Porte d'Aval. Close by yonder, is the famous Trou à Romain,-of which you will hear more by and by. But stand aside. There is a rumour that the herrings are passing opposite Fécamp, and that long line of quaint unwieldy luggers, drawn high up on the beach in the method described by Horace, "Trahit siccas machina carinas," is about to be launched. One by one, amid shoutings and gesticulations, the fishing-boats are dragged over the shingle by men and women, the latter doing far more than their fair share of the labour. One by one, they are manned, and spreading their brown sails to the fresh breeze, slip over the eastern horizon. Close against the houses, you behold the caloges-houses made of old boats Dofed with straw, and used as receptacles for sails and ordage. These primitive boat-houses-answering almost to Sallust's description of the inverted vessels used as residences by the nomads on the coast of Africa-lend the beach of Étretat tenfold picturesqueness and romance. One of them forms a bathing-house, and a cleaner person than Diogenes might be comfortable in some of the others. Nowadays, even in the summer months, fish are by no means plentiful at Etretat; but now again comes a shoal, and the beach, as now, is alive with the population. These fishers are fine fellows; most above twentyone years of age have been drawn for the marine conscription, and have served their country, and a large number have had many a dangerous cod-fishing excursion to Newfoundland. They are as polite as Parisians, without any of that servility which distinguishes the inland. population. Their fault is a love of French billiards and dominoes, and a tendency to lounge with their hands in their pockets. Watch these groups of women descending the steep shore, and each carrying a great white bundle of clothes upon her back. They hasten down to a spot close by the brink of the low sea and deposit the burthens. Then each takes a spade, or stick, or even her bare hands, and digs a hole about the size of a washing-basin, through which up bubbles the sweet water. They are soon on their knees, and all busy at work, soaping, wringing, and chattering busily all the while. By and by, when the sea compels them to depart, they will carry their cleansed burthens up to yonder steep hill-sides, and hang them on the furze and broom to dry. By that time they will have finished, not only the day's labour, but the day's gossiping; for the Fountain is their place of public discussion. Public affairs, private grievances, market news, love, marriage, death, everything, from the weather down to the last scandal, is ventilated there. Husbands who have misconducted themselves receive their due condemnation. The girl who has eaten forbidden fruit is detected and indicated. The Englishman who has arrived with bag and baggage to winter in Étretat, and whose shirts and collars that bright-eyed brunette is scouring into pristine whiteness, is discussed in a succession of little incidents for the edification of the assembly. Time was when the river flowed down the centre of this valley; but it has sunk never to rise again-plunging into the earth at Grainville l'Alonette, in the neighbour 66 hood of Havre, at a point still marked by a great mound of earth. To what cause is to be attributed its sudden disappearance no man can tell, unless he is content to accept the tradition afloat here among the old men. The story runs, that once upon a time there was a mill at Grainville l'Alonette, and that the river turned the wheel. Late one night, when the rain was falling from a black heaven, there came to the miller's door a poor gipsy woman, bearing on her back a little child. Wet, and cold, and hungry, she begged for bread to eat, and a bed of straw to lie on. But the miller was a hard man :— 'Begone!" he cried, driving the unfortunate from his door. While the mill-wheel roared, and the swollen river rushed, the gipsy turned upon the man, and the warm light, striking in her face from the door of the open dwelling, showed that death was there. "My curse upon you!" she cried, "and the curse of my child! Thou wilt repent this ere sunrise." So saying, she disappeared into the darkness. That night the mill-wheel stopped, and the miller, looking forth, saw that the bed of the stream was dry the river had disappeared for ever. The gipsy was found dead, clasping a dead child to her bosom; and the miller was a conscience-stricken and a ruined man-for where was the strong arm to turn the mill whereby he subsisted? The eye of the All-Just had seen it all; and, delightfully in accordance with the ideas of superstition, had wrought a miracle that made a whole valley suffer for the sins of one unmitigated rascal. If the miller had been a reflective person, there were certain ideas of human justice which may have lessened the weight of his own self-reproach. : As certainly as the river once flowed through the village, there once stood a Roman colony on the site where Étretat now stands; but it would be wearisome to cite the evidence whereby the Society of Normandy Antiquaries has established the fact beyond all contradiction. Ancient geographical charts indicate the existence of ruins at the mouth of the valley. These ruins have long since been utterly engulfed. But again and again, in the process of building and trenching, pieces of ancient masonry and antique objects of art have been dug up from the shingle. Roman tiles, medals, bronze clocks, spoons, and other domestic utensils, have been constantly found by the inhabitants, frequently in the process of sinking wells. Nay, portions of Roman villas have been discovered, with some of the chambers nearly perfect. Traces of a Gallo-Roman cemetery, with urns containing human dust, and of a burial-place of more recent date, that of the occupancy of the Franks,—have been found within a few years. By the time I have ceased musing on the heights above the Porte d'Aval, and am descending the precipitous path that leads down to the village, the people have done praying, and are returning home to dinner. So I wend. my way through the main street of the village, inland to the Petit Val, recently a dark and narrow glen, where the church stood solitary, but now dotted here and there by the châlets of summer residents. There stands the old church still, with its sombre masonry, its grim square tower, its quaint burial-place,-a strange contrast to the pretentious little masonic impertinences that are beginning to cluster around it. Bleak and barren, covered |