The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871

by Various

BORDEAUX.

One of the first objects that strikes the mariner ascending the Garonne towards Bordeaux is the ancient tower of St. Michel. I visited it the very morning after my arrival in that city. It is the belfry of a church of the same name, but is separated from it, being about forty yards distant. It was built in 1472, and is two hundred and fifty feet high. Formerly, it was over three hundred feet in height, but the steeple was blown down by a hurricane on the 8th of September, 1768. The view from the top is superb. Before you, like a map, lies the whole city—a noted commercial centre from the time of the Cæsars—encircling a great bend of the river. The eye is at first confused by the mass of roofs, spires, and streets, but in a moment singles out the great cruciform churches of St. André, Ste. Croix, and St. Michel. They lie beneath like immense crosses with arms stretched out—a perpetual appeal to heaven. Such remembrances of Calvary must ever stand between a sinful world and the justice of Almighty God. How can he look down upon all the iniquity of a great city, and not feel the silent Parce nobis of these sacred arms extended over it, repeating silently, as it were, the divine prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Oh! what a love for the Passion dwelt in the heart of the middle ages which built these churches. Absorbed in the thought, I lost sight of the city. Its activity, its historical associations, the fine buildings and extensive view, all disappear before the cross. Bordeaux is generally thought of only as a wine-mart, but it also has holier associations. "Every foot-path on this planet may lead to the door of a hero," it is said, and very few paths there are in this Old World that do not bring us upon the traces of the saints—the most heroic of men, who have triumphed over themselves, which is better than the taking of a strong city. They it was that made these great signs of the cross on the breast of this fair city, hallowing it for ever.

Beneath the tower of St. Michel is a caveau, around which are ranged ninety mummies in a state of preservation said to be owing to the nature of the soil. Why is it that every one is enticed down to witness so horrid a spectacle? Dust to dust and ashes to ashes is far preferable to these withered bodies, and a quiet resting-place, deep, deep in the bosom of mother earth till the resurrection. Edmond About says the twelfth century would have embroidered many a charming legend to throw around these bodies, but the moderns have less imagination, and the guardian of the tower, who displays them by the light of his poor candle, is totally deficient in poesy. Had this writer been at Bordeaux on the eve of All Souls' day, he would have been invited at the midnight hour, "when spirits have power," to listen to the lugubrious cries and chants that come up from the caveau, where, as the popular voice declares, these ninety forms are having their yearly dance—the dance of death! I wonder if the mummy next the door, as you gladly pass out into the upper air, has his hand still extended like an au revoir.... Yes, there is one place where we shall meet, but not in this repulsive form. May we all be found there with glorified bodies!

The church of St. Michel is older than the tower, having been built in the twelfth century. It is of the Gothic style, and one of those antique churches that speak so loudly to the heart of the traveller from the New World—one in which we are penetrated with

"An inward stillness,
That perfect silence when the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
In singleness of heart that we may know
His will, and in the silence of our spirits
That he may do his will, and do that only."

The ancients had a deep meaning when they represented the veiled Isis with her finger on her hushed lips. The soul profoundly impressed by the Divine Presence is speechless.

In one of the side chapels is the tomb of an old bishop of the middle ages, in a niche of the wall. On it he lies carven in stone, with the mitre on his head, and clad in his pontifical vestments, and his hands folded in prayer.

"Still praying in thy sleep
With lifted hands and face supine,
Meet attitude of calm and reverence deep,
Keeping thy marble watch in hallowed shrine."

The cathedral of St. André is another of these venerable monuments of the past. Founded in the fourth century, destroyed by the barbarians, restored by Charlemagne, and again ruined by the Normans, it was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and consecrated by Pope Urban II., in 1096. I went there at an early hour to offer up my thanksgiving for the happy end of this stage of my journey. The canons were just chanting the hours, which reverberated among the light arches with fine effect. Masses were being offered in various chapels, and there were worshippers everywhere. I was particularly struck with the devout appearance of a venerable old man in one of the dimmest and most remote chapels, enveloped in a hooded cloak, with the capuche drawn over his head. He looked as if his soul, as well as his body, was almost done with time.

Through all these aisles and oratories, which whispering lips filled with the perfume of prayer streaming through the old windows came the morning sun,

"Whose beams, thus hallowed by the scenes they pass,
Tell round the floor each parable of glass."

I can still see the purple light filling the chapel of the Sacred Heart and ensanguining the uplifted Host.

"A sweet religious sadness, like a dove,
Broods o'er this place. The clustered pillars high
Are roséd o'er by the morning sky:
And from the heaven-hued windows far above,
Intense as adoration, warm as love,
A purple glory deep is seen to lie.
Turn, poet, Christian, now the serious eye,
Where, in white vests, a meek and holy band,
Chanting God's praise in solemn order, stand.
O hear that music swell far up and die!
Old temple, thy vast centuries seem but years,
Where wise and holy men lie glorified!
Our hearts are full, our souls are occupied,
And piety has birth in quiet tears!"

And all the worshippers in this church were turned toward the holy East, whence cometh the Son of Man. The glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the East. I like this orientation of churches now too much neglected. The old symbolic usages of the church should be perpetuated. This turning to the East in prayer was at one age the mark of a true believer, distinguishing him from those who had separated from the church. True, some of the old basilicas at Rome and elsewhere have their altars at the west, but, according to the ritual of such churches, the priest turns toward the people, thus looking to the East. Cassiodorus and others say that our Lord on the cross had his face toward the west. So, in directing our thoughts and hearts to Calvary, it is almost instinctive to look to the East.

"With hands outstretched, bleeding and bare,
He doth in death his innocent head recline,
Turning to the west. Descending from his height,
The sun beheld, and veiled him from the sight.
Thither, while from the serpent's wound we pine,
To thee, remembering that baptismal sign,
We turn and drink anew thy healing might."

Let us, then, place, as Wordsworth says,

"Like men of elder days,
Our Christian altar faithful to the east,
Whence the tall window drinks the morning rays."

While I was lingering with peculiar interest before a monument to the memory of Cardinal de Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, and afterward Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose memory is revered in the Old World and the New, I heard a chanting afar off, and, looking around, saw through the open door a funeral procession coming hastily along the street toward the church, and singing the Miserere—coming, not with mournful step and slow, as with us, but like the followers of Islam, who believe the soul is in torment between death and burial, and so lay aside their usual dignified deportment and hurry the body to the grave. But in France the funeral cortége does not necessarily include the relatives, and I felt this very haste might be typical of their eagerness to commence the Office of the Dead. Anyhow, I forgave them when, in the chapel draped in black, I saw them devoutly betake themselves to prayer during the Holy Sacrifice. I, too, dropped my little bead of prayer for the eternal rest of one whose name I know not, but which is known to God.

"Help, Lord, the souls which thou hast made,
The souls to thee so dear;
In prison for the debt unpaid,
Of sins committed here."

The confessionals seemed to be greatly frequented the day I was at St. André's—those sepulchres into which rolls the great burden of our sins. There

"The great Absolver with relief
Stands by the door, and bears the key,
O'er penitence on bended knee."

What non-Catholic has not felt, at least once in his life, as if he would give worlds for the moral courage to lay down the burden of memory at the feet of some holy man endowed with the power of absolving from sin! Almighty God has made his church the interpreter between himself and his creatures; hence the peculiar grace a holy confessor has to meet the wants of the human heart laid bare before him. Zoroaster told his disciples that the wings of the soul, lost by sin, might be regained by bedewing them with the waters of life found in the garden of God. It is only the consecrated priest who has the power of unsealing this fountain to each one of us. These confessionals are distributed in the various chapels, everywhere meeting the eye of the parched and sin-worn traveller who would

"Kneel down, and take the word divine,
Absolvo te."

Of course there is a Ladye Chapel in this church, as in all others. Jesus and Mary, whose names are ever mingled on Catholic lips, the first they learn and the last they murmur, are never separated in our churches. Devotion to the Virgin has grown up through the church, beautifying and perfuming it like the famous rose-bush in the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany—the oldest of all known rose-bushes. It takes root under the choir in the crypt. Its age is unknown, but a document proves that nearly a thousand years ago Bishop Hezilo had it protected by a stone roof still to be seen. So with devotion to our Mystical Rose—quasi plantatio rosæ in Jericho—its roots go down deep among the foundations of the church; saints have protected and nourished it, and all nations come to sit under its vine and inhale its perfume.

"Blossom for ever, blossoming rod!
Thou didst not blossom once to die:
That life which, issuing forth from God,
Thy life enkindled, runs not dry.

"Without a root in sin-stained earth,
'Twas thine to bud salvation's flower,
No single soul the church brings forth
But blooms from thee, and is thy dower."

What a safeguard to man is devotion to Mary Most Pure! It is like the Pridwin—the shield of King Arthur—on which was emblazoned the Holy Virgin, warding off the strokes of the great enemy of souls.

There are some poetical associations connected with Bordeaux: among others, the memory of the troubadours who enriched and perfected the Romance tongue, but whose songs at last died away in the sad discord of the Albigensian wars. Here the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine held her court of love, gathering around her all the famous troubadours of her time, and deciding upon the merits of their songs. Among these was her favorite, Bernard de Ventadour, chiefly known to fame by being mentioned by Petrarch. Eleanor herself was a musician and a lover of poetry—tastes she inherited from her grandfather, William, Duke of Aquitaine, generally called the Count de Poitiers, one of the earliest of the troubadours whose songs have come down to us. Around this charming queen of love and song gathered the admiring votaries of la gaia sciencia, like nightingales singing around the rose, all vowing, as in duty bound, that their hearts were bleeding on the horns!

Poor maligned Eleanor was too gay a butterfly for the gloomy court of Louis VII. She wanted the bright sun of her own province in which to float, and the incense of admiring voices to waft her along. She herself was a composer of chansons, and is reckoned among the authors of France. She dearly loved Bordeaux, her capital, and was adored by its people. Here she was married with great pomp to Louis, after which the Duke of Aquitaine laid aside his insignia of power, and, assuming the garb of a hermit, went on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, and devoted the remainder of his life to prayer and penance in hermitage on Montserrat, by way of preparation for death. It is well to pause awhile before plunging into the great ocean of eternity.

These pilgrimages to Compostella were exceedingly popular in that age, and hospices for the pilgrims to that shrine were to be found in all the large cities and towns. There was one at Auch, and another at Paris in the Rue du Temple, which was particularly celebrated and served by Augustinian nuns. And here at Bordeaux was the Hospice of St. André for the reception of the weary votary of St. Jago.

"Here comes a pilgrim," says one of Shakespeare's characters. "God save you, pilgrim. Where are you bound?"

"To St. Jacques le Grand. Where do the palmers lodge, I beseech you?"

"Eftsoones unto an holy hospitall
That was forby the way, she did him bring,
In which seven bead-men that had vowed all
Their life to service of high heaven's King,
Did spend their daies in doing godly thing;
Their gates to all were open evermore,
That by the wearie way were travelling,
And one sate wayting ever them before
To call in comers-by, that needy were and pore."

Digby says the hospitality and charity of these hospices had their origin in the bishops' houses. Fortunatus thus speaks of Leontius II., Archbishop of Bordeaux, who, in accordance with the apostle's injunction, was given to hospitality:

"Susceptor peregrum distribuendo cibum.
Longius extremo si quis properasset ab orbe,
Advena mox vidit, hunc ait esse patrem."

That the devotion of the middle ages is yet alive in the church is proved by the influx of pilgrims at the shrine of St. Germaine of Pibrac, at Notre Dame de Lourdes, and a thousand other places of popular devotion. So great is the number of pilgrims to Lourdes, drawn by the brightness of Mary's radiant form, that the railway between Tarbes and Pau was turned from its intended direct line in order to pass through Lourdes. In one day the train from Bayonne brought nine hundred, and at another time over a thousand pilgrims. And as for the continued charity and hospitality of the church, witness the monks of St. Bernard and of Palestine, known to all the world. How disinterested is genuine Catholic charity, done unto the Lord and not unto man! Some suppose the good works practised among us is by way of barter for heaven, but they little know the spirit of the church. Charity is one expression of its piety, which, in its highest manifestations, is devoid of self-interest. Listen to John of Bordeaux, a holy Franciscan friar, who, after quoting a saying of Epictetus, that we generally find piety where there is utility, says: "He does not come up to the standard of pure Christianity: he pretends that piety takes its birth in utility, so that it is interest that gives rise to devotion. Yes, among the profane, but not among Christians, who, acquainted with the maxims of our holy religion, have no other end but to serve God for his love and for his glory; forgetting all considerations of their own advantage, they aspire to attain to that devotion which is agreeable to him without any view to their own interest."

And in these practical times another holy writer, Dr. Newman, says in the same spirit: "They who seek religion for culture's sake, are æsthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they can never have the religion. To seek religion for the present elevation, or even the social improvement it brings, is really to fall from faith which rests in God, and the knowledge of him as the ultimate good, and has no by-ends to serve."

But to return to the romantic associations of this land of the vine, we recall the celebrated old romance of Huon of Bordeaux, which contains some delightful pictures of the age of chivalry. Here is one which I have abridged, showing how the religious spirit was inwoven with the impulses of the knightly heart. The Emperor Thierry, furious because his nephews and followers had been slain by Huon, seized upon Esclarmonde (Huon's wife) and her attendants, and threw them into a dungeon, there to await death. Huon, greatly afflicted at this, disguised himself as a pilgrim from the Holy Land, and set out for Mayence, where the emperor lived. He arrived on Maunday-Thursday, and learned that it was the custom of the emperor to grant the petitions of him who first presented himself after the office of Good Friday morning. Huon was so overjoyed at this information that he could not sleep all that night, but betook himself to his orisons, imploring God to inspire and aid him so he might again behold his wife. When morning came, he took his pilgrim staff and repaired to the chapel. As soon as the office was ended, he contrived to be the first to attract attention. He told the emperor he was there to avail himself of the custom of the day in order to obtain a grace. The emperor replied that, should he even demand fourteen of his finest cities, they would be given him, for he would rather have one of his fists cut off than recede from his oath; therefore to make known his petition, which would not be refused. Then Huon requested pardon for himself and for all of his who might have committed some offence. The emperor replied: "Pilgrim, doubt not that what I have just promised, I will fulfil, but I beg you right humbly to tell me what manner of man you are, and to what country and race you belong, that you request such grace from me." Huon then made himself known. The emperor's face blanched while listening to him, and for a long time he was unable to speak. At last he said: "Are you, then, Huon of Bordeaux, from whom I have received such ills—the slayer of my nephews and followers? I cannot cease wondering at your boldness in presenting yourself before me. I would rather have lost four of my best cities, have had my whole dominions laid waste and burned, and I and my people banished for three years, than find you thus before me. But since you have thus taken me by surprise, know in truth that what I have promised and vowed I will hold good, and, in honor of the Passion of Jesus Christ, and the blessed day which now is, on which he was crucified and dead, I pardon you all hatred and evil-doing, and God forbid that I should hold your wife, or lands, or men, which I will restore to your hands." Then Huon threw himself on his knees, beseeching the emperor to forgive the injury he had done him. "God pardon you," said the emperor. "As for me, I forgive you with right good will," and taking Huon by the hand, he gave him the kiss of peace. Huon then said: "May it please our Lord Jesus Christ that this guerdon be returned to you twofold." Then the prisoners were released, and, after a sumptuous entertainment, the emperor accompanied Huon and his noble lady on their way back to Bordeaux.

Bordeaux is interesting to the English race, because, among other reasons, it was for about three hundred years a dependency of the English crown, being the dowry of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married Henry II. after her divorce from Louis le Jeune. We associate the city, too, with Froissart and the Black Prince, who held his court here. Richard II. was born hard by at the Château de Lormont. And Henry III. came here to receive his son's bride, Eleanor of Castile, and gave her so extravagant a marriage feast as to excite the remonstrances of his nobles. The country prospered under the English government. The merchants had especial privileges granted them by Eleanor, and their wines then, as now, found a ready market in London. Bordeaux in particular increased wonderfully, and outgrew its defensive walls. The church of St. Michel dates from the time of English domination, and in that quarter of the city may be seen old houses, one story projecting beyond the other, and the whole surmounted by a pyramidal roof, said to be of English origin, and such as are to be seen in some of the oldest streets of London.

Eleanor always used her influence for the benefit of her people. The most ancient charter of privileges granted the Gascon merchants was given by her on the first of July, 1189.

The English seem to have taken their war-cry from the old dukes of Aquitaine who charged to the sound of "St. George for the puissant duke." A devotion to St. George was brought from the East by the Crusaders. Richard I. placed himself and his army under the special protection of this saint, who, the redoubted slayer of the dragon and the redresser of woman's wrongs, appealed to the tenderest instincts of the chivalric heart. St. George's remains were brought from Asia by the Crusaders, and a large part is enshrined at Toulouse, in the great basilica of St. Sernin. The crest of the dukes of Aquitaine was a leopard, which the kings of England bore for a long time on their shields. Edward III. is called a valiant pard in his epitaph.

These old dukes of Aquitaine seem always to have gone to extremes either as sinners or saints. Eleanor's grandfather, as I have said, was one of the earliest of the troubadours. He was distinguished for his bravery, his musical voice, and his manly beauty. His early life was such as to incur the censure of the bishop, but he ended his career in penitence, and the last of his poems is a farewell á la chevalerie qu'il a tant aimée for the sake of the cross. He was one of the first to join the crusades at the head of sixty thousand warriors, but he lost his troops and gained neither glory nor renown.

The term Aquitaine was given this country by Julius Cæsar on account of its numerous rivers and ports. The ancient province of this name extended from the Loire to the Pyrenees. In the time of the Roman dominion, Bordeaux was its capital under the name of Burdigala. The origin of the city is uncertain. Strabo, who lived in the first century, mentions it as a celebrated emporium. Some suppose its first inhabitants to have been of Iberian origin. The real history of the city commences about the middle of the third century, when Tetricus, governor of Aquitaine, assumed the purple and was proclaimed emperor. About the same time St. Martial preached in this region. But the pagan divinities were still invoked in the time of Ausonius. In the annals of the Council of Arles, in 314, Orientalis, Bishop of Bordeaux, is mentioned.

The intellectual superiority of the Romans was always even more potent than the force of their arms. Barbarism disappeared before the splendor of their civilization. Burdigala under their dominion felt the influence of this superiority, and rose to such a degree of magnificence and luxury as to be a theme for Ausonius, St. Jerome, and Sidonius Apollinaris. The remains of buildings at Bordeaux belonging to this epoch give an idea of its prosperity and importance. There is still an arena in ruins, commonly called the Palais-Gallien, but the most remarkable Roman monument of the city was a temple called Piliers de Tutelle, which, partly ruined, was demolished in 1677, by the order of Louis XIV., for the construction of a quay. Schools were established at Bordeaux at an early day. We learn from St. Jerome that in his time the liberal arts were in the most flourishing condition here. In the time of the Roman dominion, there were universities at Bordeaux, Auch, Toulouse, Marseilles, Trèves, etc. The edicts issued for their benefit showed the importance attached to their prosperity by the government. The college of Bordeaux furnished professors for Rome and Constantinople. Valentinian I. chose Ausonius, a native of Bordeaux, to superintend the education of his son Gratian. When the latter became emperor, he made his old tutor a Roman consul (A.D. 379). The poems of Ausonius are still admired, but there is much in them that is reprehensible. They were translated into French by M. Jaubert, a priest at Bordeaux, who lived in the last century.

That the wines of Aquitaine were already celebrated in the fourth century is shown by the writings of Ausonius

"Ostrea
Non laudata minus, nostri quam gloria vini."

St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, lived at this time. He was born at Bordeaux in the year 353, and was descended from a long line of illustrious senators. One of the several estates he owned near the city still bears the name of Le Puy Paulin, puy being a word from the langue Romaine, perhaps synonymous with the Latin word podium. One of the public squares of Bordeaux also bears the same name. Paulinus possessed great elevation of mind and a poetical genius, which he cultivated under Ausonius, for whose care he expresses his gratitude in verse. But Ausonius was magnanimous enough to acknowledge that Paulinus excelled him as a poet and that no modern Roman could vie with him.

In his early life Paulinus held dignified offices under government, but his intercourse with St. Delphinus, bishop of Bordeaux, inspired him with a love for retirement, in which his wife, a Spanish lady of wealth, participated. They passed over into Spain, and spent four years there in the retirement of the country, but not as anchorites. He seemed to have given up all of life but its sweetness when he composed the following prayer: "O Supreme Master of all things, grant my wishes, if they are righteous. Let none of my days be sad, and no anxiety trouble the repose of my nights. Let the good things of another never tempt me, and may my own suffice to those who ask my aid. Let joy dwell in my house. Let the slave born on my hearth enjoy the abundance of my stores. May I live surrounded by faithful servants, a cherished wife, and the children she will bring me."

While in Spain they lost their only son, whom they buried at Alcala, near the bodies of the holy martyrs Justus and Pastor. This loss weaned them completely from the world. Their Spanish solitude had been a garden of roses, but now they chose the lily as their emblem, and resolved to lead a monastic life. Paulinus received holy orders, and they both sold all they possessed and gave the money to the poor. This drew upon Paulinus the contempt of the world. Even his own relatives and former slaves rose up against him, but to all their invectives he only replied: "O beata injuria displicere cum Christo." "O blessed scorn that is shared with Christ." Ausonius, in particular, was grieved to see the extensive patrimony of Paulinus cut up among a hundred possessors, and reproached him in bitter terms for his madness. But if the world rejected him, he was received with open arms by such men as St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. His devotion to St. Felix, whose tomb he had visited in his childhood, induced him to fix his residence near Nola in Campania. Here he lived close by the church where his favorite saint was enshrined. He had put on the livery of Christ's poor ones, and contented himself with his cell and garden-plot. And his meekness and sanctity, joined to his talents as a writer, drew upon him the admiration of the world. Persons of the highest rank from all parts went to see him in his retreat, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine testify. In his seclusion he writes poems that have all the delicacy and grace of Petrarch. He describes the church of his loved saint, whose life and miracles he is never weary of dwelling on, as hung with white draperies and gleaming with aromatic lamps and tapers; the porch is wreathed with fresh flowers, and the cloisters strewn with blossoms; and pilgrims come down from the mountains, marching even at night by the light of their torches, bringing their children in sacks, and their sick on litters, to be healed at the tomb; for all the world, a picture of an Italian shrine of these days.

He loved the humblest duties of the sanctuary. "Suffer me to remain at thy gates," he says. "Let me cleanse thy courts every morning, and watch every night for their protection. Suffer me to end my days amid the employments I love. We take refuge within your hallowed pale and make our nest in your bosom. It is herein that we are cherished, and expand into a better life. Casting off the earthly burden, we feel something divine springing up within us, and the unfolding of the wings which are to make us equal to the angels." These words sound as if coming from the cloistered votary of the middle ages, or even of the nineteenth century; the same is the spirit of the church in all ages.

The writings of St. Paulinus show his devotion to the saints and their relics, a belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead, and in the doctrine of the Real Presence. What can be more explicit, for instance, than these lines on the Holy Eucharist?

"In cruce fixa caro est, quâ pascor; de cruce sanguis
Ille fluit, vitam quo bibo, corda lavo."

He adorned the walls of his church with paintings and composed inscriptions for the altar, under which were deposited the relics of St. Andrew, St. Luke, St. Nazarius, and others, and sings thus:

"In regal shrines with purple marble graced,
Their bones are 'neath illumined altars placed.
This pious band's contained in one small chest
That holds such mighty names within its tiny breast."

After fifteen years of retirement, St. Paulinus was made bishop of Nola. Shortly before he died, as the lamps were being lighted for the Vesper service, he murmured,

"I have trimmed my lamp for Christ."

The prosperity of Bordeaux under the Romans was interrupted by the invasion of the barbarians that swept down from the north, bringing ruin and desolation to the land. For nearly a century the city remained in the power of the Visigoths, who, being Arians, persecuted the Catholic inhabitants. Sidonius Apollinaris deplores the injury done to learning by their invasion, but perhaps the decline of learning was partly owing to a growing distaste for pagan literature among Christians. The barbarians were finally routed by Clovis in 507, and he took possession of Bordeaux. Charlemagne made Aquitaine a kingdom for his son Louis le Débonnaire. Louis, son of Charles le Chauve, was the last king of Aquitaine. When he ascended the throne of France, it resumed its former rank as a duchy.

The college of Guienne was founded here in the middle ages. In the sixteenth century, it had, at one time, twenty-five hundred pupils. The famous George Buchanan, whom everybody knows, because his head adorns the cover of Blackwood's Magazine, but who is more spoken of than read, taught in this college three years. He came here in 1539. Among his pupils was the great Montaigne, who passed most of his life at Bordeaux and is buried in the church of the Feuillants. As Buchanan was somewhat given to hilarity and loved the flavor of Gascon wines, this city probably had its attractions for him. In his Maiæ Calendæ, full of gaiety and merry-making, he speaks of the grapes of the sandy soil of Gascony:

"Nec tenebris claudat generosum cella Lyæum,
Quem dat arenoso Vasconis uva solo."

One vintage season, Buchanan went to Agen to enjoy it at the residence of his friend, the celebrated Julius Scaliger, who had been a professor at the college of Guienne, but was now settled as a physician at Agen.

Among the other literary celebrities of Bordeaux is Arnaud Berquin, whose charming writings are still popular. His Ami des Enfants was crowned by the French Academy in 1784. And Montesquieu was born at the château of La Brède near Bordeaux, whence he took his title of Baron de la Brède.

Bordeaux is now the finest city in France after Paris, and it ranks next to Lyons in importance. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote what a popular French author of the day says of it:

"Bordeaux is five miles long and has one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants: plenty of room for few people. But the entire population does not breathe at its ease. If the grass be growing in the streets and squares of the new town, there is some stifling felt in the old districts. The Jews, chapmen, brokers, and marine store men live in a dirty and unhealthy hive, and their shops form no straight line along the narrow and unpaved streets. You may still see a quantity of those paunchy, hunchbacked, and decrepit houses, which form the delight of romantic archæology, and you need only go to Bordeaux to form an accurate idea of old Paris. In the new town all is vast, rectilinear, and monumental: the streets, squares, avenues, esplanades and buildings rival the splendor of what we are taught to admire in Paris. The Grand Thèâtre, containing only twelve hundred persons, has the imposing aspect of a Colosseum and a staircase which might be transferred with advantage to our Opera. The cafés are truly monuments, and I saw a bathing establishment which bore a strong resemblance to a necropolis. All this grandeur dates from Louis XV. and Louis XVI. The population of Bordeaux is one of the prettiest specimens of the French nation. The women possess more expression than freshness, but with good hair, good eyes, and white teeth, a woman cannot but look well. The men have a sharp look, a lively mind, and brilliancy of language."

One of the glories of Bordeaux is the bridge across the Garonne built by order of Napoleon the Great. It has seventeen arches, and there is an interior gallery communicating from one arch to another which is accessible.

There are some fine pictures in the Musée des Tableaux—a Perugino, and others by Titian, Vandyke, Rubens, etc. Some excellent artists have been formed in the School of Design, among whom is Rosa Bonheur. But the people in general are more fond of music and the drama than the other fine arts.

The commerce of Bordeaux is extensive, but is surpassed by that of Havre, perhaps because there is too much of the laisser-aller in a more southern temperament. Nevertheless, the city is progressing. The port, says the author already quoted, is a third edition of the Thames at London and the Golden Horn at Constantinople.

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