A SKETCH AT CHERBOURG.
There is a little difficulty, not insurmountable to an Englishman, with the assistance of his consul, in obtaining permission to visit the government works in progress, and now fast approaching completion; for the Government is courteous, if cautious, in this matter. The French people cannot help being polite; there is an English yacht riding in the harbour this morning, and the ladies, who have just come ashore, have every politeness and attention shewn to them; and the little yacht will refit, as so many do here in the summer, and take refuge again and again in this roadstead, with great convenience and many pleasant recollections of their reception.
If we had been upon these heights in the summer of 1858, and later in 1865, we might have seen the combined fleets of England and France in the roadstead; and, in the spring of 1865, with a good telescope, we might have witnessed a miniature naval engagement between the famous Alabama and the Kearsage, which took place a few miles from the shore.
The Port Militaire and the Arsenal de Marine at Cherbourg (which are said to be five times as large as Portsmouth), and its basins, in which a hundred sail of the line can be accommodated at one time, are sights which we scarcely realize in description, but which almost overwhelm us with their magnitude and importance, when seen from this vantage ground.
In three hours after leaving Cherbourg we may find ourselves settled in the little old-fashioned inn, called the Hôtel du Soleil Levant, at St. Lo, which we shall probably have entirely to ourselves.
St. Lo, although the chef-lieu of the department of La Manche, appears to the traveller a quiet, second-rate manufacturing town, well-situated and picturesquely built, but possessing no particular objects of interest excepting the cathedral; although visitors who have spent any time in this neighbourhood find it rich in antiquities, and a good centre from which to visit various places in the environs. In no part of this beautiful province do we see the country to better advantage, and nowhere than in the suburbs of St. Lo, shall we find better examples of buildings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
But St. Lo is dull, and there is a gloom about it that communicates itself insensibly to the mind; that finds expression in the worship of graven images by little children, and in the burning of innumerable candles in the churches. There is an air of untidiness and neglect about the town that no trim military regulations can alter, and a repose that no amount of chattering of the old women, or even the rattle of regimental drums, seems able to disturb. They do strange things at St. Lo in their quiet, dull way; they paint the names of their streets on the cathedral walls, and they make a post-office of one of its buttresses; they paste the trees all over with advertisements in the principal squares, and erect images of the Virgin on their warehouses. The master at our hotel calls to a neighbour across the street to come and join us at table, and the people at the shops stand outside, listlessly contemplating their own wares. There are at least 10,000 inhabitants, but we see scarcely anyone; a carriage, or a cart, startles us with its unusual sound, and every footstep echoes on the rough pavement. The arrival of the train from Paris; the commercial travellers that it brings, and the red liveries of the government grooms, leading out their horses, impart the only appearance of life to the town.
Nowhere in France does the military element seem more out of place, never did 'fine soldiers' seem so much in the way as at St. Lo. There is a parade to-day, there was a parade yesterday, and to-morrow (Sunday) there will be a military mass for a regiment leaving on foreign duty. It is all very right, no doubt, and necessary for the peace of Europe, the 'balance of power,' the consumption of pipe-clay, and the breaking of hearts sometimes; but, in contrast to the natural quiet of this place, the dust and noise are tremendous, and the national air (so gaily played as the troops march through the town) has, as it seems to us, an uncertain tone, and does not catch the sympathy of the bystanders. They stand gazing upon the pageant like the Venetians listening to the Austrian band—they are a peace-loving community at St. Lo.
But let us look well at the cathedral, at the grandeur of its spires, at its towers with open galleries, at the rich 'flamboyant' decoration of the doorways; at its monuments, chapels, and stained glass, and above all at the exterior pulpit, abutting on the street at the north-east end, which is one of the few remaining in France.