WE should always remember Amiens, even were it not for the cathedral, because it was there we had the best dinner we ever ate in France.—In looking over my note-book I find I made at the time elaborate mention of the menu, and applied the adjective divine to a course of fresh mackerel served with an exquisite sauce.—As there may be readers who take interest, and perhaps pleasure, in dining well, I will here add that this excellent meal was eaten at the HÔtel de l’Univers. I can wish the visitor to Amiens no better luck than a dinner in this hotel prepared by the same artist.

It was a pity that, before leaving England—we had been so taken up with Mr. Sterne, whose sentiment was not to be distracted with cathedrals and old houses—we did not consult Mr. Ruskin, who probably thought of nothing else while he was in Amiens.—To the unsentimental traveller I would recommend the traveller’s edition of “Our Fathers have Told Us” (Part I. chap. iv.), rather than the “Sentimental Journey,” as a guide-book to the town.

We had two hours of daylight on the afternoon of our arrival, and we remained in the city until noon the next day, partly because there were many things to see, and partly on account of a heavy wind and rain storm in the morning. We were not much troubled by sentiment, though here Mr. Sterne’s overflowed into three chapters. But it was of a kind so impossible for us to simulate—not having left an Eliza in England, nor knowing a fair Countess in the town—we put all thought or hope of it aside, and went out to look about.

What pleased us most were the many canal-like branches of the Somme, old tumbled-down houses rising from the water, and little foot-bridges connecting them with opposite gardens. We liked, too, the wider and less modest main current of the river, where men or women in flat boats with pointed prows and square sterns, like inclined planes, were for ever poling themselves down stream beyond the embankment where the poplars begin.—But I remember we lingered longest on a bridge over a tiny canal from which there was a fine view of disreputably shabby back doors, women appearing and disappearing as they emptied their pails and pots, and of battered windows from which hung the family wardrobes. It was then, I believe, we pronounced Amiens the French Venice—an original idea which most likely occurs to every tourist fortunate enough to find his way to the banks of the Somme. Indeed I have since read that in the good old days, before a straight street had been dreamed of by city officials, the town was known as Little Venice.

Delightful as were the scenes by the river in the late afternoon, they were even more so in the early morning, when, from under a borrowed umbrella, we watched the open-air market. The embankment was carpeted with greens and full of noisy peasants. The prevailing tint, like that of the sky above, was a dull bluish grey, relieved here and there by a dash of white. Fastened to rings in the stone wall of the embankment, some thirty or forty of the boats with pointed prows lay on the water. Two, piled high with cabbages and carrots, the brightest bit of colour in the picture, were being poled towards the market-place. Others, laden with empty baskets, satisfied-looking women in the prow, a man at the stern, were on their homeward way. And above the river and the busy people and the background of houses the great cathedral loomed up, a “mass of wall, not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago.”

We found a priest saying Mass in the chapel behind the choir, the eastern light shining on him at the altar. His congregation consisted of four poor women and one great lady in silk attire kneeling in the place of honour. In the nave and aisles were a handful of tourists and two sentimental travellers—i.e., ourselves, who scorned to be classed as tourists—uttering platitudes under their breath about the unspeakable feeling of space and height, as if the cathedral existed but to excite their wonder.

We went also to the old belfry, a fine substantial pile, allowed to stand, I suppose, because to remove it would be too herculean a task. Our attention was distracted from it to a pair of French twins staggering by, arm in arm, both wearing baggy brown velveteen trousers, striped shirts and open coats, and little round caps, which rested on each curly head at exactly the same angle. It was rather absurd to discover that they were no greater oddities to us than we were to them. Of one accord they stopped to stare solemnly at J——’s knee-breeches and long stockings. Indeed I might as well say here, as in any other place, that we were greater objects of curiosity off the machine than on it.—Always, as in Calais, the eminently quiet and respectable Cyclists’ Touring Club uniform seemed to strike every French man and woman as a problem impossible to solve but easy to ridicule.