Page:Costello - A pilgrimage to Auvergne from Picardy to Velay - A 30154 1.pdf/20

6 father, a patriarch of ninety. She was from Amiens—a Picarde, and held in contempt the whole of Artois, where she assured us we should find nothing interesting—that Arras was a blank, and Bapaume a ¢row: we found her tolerably right in both particulars. But for the luxuriant hedges of hawthorn in full bloom, we should have found nothing to admire on the road, and were only struck with the neatness of the villages through which we passed, and the peculiarity of the Flemish-shaped roofs, vandyked and ornamented with variegated bricks: all, however, appeared to tell of wealth and ease, and the appearance of the peasantry, neat, clean and cheerful-looking, atoned in some measure for the flatness, coarseness and uninteresting character of the whole country as far as Arras.

From the incessant noise of our vehicle as we hurried over the paved road, we were glad to be delivered, and could scarcely persuade ourselves that any works of newer date than those of the Romans had occurred in Artois since the period when they traversed the country with their victorious chariots, and made ways so extensive that'a more modern race attributed them to supernatural agency. These Roman ways are however now only followed by the peasantry from village to village, and to them are known the scerets of their con-