The château of Pierrefonds ought to be visited from Compiègne. The ruins must be interesting, and I believe the site is very picturesque. It is a fashionable place of resort, and at a distance of some three hours through the forest from Compiègne. M. Viollet-le-Duc’s description of the buildings is known probably to most of your readers.
From Compiègne I made my way to Soissons. It was here that on this journey I came first on the grand style which distinguishes the buildings of this part of France. Laon, chief in grandeur, both natural and architectural, Noyon, S. Quentin, Meaux, and Soissons, are magnificent illustrations of the main features of the style: whilst smaller churches, remains of abbeys, such as those of Ourscamp (near Noyon) and Longpont (near Soissons), and of castles, such as Coucy-le-Château, enable us to appreciate all its varieties. It is to be hoped that the stream of English travellers will for the future set more in this direction than it has hitherto done, since it is now possible in going to Strasbourg to take the railway through this country to Rheims, and in so doing to make acquaintance with a group of churches, which impress me more and more each time that I see them. They are remarkable evidence also of the wonderful vigour of the age in which they were built: for they are all of very nearly the same date--the end of the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth century, and conceived on the grandest possible scale. Indeed, France, under Philip Augustus, affords a spectacle such as perhaps no other country in the world can show. For if we think of the wars which characterized his reign, it is almost incredible that it should nevertheless at the same time have been possible to found such cathedrals as those of Paris, Bourges, Chartres, Amiens, Laon, Meaux, Soissons, Noyon, Rouen, Séez, Coutances, Bayeux: yet such was the case, and some of them were completed in but a few years with extraordinary energy.
[Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AT SOISSONS]
Few things are more impressive than the cathedral of Laon, even in its present state: and what must it not have been with its central steeple and the six towers and spires which once adorned its several fronts, rising, as they all did, from the summit of a mighty hill, seen on all sides for many a long mile by the dwellers in the plain which stretches away from its feet! And yet, magnificent as is the cathedral of Laon, it is one only among many; and such a city as Soissons, inferior as it is in situation, affords nevertheless in its architectural remains, matter of almost equal interest.