Pont Audemer is being modernised, and many an
interesting old building is doomed to destruction; whilst cotton-mills
and steam-engines, and little white villas amongst the trees, black
coats and parisian bonnets, all tend to blot out the memories of
mediaeval days. Let us make the most of the place whilst there is
time--and let us, before we pass on to Lisieux, add one picture of Pont
Audemer in the early morning--a picture which every year will seem less
real.[8]
There are few monuments or churches to examine, and when we have seen
the stained-glass windows in the fine old church of St. Ouen, and walked
by the banks of the Rille, to the ruins of a castle (of the twelfth
century) at Montfort; we shall have seen the chief objects of interest,
in what Murray laconically describes as, 'a prettily situated town of
5400 inhabitants, famed for its tanneries.'
_Early morning at Pont Audemer._
That there is 'nothing new under the sun,' may perhaps be true of its
rising; nevertheless, a new sensation awaits most of us, if we choose
to see it under various phases. The early morning at Pont Audemer is the
same early morning that breaks upon the unconscious inhabitants of a
London street; but the conditions are more delightful and very much more
picturesque; and we might be excused for presenting the picture on the
simple ground that it treats of certain hours of of the twenty-four, of
which most of us know nothing, and in which (such are the exigencies of
modern civilization) most of us do nothing.
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