? Would she complete the fall which began when
knights and nobles turned courtiers--and roues? Let us read history to
her and remind her what centralization did for old France; let us
whisper to her, whilst there is time, what Paris is like in our own day.
Do we exaggerate the evils of over-centralization? We only at present,
half know them; but the next generation may discover the full meaning
of the word. There is exaggeration, no doubt; some men have lived so
long in the country that they speak of towns as a 'seething mass of
corruption,' pregnant of evil; and of villages as of an almost divine
Arcadia, whence nothing but good can spring; but the evils of
centralization can scarcely be overrated in any community. The social
system even in France, cannot revolve for ever round one sun.
CHAPTER VII.
_AVRANCHES--MONT ST. MICHAEL._
There are some places in Europe which English people seem, with one
consent, to have made their own; they take possession of them,
peacefully enough it is true, but with a determination that the
inhabitants find it impossible to resist. Thus it is that
Avranches--owing principally, it may be, to its healthiness and
cheapness of living, and to the extreme beauty of its situation--has
become an English country town, with many of its peculiarities, and a
few, it must be added, of its rather unenviable characteristics.
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