Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. GENERAL APPEARANCE OF PAU — VISITORS—PUBLIC PROMENADES—CLIMATE GENERAL APPEARANCE OF THE SCENERY — ASPECT OF THE TOWN ANCIKNT CHATEAU OF HENRY IV. On the morning after our arrival at Pau, we were surprised, on first looking out, to behold a wide, handsome square, with regular buildings on each side, noble avenues in the distance, and, as the day advanced, a tide of respectable and fashionable- looking English people, setting in towards a certain point, which looked extremely inviting. The same bright sunshine still blazed upon the scene, and there were ladies in light dresses, with their parasols, without which it is scarcely possible to look steadily at any object when the sun is shining here; while others rode forth in happy looking parties, with their hats and habits, just as in Hyde Park, only somewhat differently mounted. Nor was there wanting the usual proportion of dandies, still evidently English, notwithstanding all the pains they had taken to look French. And here, if I might presume to venture a remark upon thisclass of my countrymen, it would be to observe upon the futility, as well as the bad taste, of all such endeavours. The English countenance, if not good in itself, can never be made so by the garniture which the military habits of Frenchmen may have rendered more appropriate to them; and amongst the many anomalies which arrest the attention of the traveller abroad, it is by no means the least, to meet the light complexion, fair hair, rosy cheeks, and long upper lip, of a native Briton, under a disguise which only serves to render his identity more striking. Impatient to become acquainted with a place where we expected to spend some months, I took the earliest opportunity of quitting the hotel, and following the tide I had observed, s...