The charm of the little towns of Northern France is very difficult to imprison on paper.

It is not exactly that they are old, although there is scarcely one which has not a church or a chateau or a quaint medieval street worth coming far to see; nor that they are particularly picturesque, for the ground is fairly flat, and they are all but always set among the fields, since it is by agriculture far more than by manufacture that they live.

But they are clean and cheerful; one thinks of them under the sun; and they are very homely.

In them the folk smile simply at you, but not inquisitively as in England, for each bustles gaily about his own affairs, and will let you do what you please, with a shrug of the shoulders.

Abbeville is very typical of all this.