This fabric has a singular appearance, its strong arch, which still serves as a passage from one street to another, its thick walls of brick and small stone, its loops, through which the blue sky shines, and its ivy-covered masses make it very imposing.

The learned are divided as to its date: Ausonius does not name it in his enumeration of the works of Bordeaux; but its Roman origin, of whatever age, is undoubted.

It stands in a state of squalid neglect and dirt, sharing the fate of most of the antiquities of Bordeaux.

If the space were cleared, and the surrounding huts removed, a decent walk made, and the whole enclosed, this monument of former days might form an attractive object: as it is, the struggle to escape entanglement in every sort of dirt, while fighting one's way to the ruined amphitheatre, is almost too disheartening.

When these circumstances accompany a visit to antiquities in out-of-the-way places, such as Saintes, and distant and anti-commercial towns, such as Poitiers, one has no reproach to make to the inhabitants; but what is to be said for rich and flourishing Bordeaux,--the rival of Paris,--when she allows her monuments to remain in so degraded a state! One of the glories of Bordeaux is having been the birth-place of Montaigne, whose tomb is in the church of the Feuillants, now the college.