The expression and attitude of these figures are touching in the
extreme. All these monuments are highly interesting, and worthy of being
studied in detail. The Church is disfigured by not a few modern
frivolities and vulgarities.
Many objects illustrating the pre-historic and most ancient periods of
French history have been found at Baume; bronze weapons and ornaments,
Gallo-Roman relics, tombs, statuettes, &c., whilst a Roman camp, the
largest in the Jura, has been traced on the summit of the rocks. This
was destined to protect the road from Lyons to the Rhine, and occupied
the height known as Mount Sermus.
Baume shared the fate of most other ecclesiastical establishments in the
iconoclastic period of the French Revolution, and when we consider what
the pitch of popular fury was then, we are rather tempted to wonder that
anything was left, rather than that so many treasures were destroyed.
Our way home lay through the picturesque valley of the Seille, and past
many places celebrated for their wines or antiquities. Vines, maize,
buckwheat, potatoes, and hay covered the hillside and the plain, whilst
poplar and fruit trees gave abundant shadow. We pass Voiteur, with its
ruins; Chateau Chalon, ancient Celtic _oppidum_, renowned for its wines,
like Tokay, 'veritable Madere sec Francais, genereux,' the Chateau du
Pin, massive donjon perched on a hill, and still habitable, where Henry
IV.
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