by Henry James, A Little Tour In France — Chapter XII
“ The look of things is neither modern nor antique, - a kind of mediocrity of middle age. There is an enormous number of blank walls, - walls of gardens, of courts, of private houses - that avert themselves from the street, as if in natural chagrin at there being so little to see. Round about is a dull, flat, featureless country, on which the magnificent cathedral looks down. There is a peculiar dulness and ugliness in a French town of this type, which, I must immediately add, is not the most frequent one. In Italy, everything has a charm, a color, a grace ”
