Everywhere you go in France, the scenery seems to have been cultivated and tempered by the hand of man. It's as if the land has been molded and trimmed with an instinct for proportion. This celebrated Gallic measure is visible everywhere. You'll be conscious of it in Notre-Dame de Paris, Versailles, the place de la Concorde, and the Rouen Cathedral. You'll feel it in the Champs-Élysées; the Tuileries Gardens; the spires of Chartres; and such chateaux as Vaux-le-Vicomte and Fontainebleu in the Ile-de-France or Chenonceau and Chambord in the Loire Valley. In hundreds of places throughout the country, an unerring sens du plastique, or artistic sense, has been imparted to stone, iron, paint, and glass in such a way that these monuments still have the power, centuries after they were created, to lift the human spirit.