Jumieges fills nearly seventy closely-printed folio pages of that
curious and entertaining, though credulous, work.--What remains to be
told of its annals is little more than a series of dates touching the
erection of different parts of the building: these, however, are worth
preserving, so long as any portion of the noble church is permitted to
have existence, and so long as drawings and engravings continue to
perpetuate the remembrance of its details.

The choir and extremities of the transept, all of pointed architecture,
are supposed to have been rebuilt in 1278.--The Lady-Chapel was an
addition of the year 1326.--The abbey suffered materially during the
wars between England and France, in the reigns of our Henry IVth and
Henry Vth: its situation exposed it to be repeatedly pillaged by the
contending parties; and, were it not that the massy Norman architecture
sufficiently indicates the true date, and that we know our neighbors'
habit of applying large words to small matters, we might even infer that
it was then destroyed as effectually as it had been by Ironside: the
expression, "lamentabilitèr desolata, diffracta et annihilata," could
scarcely convey any meaning short of utter ruin, except to the ears of
one who had been told that a religious edifice was actually _abimé_
during the revolution, though he saw it at the same moment standing
before him, and apparently uninjured.--The arched roof of the choir
received a complete repair in 1535: that of the nave, which was also in
a very bad state, underwent the same process in 1688; at the same time,
the slender columns that support the cornice were replaced with new
ones, and the symbols of the Evangelists were inserted in the upper part
of the walls. These reparations are managed with a singular perception
of propriety; and though the manner of the sculpture in the symbolic
figures, is not that of a Gothic artist, yet they are most appropriate,
and harmonize admirably with the building.