half-demolished altar-piece--the gilded or the painted frieze--in the midst
of bales of goods--casks, ropes, and bags of cotton: while, without, the
same spirit of demolition prevails in the fractured column, and tottering
arch way. Thus time brings its changes and decays--premature as well as
natural: and the noise of the car-men and injunctions of the clerk are now
heard, where formerly there reigned a general silence, interrupted only by
the matin or evening chaunt! I deplored this sort of sacrilegious
adaptation, to a respectable-looking old gentleman, sitting out of doors
upon a chair, and smoking his pipe--"c'est dommage, Monsieur, qu'on a
converti l'église à"--He stopped me: raised his left hand: then took away
his pipe with his right; gave a gentle whiff, and shrugging up his
shoulders, half archly and half drily exclaimed--"Mais que voulez vous,
Monsieur?--ce sont des événemens qu'on ne peut ni prévoir ni prévenir.
Voilà ce que c'est!" Leaving you to moralize upon this comfortable morceau
of philosophy, consider me ever, &c.


[36] A most ample and correct view of this west front will be found in Mr.
_Cotman's Norman Antiquities_.

[37] It is about 180 English feet in width, by about 150 in the highest
part of its elevation. The plates which I saw at Mr. Frere's,
bookseller, upon the Quai de Paris, from the drawings of Langlois,
were very inadequate representations of the building.

[38] The ravages committed by the Calvinists throughout nearly the whole of
the towns in Normandy, and especially in the cathedrals, towards the
year 1560, afford a melancholy proof of the effects of RELIGIOUS
ANIMOSITY. But the Calvinists were bitter and ferocious persecutors.
Pommeraye, in his quarto volume, _Histoire de l'Eglise Cathedrale de