The conservative influence of all this on his character (which, although
we are in France, we must call 'home-feeling'), its tendency to
contentment and self-respect, are subjects suggestive enough, but on
which we must not dwell. It flourished during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, and it declined when men commenced crowding into
cities, and were no longer 'content to do without what they could not
produce.'[14]

Let us stay quietly at Lisieux, if we have time, and _see_ the place,
for we shall find nothing in all Normandy to exceed it in interest; and
the way to see it best, and to remember it, is, undoubtedly, to
_sketch_. Let us make out all these curious 'bits,' these signs, and
emblems in wood and stone--twigs and moss, and birds with delicate
wings, a spray of leaves, the serene head of a Madonna, the rampant
heraldic griffin,--let us copy, if we can, their colour and the marks of
age. We may sketch them, and we may dwell upon them, here, with the
enthusiasm of an artist who returns to his favourite picture again and
again; for we have seen the sun scorching these panels and burning upon
their gilded shields; and we have seen the snow-flakes fall upon these
sculptured eaves, silently, softly, thickly--like the dust upon the
bronze figures of Ghiberti's gates at Florence--so thickly fall, so soon
disperse, leaving the dark outlines sharp and clear against the sky; the
wood almost as unharmed as the bronze.

But more interesting, perhaps, to the traveller who sees these things
for the first time, more charming than the most exquisite Gothic lines,
more fascinating than their quaint aspect, more attractive even than
their colour or their age, are the associations connected with them; and
the knowledge that they bear upon them the direct impress of the hands
that built them centuries ago, and that every house is stamped, as it