degree,' who claimed the site of the grave, and was appeased with 60
sous; and of the subsequent disturbance and destruction of his tomb by
the Huguenots; but the artistic traveller will be more interested in
these buildings as monuments of the architecture of the eleventh
century, and to notice the marks of the chisel and the mason's
hieroglyphics made in days so long gone by, that history itself becomes
indistinct without these landmarks--marks and signs that neither armies
of revolutionists nor eight centuries of time have been able to destroy.

We speak of 'eight centuries' in two words (the custodian of the place
has them glibly on his tongue), but it is difficult to comprehend this
space of time; to realise the fact of the great human tide that has
ebbed and flowed through these aisles for eleven generations--smoothing
the pillars by its constant wave, but leaving no more mark upon them
than the sea on the rocks of Calvados.

The contemplation of these two monuments may suggest a comparison
between two others that are rising up in western London at the present
time,--the 'Albert Memorial' and the 'Hall of Science.' They (the old
and the new) stand, as it were, at the two extremities of a long line of
kings, a line commencing with 'William the Bold,' and ending with
'Albert the Good;' the earlier monuments dedicated to Religion, the
latter to Science and Art--the first to commemorate a warrior, the
latter a man of peace--the first endurable through many ages, the latter
destructible in a few years.[17]

The comparison is surely worth making, for is it not curiously typical
of the state of monumental art in England in the present day, that we
are only doing what our ancestors did better? They erected useful,
appropriate, and endurable monuments which are still crowning ornaments