century; we see the great Gothic hall of the Knights of Mont St.
Michael, with its carved stone-work and lofty roof, supported by three
rows of pillars, beautiful in proportion, and grand in effect, although
the Revolution, as usual, has left us little but the bare walls; but, as
we look down upon it from a gallery, it is easy to picture the splendour
of a banquet of knights in the twelfth century, with the banners and
insignia of chivalry ranged upon the walls.[32] But it is now a silent
gloomy chamber, and the atmosphere is so close and the moral atmosphere
so heavy withal, that we are glad to leave it, and to ascend to another
story of this wonderful pile; through the beautiful Gothic cloisters,
and out upon the cathedral roof, where we suddenly emerge upon a view
more wonderful in its extent and flatness than anything, save that from
the cathedral tower of Chartres; before us an horizon of sea, behind us
the coast line, and the hills of Avranches; all around, a wide plain of
sand, and northward, in the far distance, the low dark lines of the
channel islands.

That 'Saint Michael's Mount has become a popular lion, and can only be
seen under the vexatious companionship of a guide and a party' is true
enough; nevertheless, we can stay at the inn on the island, and thus be
enabled to examine and make drawings of some of the most beautiful
thirteenth-century work in the cloisters that we shall meet with in
Normandy. These cloisters and open arcades (supported by upwards of two
hundred slender pillars) are carved and decorated with grotesque and
delicate ornament, the capitals to the pillars are richly foliated, and
the fringe that surrounds them has been well described as a 'wilderness
of vines and roses, and dragons, winged and crowned.'

Like the churches in Normandy, the architecture of these monastic
buildings is in nearly every style, from the simple romanesque of the