highest
glory in nautical affairs. They lay claim to the honor of having first
planted the standard of Christianity upon the coast of Guinea, where
they established a settlement in the fourteenth century; of having been
the first who discovered the great river of the Amazons; and also the
first who sailed up that of St. Lawrence. Even to the present day, they
carry on a considerable traffic in small ornaments made of ivory, a
humiliating memento of their connection with Senegal: but all the rest
of their commerce is dwindled into the fishery, and a small portion of
coasting-trade.

The castle, (the subject of _plate thirty-four_,) stands upon a steep
hill; and, on approaching the town from the sea, has a grand and
imposing appearance. Its walls, flanked with towers and bastions, cause
it to retain the look of strength, the reality of which has long since
departed. The earliest portion of the building is probably a high
quadrangular tower, with lofty pointed pannels, in the four walls. Even
this, however, cannot have been erected anterior to the year 1443; for
it is upon record that the Sieur des Marets, the first governor of the
place, then began to build a castle here, to protect the town from any
farther attacks on the part of the English army. The inhabitants, during
the reign of Henry IV. obtained permission to add to it a citadel; but
the whole was suffered almost immediately afterwards to fell into decay.

[Illustration: Plate 35. CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, AT DIEPPE.
_West front._]

[Illustration: Plate 36. CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, AT DIEPPE.
_East end._]

The church of St. Jacques, figured in the _thirty-fifth_ and
_thirty-sixth plates_, is the largest, and considerably the most
interesting of the two parochial churches of the place. It had the
singular good fortune of escaping, together with the castle, nearly
uninjured from the bombardment, during the reign of our third William,
which laid the town in ashes. It was begun about the year 1260, but was
little advanced at the commencement of the following century; nor were
its nineteen chapels, the works of the piety of individuals, completed
before 1350. The roof of the choir remained imperfect till ninety years
afterwards; while that of the transept is as recent as 1628. Thus it is
a valuable specimen of the ecclesiastical architecture of successive
ages. In the lines of the transepts are traces of the early pointed
style, apparently coeval with the churc