ress
was already made in the execution of their plan. All precise dates,
however, connected with this subject, are lost: the various wars that
have ravaged this part of France; the numerous sieges to which the city
of Rouen itself has been exposed; and the repeated changes of masters it
has undergone;--these, with the addition of occasional injuries from
fire and pillage, have effectually destroyed the archives of the town
and cathedral.

Authors have differed strangely regarding the remains of the church
erected by the Norman Dukes. Some of them, and indeed the greater
number, assert that no small part of the structure now in existence
belonged to the building consecrated by Maurilius: others maintain, that
not one stone of this latter has been left upon another. The truth seems
to be, that a small portion of the eastern side of the present northern
tower, known by the name of the tower of St. Romain, is really of Norman
workmanship, but that nothing else throughout the cathedral is so,
excepting, possibly, the lateral doorways in the western front. The
whole of the tower just mentioned, up to its highest tier of windows, is
evidently the most ancient part of the building, and is apparently of
the architecture of the latter part of the twelfth century. The church,
considered collectively, is so obviously the work of different aeras,
that there can be little risk in hazarding the assertion, that it has
been raised by piece-meal, on various occasions, as may either have been
suggested by the piety of potentates and prelates, or may have been
required by the state of religion or of the edifice itself.

What is known as to the dates of the building is, that the southern
tower was begun in 1485, and completed in 1507; that the first stone of
the central portal was laid in 1509; and that the Lady-Chapel, though
commenced during some of the earliest years of the fourteenth century,
and finished in the middle of the fifteenth, contains work of the year
1538. At this last period, Cardinal Georges d'Amboise restored the roof
of the choir, which had been injured in 1514, by the destruction of the
spire. The square short central tower was erected A.D. 1200: it replaced
one that had been damaged eighty years before, when the original stone
spire of the church was struck by lightning. From that time forward, no
attempt had been made to rebuild the spire, except with wood, of which
material, that now in existence is the second. The