men and injunctions of the clerk are now
heard, where formerly there reigned a general silence, interrupted only by
the matin or evening chaunt! I deplored this sort of sacrilegious
adaptation, to a respectable-looking old gentleman, sitting out of doors
upon a chair, and smoking his pipe--"c'est dommage, Monsieur, qu'on a
converti l'eglise a"--He stopped me: raised his left hand: then took away
his pipe with his right; gave a gentle whiff, and shrugging up his
shoulders, half archly and half drily exclaimed--"Mais que voulez vous,
Monsieur?--ce sont des evenemens qu'on ne peut ni prevoir ni prevenir.
Voila ce que c'est!" Leaving you to moralize upon this comfortable morceau
of philosophy, consider me ever, &c.

[36] A most ample and correct view of this west front will be found in Mr.
_Cotman's Norman Antiquities_.

[37] It is about 180 English feet in width, by about 150 in the highest
part of its elevation. The plates which I saw at Mr. Frere's,
bookseller, upon the Quai de Paris, from the drawings of Langlois,
were very inadequate representations of the building.

[38] The ravages committed by the Calvinists throughout nearly the whole of
the towns in Normandy, and especially in the cathedrals, towards the
year 1560, afford a melancholy proof of the effects of RELIGIOUS
ANIMOSITY. But the Calvinists were bitter and ferocious persecutors.
Pommeraye, in his quarto volume, _Histoire de l'Eglise Cathedrale de
Rouen_, 1686, has devoted nearly one hundred pages to an account of
Calvinistic depredations.

[39] [Mr. Cotman has a plate of the elevation of the front of this south
transept; and a very minute and brilliant one will be found in the
previous edition of this Tour--by Mr. Henry le Keux: for which that
distinguished Artist received the sum of 100 guineas. The remuneration
was well merited.]

[40] [Mons. Licquet says each clustered pillar contains thirty-one
columns.]

[41] This chapel is about ninety-five English feet in length, by thirty in
width, and sixty in heighth. The sprawling painting by Philippe de
Champagne, at the end of it, has no other merit than that of covering
so many square feet of wall. The architecture of this chapel is of the
XIVth century: the stained glass windows are of the latter end of the
XVth. On completing the circuit of the cathedral, one is surprised to
count not fewer than _twenty-five_ chapels.