here is a tolerably good set of modern paintings (the best
which I have yet seen in the interior of a church) of the _Life of Christ_,
in the side chapels. The eastern extremity, or the further end of _Our
Lady's Chapel_, is horribly bedaubed and over-loaded with the most
tasteless specimens of what is called Gothic art, perhaps ever witnessed!
The great bell of this church, which has an uncommonly deep and fine tone,
is for ever

Swinging slow with solemn roar!

that is to say:--it is tolling from five in the morning till ten at night;
so incessantly, in one side-chapel or another, are these offices carried on
within this maternal parish church.[116]

I saw, with momentary astonishment, the leaning tower of a church in the
_Rue St. Jean_,[117] which is one of the principal streets in the town: and
which is terminated by the _Place des Cazernes_, flanked by the river Orne.
In this street I was asked, by a bookseller, two pounds two shillings, for
a thumbed and cropt copy of the _Elzevir-Heinsius Horace_ of 1629; but with
which demand I did not of course comply. In fact, they have the most
extravagant notions of the prices of Elzevirs, both here and at Rouen.

You must now attend me to the most interesting public building, perhaps all
things considered, which is to be seen at Caen. I mean, the _Abbey of the
Holy Trinity_, or L'ABBAYE AUX DAMES.[118] This abbey was founded by the
wife of the Conqueror, about the same time that William erected that of St.
Stephen. Ducarel's description of it, which I have just seen in a copy of
the _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, in a bookseller's shop, is sufficiently
meagre. His plates are also sufficiently miserable: but things are
strangely altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a
manufactory for making cordage, or twine; and upwards of a hundred lads are
now busied in their _flaxen_ occupations, where formerly the nun knelt
before the cross, or was occupied in auricular confession. The entrance at
the western extremity is entirely stopped up: but the exterior gives
manifest proof of an antiquity equal to that of the Abbey of St. Stephen.
The upper part of the towers are palpably of the fifteenth, or rather of
the early part of the sixteenth century. I had no opportunity of judging of
the neat pavement of the floor of the nave, in white and black marble, as
noticed by Ducarel, on account of the occupation of this part of the
building by the manufacturing children