y parts so
rich, adorned by a succession of great buildings worthy of the land in
which they are placed. The great haven of the district is indeed more
favoured by nature than by art. In the name of Cherbourg mediaeval
etymologists fondly saw an Imperial name yet older than that which is
borne by the whole district, and the received Latin name is no other
than _Caesaris Burgus_. Yet it is far more likely that the name of
Cherbourg is simply the same as our own Scarborough, and that it is so
called from the rocky hills, the highest ground in the whole district,
which look down on the fortified harbour, and are themselves condemned
to help in its fortification. The rocks and the valley between them are
worthy of some better office than to watch over an uninteresting town
which has neither ancient houses to show nor yet handsome modern
streets. The chief church, though not insignificant, is French and not
Norman, and so teaches the wrong lesson to an Englishman who begins his
Cotentin studies at this point. But, four miles or so to the west, he
will find a building which is French only if we are to apply that name
to what runs every chance of being prae-Norman, the work of a day when
Rolf and William Longsword had not yet dismembered the French duchy. On
a slight eminence overhanging the sea stands Querqueville, with its
older and its newer, its lesser and its greater, church, the two
standing side by side, and with the outline of the greater--the same
triapsidal form marking both--clearly suggested by the smaller. Of the
smaller, which is very small indeed, one can hardly doubt that parts
at least are primitive Romanesque, as old as any one chooses. It is the
fellow of the little church of Montmajeur near Arles, but far ruder. But
at Querqueville the name is part of the argument; the building gives its
name to the place. The first syllable of Querqueville is plainly the
Teutonic _kirk_; and it suggests that it got the name from this church
having been left standing when most of its neighbours were destroyed in
the Scandinavian inroads which created Normandy. The building has gone
through several changes; the upper part of its very lofty tower is
clearly a late addition, but the ground-plan, and so much of the walls
as show the herring-bone work, are surely remains of a building older
than the settlement of Rolf.

[Illustration: Valognes Church, N.E.]

From the rocks of the Norman _Scarborough_, one of the only two railwa