ys
which find their way into the Cotentin will carry the traveller through
a district whose look, like that of so much of this side of Normandy, is
thoroughly English, to Valognes, with its endless fragments of old
domestic architecture, remnants of the days when Valognes was a large
and aristocratic town, and with its church, where the architect has
ventured, not wholly without success, on the bold experiment of giving
its central parts the shape of a Gothic cupola. Is its effect improved
or spoiled--it certainly is made stranger and more striking--by its
grouping with a spire of late date immediately at its side? There is
much to please at Valognes; but when we remember the part which the town
plays in the history of the Conqueror, that it was from hence, one of
his favourite dwelling-places, that he took the headlong ride which
carried him away safely from the rebellious peninsula before
Val-es-dunes, we are inclined to grumble that all that now shows itself
in the place itself is of far later date. The castle is clean gone; and
the traveller to whom Normandy is chiefly attractive in its Norman
aspect may perhaps sacrifice the Roman remains of Alleaume if the choice
lies between them and a full examination of the castle and abbey of
Saint Saviour on the Douve, _Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte_, the home of the
two Neals, the centre, in the days of the second of the rebellions which
caused William to ride so hard from Valognes to Rye.[29] A
characteristic church or two, among them Colomby, with its long lancets,
may be taken on the way; but the great object of the journey is where
the little town of Saint Saviour lies on its slope, with the castle on
the one hand, the abbey on the other, rising above the river at its
feet. The abbey, Neal's abbey, where his monks supplanted an earlier
foundation of canons, has gone through many ups and downs. Its
Romanesque plan remained untouched through a great reconstruction of its
upper part in the later Gothic. It fell into ruin at the Revolution,
but one side of the nave and the central saddle-backed tower still
stood, and now the ruin is again a perfect church, where Sisters of
Mercy have replaced the monks of Saint Benedict. Here then a great part
of the work of the ancient lords remains; with the castle which should
be their most direct memorial the case is less clear. Besides round
towers--one great one specially which some one surely must have set down
as Phoenician--the great feat