ebuilt. Later
builders clearly admired them and spared them. Much more would this be
the case at Mortain, where the building of the new church must have
begun no very long time after the adding of this last finish to the old.
The style of the building is Transition, and advanced Transition; it is
all but early Gothic. The pointed arch alone is used; the only trace of
Romanesque feeling is to be seen in the short columns of the arcade, and
in the extreme simplicity of the triforium and clerestory, a single
unadorned lancet in each. The vaulting is naturally a little later; that
at least, with the English-looking shafts from which it springs, is in
the fully developed Pointed style.

The plan of the church of Saint Evroul, Mortain, is as simple as a
church that has aisles can be. We were going to say that it is a perfect
basilica; but no; the basilica commonly has the transepts and the arch
of triumph. At Mortain the same simple arcade runs round nave, choir,
and apse without break of any kind. Within the building the effect of
this austere and untouched simplicity--no one at Mortain has altered a
window or added a chapel--is perfectly satisfactory. Many buildings are
larger and more enriched; not many can be said to be more perfect
wholes. Save in the matter of multiplied aisles within and flying
buttresses without, Mortain may pass for Bourges in small. And, just as
at Bourges, the external outline is less satisfactory than the internal
effect. A single body of this kind has in itself no outline at all; it
depends on its tower or towers. At Mortain the usual central tower of a
great Norman church could not be; but neither has Saint Evroul the two
Western towers of Saint-Lo and Seez; the arrangement designed was rather
a development of the side towers common in the smaller churches of the
district. A tower on each side was designed and begun. They stand near
the east end; but they are not eastern towers like those of Geneva and
many German churches. They stand outside the aisles, so as not to
interrupt the continuous design within. They therefore do not really
group with the apse; they are detached towers whose lowest stage just
touches that of the church. But we are speaking as if both towers were
there. In truth only the southern one was carried up, and that only to a
height very little above the ridge of the roof, and there furnished with
a saddle-back. Such a tower lends the building hardly any increase of
outline in