. A second glance shows that what seemed to be the
lower part of a south-western tower is really a building in advance of
such a tower. That is to say, a large porch, or rather portico, with
three tall arches, stood out in front of the western towers and of the
end of the nave. It must have looked just enough like Peterborough to
suggest Peterborough, but also to suggest the contrast between
Peterborough and itself. At Peterborough the great portico stands
indeed, as here, in advance of a west front with two towers. But it may
be said to have supplanted that front. One tower was never finished; the
other was thrown into insignificance. The portico is of the full height,
and became the real west front. Here at Saint-Evroul the portico was not
the whole of the west front, but only part; the towers must have risen a
long way above it. One would like to be able to judge of the effect of
such a design.

There is little or nothing left of the other buildings of the abbey,
except the gateway by which we enter, with a larger and a smaller
pointed arch. The field to the south of the church, where cloister,
chapter-house, refectory, and the rest must have stood, had a locked
gateway, and the owner had gone off with the key. But there seemed to be
nothing, at least nothing standing up. Yet we should have liked to see
at least the traces of the cloister on the southern wall. But Saint
Evroul is not forgotten in his own place, or even within the walls of
his own abbey. For a little chapel has been made within the buildings of
the gate-house. He has also a cross and fountain, of which the cross, a
modern one, is more visible than the fountain. And in the parish church
on the opposite hill some relics of the abbey, indeed of the saint
himself, are still preserved. There is specially a good fragment of an
ancient triptych. The surviving small church looks down on the relics of
the great one below. And the thought comes, so different from any
suggested by the monastic ruins of England, how short a time it after
all is since the great church of Saint-Evroul was a living thing as well
as the small one. A visitor of no wonderful age could do a sum and find
that his own father was at least able to walk and talk while Robert of
Grantmesnil had still a less famous, but perhaps less unquiet successor.

TILLIERES AND VERNEUIL

1892

Our second excursion from Laigle has quite another kind of interest from
that of Saint-Evroul. We go