ges plainer--no fault in that; but a
little higher it begins to Italianise, and then stops altogether. An
ugly modern top is all that answers to the upper stages and octagon of
the Magdalen. The people of the Magdalen parish must have been strongly
tempted to say of their nearest neighbours, "These men began to build,
and were not able to finish."

The church to which this most stately tower is attached is not of any
great interest, beyond a simple Romanesque doorway and window in the
west front, and some very plain arches to match in the transepts. The
choir is rather poor late Gothic, spoiled by a great blank space between
arcade and clerestory. Of the nave we hardly know what to say. As it
stands, it is plainly modern; the great round pillars are hollow; but
the design is one which we can hardly fancy coming into anybody's head,
unless it reproduced something older. It is something like Boxgrove,
something like some German churches, but not exactly. A pair of
pier-arches are grouped under a single arch containing a single
clerestory window, and there is a barrel-vault above all. A church in
the hands of Huguenots, called "La Salle des Conferences," seems to have
a Romanesque shell and keeps three windows in a flat east end. Not far
from the donjon is the Decorated church of Saint Lawrence, where the
usual late Gothic dies off into _Renaissance_ at the west end. But the
other great piece of ecclesiastical work in Verneuil, besides the
Magdalen tower, is the choir of the church of Our Lady, lower down in
the town. There is an east end, such as one hardly sees on so small a
scale out of Auvergne. Here is the apse, the surrounding aisle, the
apses again projecting from the aisle; and the varied outline is made
yet more varied by a round turret of the same date and style thrown in
among the apses. The general air is early, the work plain, the masonry
simple; but the clerestory windows have pointed arches. We gaze with
delight on an outline more thoroughly picturesque than we have seen for
a long while, and which carries back our thoughts to a land of which all
the memories are pleasing. We purpose to look at it once more before we
finally turn away from Verneuil; but good intentions are not always
carried out. Let us dream of another Arvernian journey, so planned as to
take Verneuil on the road.

BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER

1892

The name of Roger of Beaumont must be well known to any who have studied
the details of t