They who were revelling
ten years back in the destruction of Perigueux, they who are even now
fresh from effacing all traces of antiquity from the noble minster of
Matilda, they who have thrust their own handiworks even into the gloomy
crypt of Odo, have at last stretched forth their hands to smite the
cradle of the Conqueror himself. The Imperial architect, M. Ruprich
Robert, has surveyed the building, he has drawn up a most clear and
intelligent account of its character and history, and, on this showing,
the work of destruction has begun. Controversy will soon be at an end;
there will be no need to dispute whether any part be of the eleventh or
of the twelfth century; both alike are making room for a spruce
imitation of the nineteenth. We shall no longer see the dwelling-place
either of Robert the Devil or of Henry Fitz-Empress; in its stead we
shall trace the last masterpiece of the reign of Napoleon the Third.
Sham Romanesque is grotesque everywhere, but it is more grotesque than
all when we see newly-cut capitals stuck into the windows of a roofless
castle, when the grey hue of age is wiped away from a building which has
stood at least seven hundred years, and when the venerable fortress is
made to look as spick and span as the last built range of shops at
Paris. Among the endless pranks, at once grotesque and lamentable,
played by the mania for restoration, surely the "restoration" of this
venerable ruin is the most grotesque and lamentable of all. The
municipality of Caen have lately made themselves a spectacle to mankind
by pulling down, seemingly out of sheer wantonness, one half of one of
the most curious churches of their city.[10] We commend them not; but we
do not place even them on a level with the subtler destroyers of
Falaise. The savages of Caen are satisfied with simple, open
destruction; what they cannot understand or appreciate they make away
with. But there is no hypocrisy, no pretence about them; they simply
destroy, they do not presume to replace. But the restorer not only takes
away the work of the men of old, he impudently puts his own work in its
stead. He takes away the truth and puts a lie in its place. Our readers
know very well with what reservations this doctrine must be
taken--reservations which in the case of churches or other buildings
actually applied to appropriate modern uses, are very considerable. But
in the case of a mere monument of antiquity, a building whose only value
is that i