t has stood so many years, that it exhibits the style of such
an age, that it has beheld such and such great events, there is no
reservation to be made at all. In the castle of Falaise we may adopt,
word for word, the most vehement of Mr. Ruskin's declamations on this
head. The man who turns the ancient reality of the twelfth century into
a sham of the nineteenth deserves no other fame than the fame which
Eratostratus won at Ephesus, and which James Wyatt won in the
chapter-house of Durham.

THE CATHEDRAL CHURCHES OF BAYEUX, COUTANCES, AND DOL

1867

One would rather like to see a map of France, or indeed of Europe,
marking in different degrees of colour the abundance or scarcity of
English visitors and residents. Of course the real traveller, whether he
goes to study politics or history or language or architecture or
anything else, is best pleased when he gets most completely out of the
reach of his own countrymen. The first stage out of the beaten track of
tourists is a moment of rapture. For it is the tourists who do the
mischief; the residents are a comparatively harmless folk. A colony of
English settled down in a town and its neighbourhood do very little to
spoil the natives among whom they live. For the very reason that they
are residents and not tourists, they do not in the same way corrupt
innkeepers, or turn buildings and prospects into vulgar lions. It is
hard to find peace at Rouen, as it is hard to find it at Aachen; but a
few English notices in the windows at Dinan do not seriously disturb
our meditations beneath the spreading apses of St. Sauveur and St. Malo
or the plaster statue of Bertrand du Guesclin. For any grievances
arising from the neighbourhood of our countrymen, we might as well be at
Dortmund or Rostock. But, between residents, tourists, and real
travellers, we may set it down that there is no place which Englishmen
do not visit sometimes, as there certainly are many places in which
Englishmen abound more than enough.

We have wandered into this not very profound or novel speculation
through a sort of wish to know how far three fine French churches of
which we wish to speak a few words are respectively known to Englishmen
in general. These are the Norman cathedrals of Bayeux and Coutances,
both of them still Bishops' sees, and the Breton Cathedral of Dol,
which, in the modern ecclesiastical arrangements, has sunk into a parish
church. Bayeux lies on a great track, and we suppose th