at all the world
goes there to see the tapestry. Coutances has won a fame among professed
architectural students almost higher than it deserves, but we fancy that
the city lies rather out of the beat of the ordinary tourist. Dol is
surely quite out of the world; we trust that, in joining it with the
other two, we may share somewhat of the honours of discovery. We will
not say that we trust that no one has gone thither from the Greater
Britain since the days of the Armorican migration; but we do trust that
a criticism on the cathedral church of Dol will be somewhat of a novelty
to most people.

We select these three because they have features in common, and because
they all belong to the same general type of church. As cathedrals, they
are all of moderate size; Coutances and Dol, we may distinctly say, are
of small size. They do not range with such miracles of height as France
shows at Amiens and Beauvais, or with such miracles of length as England
shows at Ely and St. Albans. They rank rather with our smaller episcopal
churches, such as Lichfield, Wells, and Hereford. Indeed most of the
great Norman churches come nearer to this type than to that of minsters
of a vaster scale. And the reason is manifest. The great churches of
Normandy, like those of England, are commonly finished with the central
tower. Perhaps they do not always make it a feature of quite the same
importance which it assumes in England, but it gives them a marked
character, as distinguished from the great churches of the rest of
France. Elsewhere, the central tower, not uncommon in churches of the
second and third rank, is altogether unknown among cathedrals and other
great minsters of days later than Romanesque. It is as much the rule for
a French cathedral to have no central tower as it is for an English or
Norman cathedral to have one. The result is that, just as in our
English churches, the enormous height of Amiens and Beauvais cannot be
reached. But, in its stead, the English and Norman churches attained a
certain justness of proportion and variety of outline which the other
type does not admit. No church in Normandy, except St. Ouen's, attains
any remarkable height, and even St. Ouen's is far surpassed by many
other French churches. But perhaps a vain desire to rival the vast
height of their neighbours sometimes set the Norman builders to attempt
something of comparative height by stinting their churches in the
article of breadth. This peculiarit