t east end gives the church an English
look, and the flat east end with an apsidal chapel beyond it especially
suggests Wells. Within, the church has a great effect of height and
narrowness, greater certainly than Coutances. Like Coutances, the nave
and choir are of somewhat different dates, the choir being more modern,
but, unlike Coutances, still more unlike Bayeux, they range completely
together in composition. The nave we might fairly call Early English. It
is not quite so characteristic as some of the work at Bayeux, but it
uses the round abacus freely, although not exclusively. But for a few
square abaci which are used, and for the appearance of early tracery in
the side windows, it might pass as a purely Lancet building. The choir
is fully developed geometrical work, of excellent character, with a
beautifully designed triforium and clerestory. Altogether we think Dol
may make good its claim to a high place among churches of the second
order. It is specially curious to see how a building which does not
differ in any essential peculiarity of style from its fellows assumes a
distinct character, and that by no means wholly to its loss, through the
use of a somewhat rugged material.

OLD NORMAN BATTLE-GROUNDS

1867

In the strictly historical aspect, the English inquirer is perhaps
naturally led to think most of those events in which his more recent
countrymen were more immediately concerned--those events of the Hundred
Years' War, on which so much light has lately been thrown by the
researches of M. Puiseux.[13] But he should not forget that, besides
being the scene of these events in the great struggle between England
and France, Normandy, independent Normandy, has also a history of its
own, in which both England and France had a deep interest. It is not
only because Normandy is the cradle of so many families which after
events made English, because so many Norman villages still bear names
illustrious in the English peerage. It is because it is in the earlier
history of Normandy, above all, in the reign of William himself, that
we are to seek for one side of the causes which made a Norman conquest
of England possible, just as it is in the earlier history of England,
above all, in the reign of Eadward, that we are to seek for the other
side of those causes.

No one among those causes was more important than the personal character
of the great Duke of the Normans himself. And the qualities which made
Will