lf and from the hill-side
paths which lead up to it, we get the noblest views of the great abbey,
in all the stern simplicity of its age, stretching the huge length of
its nave, one of the very few, even in Normandy, which rival the effect
of Winchester and Saint Albans. A single central tower, of quite
sufficient height, of no elaborate decoration, crowned by no rich spire
or octagon, but with a simple covering of lead, forms the thoroughly
appropriate centre of the whole building. We feel that this tower is
exactly what is wanted; we almost doubt whether the church gained or
lost by the loss of the western towers, which would have taken off from
the effect of boundless length which is the characteristic of the
building. At any rate we think how far more effective is the English and
Norman arrangement, which at all events provides a great church with the
noblest of central crowns, than the fashion of France, which
concentrates all its force on the western front, and leaves the at least
equally important point of crossing to shift for itself.

The church itself is one of the noblest even in Normandy, and it is in
remarkably good preservation. And the two points in which the fabric has
suffered severe damage are not owing either to Huguenots or to Jacobins,
but to its own guardians under two different states of things. The bad
taste of the monks themselves in their later days is chargeable with the
ugly Italian west front, which has displaced the elder front with towers
of which the stumps may still be seen. An Italian front, though it must
be incongruous when attached to a mediaeval building, need not be in
itself either ugly or mean, but this front of Fecamp is conspicuously
both. The other loss is that of the _jube_ or roodloft, which, from the
fragments left, seems to have been a magnificent piece of later Gothic
work, perhaps almost rivalling the famous one at Alby. The destruction
of roodlofts has been so general in France that one is not particularly
struck by each several case of destruction. But there is something
singular about this Fecamp case, as the _jube_ was pulled down at the
restoration of religion, through the influence of the then cure, in
opposition to the wishes of his more conservative or more ritualistic
parishioners. With these two exceptions Fecamp has lost but little, as
far as regards the church itself. The conventual buildings, like most
French conventual buildings, have been rebuilt in an inco