ngruous style,
and now serve for the various public purposes of the local
administration. In a near view of the north side, they form an ugly
excrescence against the church, but they are lost in the more distant
and general view.

The church itself mainly belongs to the first years of the thirteenth
century, with smaller portions both of earlier and of later date. On
entering the church, we find that the long western limb is not all
strictly nave, the choir, by an arrangement more common in England than
in France, stretching itself west of the central tower. The whole of
this western limb is built in the simplest and severest form of that
earliest French Gothic, which to an English eye seems to be simply an
advanced form of the transition from Romanesque. Even at Amiens, amid
all the splendours of its fully-developed geometrical windows, the
pillars and arches, in their square abaci and even in the sections of
their mouldings, have what an Englishman calls a Romanesque feeling
still hanging about them. At Fecamp this is far stronger. The large
triforium, the untraceried windows, the squareness of everything except
a few English round abaci in some bays of the triforium, the external
heaviness and simplicity, all make the early Gothic of Fecamp little
more than pointed Romanesque. We do not say this in disparagement. This
stage was a necessary stage for architecture to pass through, and the
Transitional period is always one of the most interesting in
architectural history. And when work of that date is carried out with
such excellence both of composition and detail as it is at Fecamp, it is
much more than historically interesting, it is thoroughly satisfactory
in artistic effect. We say nothing against the style, except that, as
being essentially imperfect and not realising the ideal of either of the
two styles between which it comes historically, we cannot look on it as
a proper model for modern imitation. Several diversities of detail may
on minute examination be seen in the different bays of the nave of
Fecamp, just as in the contemporary nave of Wells. Just as at Wells, the
western part--in this case the five western bays--is slightly later than
the rest. And, as at Wells, the distinction between the older and newer
work is easily to be remarked by those who look for it, though it is a
distinction which makes no difference in the general effect and which
might pass unnoticed by any but a very minute observer. In trut