ichard Coeur-de-Lion.

Le Mans stands, without doubt, in advance of Chartres in the importance
and number of its secondary churches, as well as its ecclesiastical,
civil, and military establishments in general. In spite of all this,
the city has never ranked as of supreme importance as a European city;
nor did it ever attain the rank in Gallic times, that the events which
have been woven around it would seem to augur. To-day it is a truly
characteristic, large, provincial town of little or no importance to the
outside world. Self-sufficient as to its own importance, and the events
around which its local life circles, it gives little indication of ever
becoming more of a metropolis than it now is; indeed the census figures
would indicate that the department, of which it is the capital, has
remained stationary as to the numbers of its population, since the
Revolution.

Writers have endeavoured to carry the similarity to English interests
and conditions still farther than the events of history really go to
prove, and have declared that Maine and England should have united in
repelling their common invader. Endeavour has also been made to trace
similarity between the communistic principles of days gone by, which
took form here and at Exeter across the Channel, and have even remarked
the similarity of the topographical features of the surrounding
landscape, wherein the country round about differs so from other parts
of France, being here rolling, hilly, and wooded, as in certain parts
of England; and even stretching a point to include the hedgerows, which,
it must be admitted, are more in evidence in Maine than elsewhere in
France. But these observations apparently prove nothing except that the
majority of persons probably know very little of the real conditions
which exist in the provinces of France, preferring rather that their
journeyings afield should follow more the well-worn road of their
compatriots.

The Cathedral of St. Julien well represents the two distinct epochs in
which church architecture, as it remains to us to-day, was practised
here, and shows, to well-nigh the fullest expression possible, the two
principal transformations of Christian architecture.

As the Angevin style partakes so closely of northern and southern types
intermixed, so the distinctive architectures of Maine, if such there be,
may be said to favour the styles of both Normandy and Anjou; at least so
far as the cathedral at Le Mans shows a