ers round about
the city, but they appear to have been all of small size until, in the
fifth century, Perpetus, Bishop of Tours in the reign of Childeric,
caused to be built a more splendid church to replace that which Briceius
had erected over the tomb of St. Martin. This, in turn, was rebuilt by
the celebrated Gregory of Tours, or so ordered by him; until finally in
the seventh century the abbey church of St. Martin of Tours became a
place of pilgrimage for all the Turones. To-day, nought remains of this
great church but the two towers, which have been bisected by the running
of a street throughout the old nave of the church; and thus they stand
as silent sentinels of the means through which Tours arose to its
ecclesiastical dignity. The Tour St. Martin or "de l'Horloge" is of the
twelfth century, and the other, called the Tour de Charlemagne, being
the burial-place of his wife Luitgarde, is, in its lower portions, of
the eleventh century.

The Cathedral of St. Gatien, which should be greatly endeared to the
English people, was commenced by Henry II. in 1170, the choir being the
earliest portion. The transepts followed in the next century, and the
facade as late as the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth,
century. Of manifestly Renaissance tendency, this facade for sheer charm
and picturesqueness must rank with the best, with the qualifying
statement added that it offends against many consistent artistic and
architectural principles. It is certainly an effective type, although
perhaps not warranting the statement of a certain monarch, whose art
training may to some degree have been wanting, that it was a "jewel in a
gemmed setting." An exceedingly picturesque and attractive pair of
towers rise, through no less than three different styles, to the
inverted egg-cups, which in a purer example might perhaps prove less
pleasing, but which in the present case seem at least to be imbued with
something of the Oriental or Mediterranean influence, not yet fallen
before the actual decadence. Another peculiarity of this charmingly
toned west front is that the rose window is of a peculiar lozenge shape,
"neither square nor round," as one authority puts it. This, of itself,
is decidedly not a graceful arrangement; but the proportions are ample
and the glass is good, so its deficiencies may in a measure be said to
be overbalanced by its merits; and, for that matter, as it is only seen
in its minutia of detail from the inside