raphical laws of permanent
or slowly changed surroundings, and secondly in the outward aspect of
the dwellings built by man, for his personal comfort or for the good
of the material community, or for his spiritual needs.

To these three kinds of architecture I have attached this story of
Rouen, because even in its remotest syllables there are some traces
left that are still visible; and these traces increase as the story
approaches modern times. While moats and ramparts still sever a city
from its surrounding territory, the space within the walls preserves
many of those sharply defined characteristics which grow fainter when
town and country merge one into the other; the modern suburb gradually
destroys the personality both of what it sprang from and of what it
meets. Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century I have been more
careful to explain the scattered relics of an earlier time than during
the years when Rouen was filled with exquisite examples of the
builder's art. After that century there is so little of distinction,
and so much of average merit, that my story languishes beneath a load
of bricks and mortar.

Each chapter in this book which describes an advance in time or a
different phase of life and feeling will be found to be connected with
the buildings that are either contemporaneous with that phase or most
suggestive of it. I have thus been able to mention all the important
architectural features of the town without disturbing a fairly even
chronological development of the tale, in the hope that this method
will appeal not only to the traveller who needs guidance and
explanation in the place he visits, but also to the reader who prefers
to hear my story by his own fireside. Working, then, with this double
audience in my mind, I have used to a very large extent, in my
description of the people's life, the documents they have left behind
themselves, so that the best expression may be given of the vital fact
that a town is built and fashioned and inspired not by a few great
men, but by the many persistent citizens who dwell in it, working
their will from age to age without shadow of changing.

One such manuscript, the work of many hands and many centuries, I must
particularly mention. It is the record kept by the Cathedral
Chapterhouse, from 1210 to 1790, of the prisoners pardoned by the
Privilege of St. Romain's Shrine. Forbidden, for reasons of health, to
investigate these ancient parchments for myself