etimes
appears quite black with them.]

[Footnote 14: The following account of the destruction of the monastery
is extracted from William of Jumieges. (See _Duchesne's Scriptores
Normanni_, p. 219)--"Dehinc Sequanica ora aggrediuntur, et apud
_Gemmeticum_ classica statione obsidionein componunt.... In quo
quamplurima multitudo Episcoporum, seu Clericorum, vel nobilium
laicorum, spretis secularibus pompis, collecta, Christo Regi militatura,
propria colla saluberrimo iugo subegit. Cuius loci Monachi, sive incolae,
Paganorum adventum comperientes, fuga lapsi quaedam suarum rerum sub
terra occulentes, quaedam secum asportantes, Deo juvante evaserunt.
Pagani locum vacuum reperientes, Monasterium sanctae Mariae sanctique
Petri, et cuncta aedificia igne iniecto adurunt, in solitudinem omnia
redigentes. Hac itaque patrata eversione, locus, qui tauto honoris
splendore diu viguerat, exturbatis omnibus ac subuersis domibus, cA"pit
esse cubile ferarum et volucrum: maceriis in sua soliditate in sublime
porrectis, arbustisque densissimis; et arborum virgultis per triginta
ferme annorum curricula ubique a terra productis."]

[Footnote 15: The following are the proportions of the building, in
French feet:--

Length of the church..................265
Ditto of the nave.....................134
Width of ditto.........................62
Length of choir........................43-1/2
Width of ditto.........................31
Length of Lady-Chapel..................63
Width of ditto.........................27
Height of central tower...............124
Ditto of western towers...............150

]

[Footnote 16: Mr. Cotman has figured this porch, (_Architectural
Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 4) but has, by mistake, called it "_An Arch
on the West Front of the Abbey Church_."]

[Footnote 17: See a paper by M. Le Prevost in the _Precis Analitique des
Travaux de l'Academie de Rouen_, 1815, p. 131.]

[Footnote 18: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II, p. 260.]

LETTER XVI.

GOURNAY--CASTLE OF NEUFMARCHE--CASTLE AND CHURCH OF GISORS.

(_Gisors, July_, 1818)

We are now approaching the western frontiers.--Gournay, Gisors, and
Andelys, the objects of our present excursion, are disposed nearly in a
line between the capitals of France and Normandy; and whenever war broke
out between the two states, they experienced all the glory, and all the
afflictions of warfare. This district was in fact a kind of debatable
lan