cation upon the town of
Caen,[22] does not furnish the satisfactory information which might have
been hoped, relative to the date of the erection of the church of St.
Michael, in the suburb of Vaucelles. He contents himself with
observing,[23] that it is a work of different aeras: that the tower and
its supporting pillars belong to a primitive church, of which no account
remains; that a part of the nave may be seen, from the circular form of
the arches having been obviously altered into pointed, to have belonged
to the same church; that the choir was raised and increased during the
sixteenth century; that the aisles are partly of the same century, and
partly of the preceding; and that the other portion of the nave and the
new tower, are productions of our own days.

In all this there is nothing definite; and, unfortunately, our knowledge
of Norman architecture is not such as will justify us in attempting to
fix precise aeras to the different specimens which are left us of it. As
far, however, as it may be allowed to judge from corresponding edifices,
Mr. Turner seems correct in his opinion, that "the circular-headed
arches in the short square tower, and in a small round turret which is
attached to it, are _early Norman_."[24] He subjoins the observation,
that "they are remarkable for their proportions, being as long and as
narrow as the lancet-windows of the following aera." The conical
stone-roofed pyramid is, with the exception of its lucarne windows, most
probably of the same date. With regard to the porch,[25] the subject of
the _nineteenth plate_, its general resemblance in style to the southern
porch of the church of St. Ouen, and its having, like that, its inner
archivolt fringed with pendant trefoils, are circumstances that have
likewise been pointed out in the work just referred to. Both porches may
probably be of nearly the same date, the latter part of the fourteenth,
or beginning of the fifteenth century. Caen, but a short time before the
revolution, contained another very similar architectural specimen in the
western portal of the church of St. Sauveur du Marche,[26] now replaced
by an entrance altogether modern. The nave of the church of St. Sauveur
was built, according to De la Rue, in the fourteenth century; and it may
fairly be inferred, that the portal was also of the same date; but this
porch wanted the pendant trefoils, and was altogether less ornamented
than that of St. Michael, as the latter was tha