know, (and men well
qualified to judge,) who believe it Roman: I have heard it pronounced
from high authority, that it is of the eleventh century; others suspect
that it is Italian, of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries; while M.
Le Prevost and M. De Gerville maintain most strenuously that it is not
anterior to the fifteenth. De Bourgueville certainly calls it 'une
antiquite de grand remarque;' but we all know that any object which is
above an hundred years old, becomes a piece of antiquity in the eye of
an uncritical observer; and such was the good magistrate."

[Illustration: Plate 20. STATUE OF WILLIAM DUKE OF NORMANDY.
_South side of the Parish Church of St. Etienne at Caen._]

The parish of St. Stephen, at Caen, is generally distinguished by the
epithet of _the old_, whence an opinion has commonly prevailed, that its
church was one of those founded by St. Regnobert, in the middle of the
fourth century; and that the present edifice, if not actually in part
the same, is at least raised upon its foundations, and is certainly one
of the most ancient in Caen. This belief has been, in a measure,
countenanced by De Bourgueville and Huet, relying upon what appears to
have been an inaccurate translation from Robert Cenalis[30] But, on the
contrary, it appears from the Abbe De la Rue, that the author in
question makes no mention whatever of this parish, and that the
appellation was first given it by the Conqueror, by way of
distinguishing its church from the more sumptuous one erected by
himself, and also dedicated to the protomartyr; a circumstance, from
which the Abbe justly observes, that nothing more is to be deduced, than
that a church existed here anterior to his time; but by no means
necessarily of great antiquity. The present building is of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; a medley of debased Gothic and
corrupted Roman.

NOTES:

[28] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 174.

[29] See plate 11, of this work, right-hand figures in the upper line;
see also _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 11, with a figure.

[30] _Essais Historiques sur Caen_, I. p. 225.

PLATES XXI.--XXIII.

ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN.

(WEST FRONT, AND ELEVATION OF COMPARTMENTS OF THE NAVE.)

[Illustration: Plates 21-22. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. ETIENNE, CAEN.]

The two royal Abbeys of Caen, long the pride of the town, while France,
not yet revolutionized, suffered them to exist in their glory, and while
her sons felt ho