rcely to be found
any where than in the west front of this church," (the subject of the
_twenty-fourth plate_.) "The corresponding part of the rival abbey of
St. Stephen, is poor when compared to it; and Jumieges and St. Georges
equally fail in the comparison. In all these, there is some
architectural anomaly: in the Trinity none, excepting indeed the
balustrade at the top of the towers; and this is so obviously an
addition of modern times, that no one can be misled by it.[55] This
balustrade was erected towards the beginning of the seventeenth century,
when the oval apertures and scrolls, seen in Ducarel's print,[56] were
introduced."--It may be well to take the present opportunity of making a
general observation, that though, in speaking of this and of other
churches, the term, _west front_, may commonly be applied to the part
containing the principal entrance; yet that this term must be received
with a certain degree of latitude. The Norman religious edifices are far
from being equally regular in their position as the English. With a
general inclination to the west, they vary to every point of the
compass.[57] The church of the abbey of the Trinity fronts the
north-west--The architrave of the central door-way is composed of many
surfaces of great depth: two-thirds of them are flat and plain, and
recede so little, as to afford but small opportunity for light and
shade. Its decorations are few and simple, consisting almost wholly of
the billet and chevron moulding, the former occupying the exterior, the
latter the interior, circles. In the outermost band, the billets form a
single row, and take the curve of the arch; the succeeding circle
exhibits them with an unusual arrangement, placed compound, and all
pointing to the centre of the door. These, with the addition of
quatrefoils, and of some grotesque heads, which serve as key-stones to
the mouldings over the windows of the triforium, are the only ornaments
which this front can boast. The capitals throughout it are of the
simplest forms, being in general little more than inverted cones,
slightly truncated, for the purpose of making them correspond with the
columns below. Some few of them have the addition of small projecting
knobs immediately below the angles of the impost; while those in the
square towers are formed by a short cylinder, whose diameter exceeds
that of the shaft, surmounted by a square block, by way of abacus. The
towers and buttresses decrease in size