entre tower is wonderfully fine in the exterior: it is apparently an
expansion of the plain Norman lantern, as at Caen; but most airy and
graceful. There is a double aisle round the ambit and altars are placed
in the bays, as if they were distinct chapels, for which purpose they
were originally intended; but the line continues unbroken. The
perspective of these aisles, and also of the choir, seen from the
Lady-Chapel, is very fine. The round pillars of the choir are double, as
at Canterbury and Senlis. The apsis is half a duodecagon. The pointed
windows above are in two lancet divisions, surmounted by a trefoil; but
the dividing masonry is not a mullion: it is the unperforated part of
the wall. This perhaps is arabesque. There is a second arch within,
which is really divided by a mullion or small pillar. A curious leaf
projects above. Some of the painted glass is in the oldest style:
dispersed patterns in a black outline, on a grey ground. In a
side-chapel are painted tiles, brown and yellow as usual, displaying
knots and armorial bearings. In the same chapel are fresco paintings:
many more are on the east side of the wall that divides the last
choir-aisle from the south transept. They represent St. Michael and the
Devil, the Deity between angels, &c. In all of them, the outline is
formed by a thick black line."

PLATE XCV. AND XCVI.

MOUNT ST. MICHAEL.

[Illustration: Plate 95. MOUNT ST. MICHAEL.
_On the approach from Pontorson._]

Religion, history, poetry, and painting, have all united in giving
celebrity to St. Michael's Mount. The extraordinary sanctity of its
monastery, the striking peculiarities of its form and situation, and the
importance acquired by the many sieges it supported, or the almost
endless pilgrimages it received, have so endeared it to the man of taste
and the philosopher, that scarcely a spot is to be found in Europe, more
generally known, or more universally interesting.

The legendary mist with which St. Michael's Mount is now densely
involved, has continued, from a period of remote antiquity, to float
around its summit. Tradition delights in relating how, in times prior to
the Christian aera, it was devoted to the worship of the great luminary
of heaven, under his Gallic name of Belenus,[213] a title probably
derived from the Hebrew Baal, and the Assyrian Belus. The same tradition
recounts how, at a more recent epoch, it reared its majestic head,
embosomed in a spacious tract