nce of its discovery is told in the following inscription, cut in
the Gothic letter, upon a brass plate, and placed just above the southern
entrance:

_En lan mil quatre cens et douze
Tiers iour d'Auril que pluye arrouse
Les biens de la terre, la journee
Que la Pasques fut celebree
Noble homme et Reverend Pere
Jehan de Boissey, de'la Mere
Eglise de Bayeux Pasteur
Rendi l'ame a son Createur
Et lors enfoissant la place
Devant la grand Autel de grace
Trova l'on la basse Chapelle
Dont il n'avoit ete nouvelle
Ou il est mis en sepulture
Dieu ueuille avoir son ame en cure. Amen_.

It was my good fortune to visit this crypt at a very particular juncture.
The day after my arrival at Bayeux, there was a grand _Ordination_. Before
I had quitted my bed, I heard the mellow and measured notes of human
voices; and starting up, I saw an almost interminable procession of
priests, deacons, &c., walking singly behind each other, in two lines,
leaving a considerable space between them. They walked bareheaded,
chanting, with a book in their hands; and bent their course towards the
cathedral. I dressed quickly; and, dispatching my breakfast with equal
promptitude, pursued the same route. On entering the western doors, thrown
wide open, I shall never forget the effect produced by the crimson and blue
draperies of the Norman women:--a great number of whom were clustered, in
groups, upon the top of the screen, about the huge wooden
crucifix;--witnessing the office of ordination going on below, in the
choir. They seemed to be suspended in the air; and considering the piece of
sculpture around which they appeared to gather themselves--with the
elevation of the screen itself--it was a combination of objects upon which
the pencil might have been exercised with the happiest possible result. An
ordination in a foreign country, and especially one upon such an apparently
extensive scale, was, to a professional man, not to be slighted; and
accordingly I determined upon making the most of the spectacle before me.
Looking accidentally down my favourite crypt, I observed that some
religious ceremony was going on there. The northern grate, or entrance,
being open, I descended a flight of steps, and quickly became an inmate of
this subterraneous abode. The first object that struck me was, the warm
glow of day light which darted upon the broad pink cross of the surplice of
an officiating priest: a candle was burning upon the