are really graceful,
though we miss the rose-windows which we should otherwise have looked
for in a French church on such a scale as this. The choir too, as seen
out of the nave, is well-proportioned and effective, though we see that
the windows in the apse have flat arches and no tracery. The apse, if we
can call it so, has the strange singularity of ending in a point, and
some odd details have crept into the bosses of the vault. But, in the
general view from the nave, the only thing that mars the general harmony
and good effect is the treatment of the lantern. The four lantern arches
have the flattened shape of the latest Gothic; but, oddly enough, the
variety here chosen is the English four-centred arch, not the usual
French shape, three-centred, elliptic, or actually flat-headed. But both
the English and the French form are quite unsuited for pier-arches, and
for lantern arches yet more. And, though the work of the lantern is
quite good outside, yet within we see that the enemy has begun to take
possession. There is perhaps no actual un-Gothic detail, but the feeling
of the arcade of flat-headed arches which forms the gallery shows the
way in which things are tending.

We go into the choir. There, setting aside the apse windows, the arcade,
triforium, clerestory, are still pure, if very late Gothic; the new
fashion comes in one detail only; the vaulting shafts have an odd
kind of Ionic capital. It is in the latest part of all, the chapels
round the choir, that the new taste comes in most strongly, and even
there it is not altogether dominant. It is very strange outside, where
heavy flying-buttresses are tricked out with little columns. Within,
pairs of such little columns are the chief ornament. But they support no
arches, only scraps of entablature. The arches of the roof, the windows,
and everything else, are still of the elliptic shape, and they still
keep the late Gothic mouldings. No building better shows what a long
fight was waged between the two styles. Saint German at Argentan is not
like Saint Eustace, where we see a grand Gothic conception carried out
without a single correct Gothic detail. Here not only the conception,
but the great mass of the internal detail, is purely Gothic; the new
fashion thrusts itself in only in particular parts.

This last remark is specially true of the smaller church of Argentan,
that of Saint Martin. Here we have not the full cruciform shape. There
is no central tower or la