e has passed since the
parish church of Les Vieilles and the abbey church of Beaumont were both
living things. No man now alive can remember them such; but not so many
years back many could. In 1861 we talked with one who remembered the
abbey church of Bernay in the full extent of its choir and Lady-chapel.
We go back after thirty years to find the church of the Conqueror's
grandmother in other things much as it was, still desecrated, but with
no more of actual destruction. But we find that the one genuine Roman
shaft that was there, one of the very few such north of Loire, has
either perished or has been so covered up with timber framework as to be
quite out of sight. And one later, but still early capital, had been
knocked away to make a convenient resting-place for a wooden beam. One
would think that such a building as this, even if it cannot be restored
to divine worship, might at least be made _monument historique_ and
taken care of. Only then the State would some day come and take away
every real shaft and every real capital, and put imitation shafts and
capitals in their stead. And that might be even worse than the wooden
beams.

JUBLAINS

1876

We know not how far the name of Silchester may be known among Frenchmen,
but we suspect that the name of Jublains is very little known among
Englishmen. The two places certainly very nearly answer to one another
in the two countries. Both alike are buried Roman towns whose sites had
been forsaken, or occupied only by small villages; both have supplied
modern inquirers with endless stores both of walls and foundations and
of movable relics; and the two spots further agree in this, that both at
Silchester and at Jublains the history of the place has to be made out
from the place itself; all that we can do is to make out the Roman
names; we have no record of the history of either.[61] The names which
the two places now bear respectively illustrate the rules of French and
English nomenclature. Silchester proclaims itself by its English name
to have been a Roman _castrum_, but it keeps no trace of its Roman name
of Calleva. But Naeodunum of the Diablintes follows the same rule as
Lutetia of the Parisii. The old name of the town itself is forgotten,
but the name of the tribe still lives. The case is not quite so clear as
that of Paris; some unlucky etymologists have seen in the name Jublains
traces of _Jules_ and of _bains_; but a moment's thought will show that
the