f any
country. In printing, the word (pronounced burjoice') is used of a type
coming in size between longprimer and brevier; the derivation is
supposed to be from the name of a French printer, otherwise unknown.

BOURGES, a city of central France, chief town of the department of Cher,
144 m. S. of Paris on the Orleans railway between Vierzon and Nevers.
Pop. (1906) town, 34,581; commune, 44,133. Bourges is built amidst flat
and marshy country on an eminence limited on three sides by the waters
of the Canal Of Berry, the Yevre, the Auron, and other smaller streams
with which they unite at this point. The older part of the town with its
narrow streets and old houses forms a centre, to the south and east of
which lie important engineering suburbs. Flourishing nurseries and
market-gardens are situated in the marshy ground to the north and
north-east. Bourges preserves portions of the Roman ramparts of the 4th
century, which are for the most part built into the houses of the old
quarter. They measure considerably less in circumference than the
fortifications of the 13th century, remains of which in the shape of
ruined walls and towers are still to be seen. The summit of the rise on
which the city is built is crowned by the cathedral of St Etienne, one
of the most important in France. Begun at the end of the 12th century,
it was not completed till the 16th century, to which period belong the
northernmost of the two unfinished towers flanking the facade and two of
its five elaborately sculptured portals. The interior, which has double
aisles, the inner aisles of remarkable height, and no transepts,
contains, among many other works of art, magnificent stained glass of
the 13th century. Beneath the choir there is a crypt of Romanesque
construction, where traces of the Roman fosses are to be found; the two
lateral portals are also survivals of a Romanesque church. The Jardin de
l'Archeveche, a pleasant terrace-garden, adjoins the choir of the
cathedral. Bourges has many fine old houses. The hotel Lallemant and the
hotel Cujas (now occupied by the museum) are of the Renaissance period.
The hotel de Jacques Coeur, named after the treasurer of Charles VII.
and now used as the law-court, is of still greater interest, though it
has been doubted whether Jacques Coeur himself inhabited it. The mansion
is in the Renaissance style, but two towers of the Roman fortifications
were utilized in the construction of the south-western facad