forward manner of proceeding, after
all I had undergone in Europe, that I made a note of it the same day.

The Hotel de l'Europe, at Rouen, was not a first-rate inn, for France,
but it effectually removed the disagreeable impression left by the Hotel
d'Angleterre, at Havre. We were well lodged, well fed, and otherwise
well treated. After ordering dinner, all of a suitable age hurried off
to the cathedral.

Rouen is an old, and by no means a well-built town. Some improvements
along the river are on a large scale, and promise well; but the heart of
the city is composed principally of houses of wooden frames, with the
interstices filled in with cement. Work of this kind is very common in
all the northern provincial towns of France. It gives a place a
singular, and not altogether an unpicturesque air; the short dark studs
that time has imbrowned, forming a sort of visible ribs to the houses.

When we reached the little square in front of the cathedral, verily
Henry the Seventh's chapel sunk into insignificance. I can only compare
the effect of the chiselling on the quaint Gothic of this edifice, to
that of an enormous skreen of dark lace, thrown into the form of a
church. This was the first building of the kind that my companions had
ever seen; and they had, insomuch, the advantage over me, as I had, in a
degree, taken off the edge of wonder by the visit already mentioned to
Westminster. The first look at this pile was one of inextricable
details. It was not difficult to distinguish the vast and magnificent
doors, and the beautiful oriel windows, buried as they were in ornament;
but an examination was absolutely necessary to trace the little towers,
pinnacles, and the crowds of pointed arches, amid such a scene of
architectural confusion. "It is worth crossing the Atlantic, were it
only to see this!" was the common feeling among us.

It was some time before we discovered that divers dwellings had actually
been built between the buttresses of the church, for their comparative
diminutiveness, quaint style, and close incorporation with the pile,
caused us to think them, at first, a part of the edifice itself. This
desecration of the Gothic is of very frequent occurrence on the
continent of Europe, taking its rise in the straitened limits of
fortified towns, the cupidity of churchmen, and the general indifference
to knowledge, and, consequently, to taste, which depressed the ages that
immediately followed the construction of