tinselled virgins, and the wretched daubs, nick-named paintings, which
abound in the churches of Picardy and Normandy, the only catholic
provinces which I have yet visited; so that, if the taste of the
inhabitants is to be estimated by the decoration of the religious
buildings, this faculty must be rated very low indeed. The exterior of
the church is as richly ornamented as the inside; and not a buttress,
arch, or canopy is without the remains of crumbled carving, worn by
time, or disfigured by the ruder hand of calvinistic or revolutionary
violence. Tradition refers the erection of this edifice to the English.
From the certainty with which a date may be assigned to almost every
part, it is very interesting to the lover of architecture. The
Lady-Chapel is also perhaps one of the last specimens of Gothic art, but
still very pure, except in some of the smaller ornaments, such, as the
niches in the tabernacles, which end in escalop shells.

[Illustration: Font in the Church of St. Remi, at Dieppe]

The other church is dedicated to St. Remi, and is a building of the
XVIIth century; though, judging from some of its pillars, it would be
pronounced considerably more ancient. Those of the transept and of the
central tower are lofty and clustered, and of extraordinary thickness;
the rest are circular and plain, and not very unlike the columns of our
earliest Norman or Saxon churches, though of greater proportionate
altitude. The capitals of those in the choir are singularly capricious,
with figures, scrolls, &c.; but it is the capriciousness of the gothic
verging into Grecian, not of the Norman. On the pendants of the nave are
painted various ornaments, each accompanied by a mitre. The eastern has
only a mitre and cross, with the date 1669; the western the same, with
1666; denoting the aera of the edifice, which was scarcely finished, when
a bomb, in 1694, destroyed the roof of the choir, and this remains to
the present hour incomplete. The most remarkable object in the church is
a _benitier_ of coarse red granite, on whose basin is an inscription, to
me illegible. The annexed sketches will give you some idea of it:

[Illustration: Sketch of inscription]

In the letters one looks naturally for a date: the figures that
alternate with them are probably mitres, and, like those on the roof,
indicate the supreme jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen in the
place.

Dieppe itself is, by its own historians[7], said to boast an o