The church is a neat and spacious building, of the same kind of architecture as that of St. Jacques, at Dieppe; and, as it is a good specimen of the florid Norman Gothic, (I forbid all cavils respecting the employment of this term) I have added a figure of it.  My slender researches have not enabled me to discover the date of the building, but it may, have been erected towards the year 1350.  A most elegant bracket, formed by the graceful dolphin, deserves the attention of the architect; and I particularize it, not merely on account of its beauty, but because, even at the risk of exhausting your antiquarian patience, I intend to point out all architectural features which cannot be retraced in our own structures; and this is one of them.  By the way, Arques contributed to increase the bulk of our herbal as well as of our sketch-book, for under the walls of the church is found the rare Erodium moschatum; and near the castle grow Astragalus glycyphyllos and Melissa Nepeta.

The field of battle is to the southward of the town.  A small walk under the south wall of the castle, near the east end, adjoining a covered way which led to a postern-gate or draw-bridge, is still called the walk of Henry the IVth, because it was here that this monarch was wont to reconnoitre the enemy’s forces from below.

Napoleon, towards the conclusion of his reign, visited the field of battle at Arques; he ascertained the position of the two armies, and pronounced that the King ought to have lost the day, for that his tactics were altogether faulty.  I am willing to suppose that this military criticism arose merely from military pedantry, though it is now said that Napoleon was envious of the veneration, which, as the French believe, they feel for the memory of Henri quatre.  Napoleon is accused of having given the title of le Roi de la Canaille to the Bourbon Monarch.  And when Napoleon was in full-blown pride, he might have had the satisfaction of hearing the rabble of Paris chaunt his comparative excellence in a parody of the old national song—­

       “Vive Bonaparte, vice ce conquerant,
     Ce diable a quatre a bien plus de talent
     Que ce Henri quatre et tous ses descendans,”

Footnotes: 

[15] Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, X. p. 403. tab. 15.

[16] Such are the Abbe’s principal arguments; but he goes on to say, that the height of the ramparts proves almost to demonstration their having been erected since the use of fire-arms, a mode of reasoning that would, I fear, be equally conclusive against the antiquity of a very celebrated earth-work, the Devil’s-Ditch, in Cambridgeshire, whose agger is of about the same elevation, but of whose modern origin nobody ever yet dreamed;—­that the ramparts opposite Dieppe could only be of use against cannon, another position equally untenable;—­that, were the camp Roman, there would be platforms on the agger