Normandy Picturesque eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 170 pages of information about Normandy Picturesque.

Normandy Picturesque eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 170 pages of information about Normandy Picturesque.
of the principal persons who were known to have accompanied him.  Some of these names are very familiar to English ears, such as PERCY, TALBOT, VERNON, LOVEL, GIFFARD, BREWER, PIGOT, CARTERET, CRESPEN, &c.; and there are at least a hundred others, all in legible characters, which any visitor may decipher for himself.  There is a small grass-grown church-yard surrounded by a low wall, but the tablets are of comparatively modern date.

If, before leaving Dives, we take a walk up the hill on the east side of the town, and look down upon the broad valley, with the river Dives winding southwards through a rich pasture land, flanked with thickly wooded hills—­and beyond it the river Orne, leading to Caen—­we shall see at once what a favourable and convenient spot this must have been for the collecting together of an army of fifty thousand men, for the construction of vessels, and for the embarkation of troops and horses, and the materiel of war; and, if we continue our walk, through one or two cornfields in the direction of Beuzeval, we shall find, on a promontory facing the sea, and overlooking the mouth of the river, a not very ornamental, round stone pillar placed here by the Archaeological Society of France in 1861; ’AU SOUVENIR DU PLUS GRAND EVENEMENT HISTORIQUE DES ANNALES NORMANDES—­LE DEPART DU DUC GUILLAUME LE BATARD POUR LA CONQUETE DE L’ANGLETERRE EN 1066;’ and, if the reader should be as fortunate as we were in 1869, he might find a french gentleman standing upon the top of this column, and (forgetting probably that Normandy was not always part of France) blowing a blast of triumph seaward, from a cracked french horn.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V.

BAYEUX.

The approach to the town of Bayeux from the west, either by the old road from Caen or by the railway, is always striking.  The reader may perchance remember how in old coaching days in England on arriving near some cathedral town, at a certain turn of the road, the first sight of some well-known towers or spires came into view.  Thus there are certain spots from which we remember Durham, and from which we have seen Salisbury; and thus, there is a view of all others which we identify with Bayeux.  We have chosen to present it to the reader as we first saw it and sketched it (before the completion of the new central semi-grecian cupola); when the graceful proportions of the two western spires were seen to much greater advantage than at present.

The cathedral has been drawn and photographed from many points of view; Pugin has given the elevation of the west front, and the town and cathedral together have been made the subject of drawings by several well-known artists; but returning to Bayeux after an absence of many years, and examining it from every side, we find no position from which we can obtain a distant view to such advantage as that near the railway station, which we have shewn in the sketch at the head of this chapter.

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Normandy Picturesque from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.