The long-neglected art of staining glass being once more revived, let us hope that, with it, a taste will grow up for something better than a repetition of the grotesque.

But it is the exterior of Bayeux Cathedral that will be remembered best, the beauty and simplicity of its design; its ‘sky line,’ that we pointed out at a distance, at the beginning of this chapter, which (like the curve of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and many an english nineteenth-century church we could name), leaves an impression of beauty on the mind that the more ornate work of the Renaissance fails to give us.  It is an illustration in architecture, of what we have ventured to call the ‘simple right’ and the ‘elaborate wrong;’ like the composition of Raphael’s Holy Family (drawn on the head of a tub), it was right, whilst its thousand imitations have been wrong.

And if any argument or evidence were wanting, of the beauty and fitness of Gothic architecture as the central feature of interest, and as a connecting link between the artistic taste of a past and present age, we could point to no more striking instance than this cathedral.  It has above all things the appearance of a natural and spontaneous growth, harmonizing with the aspect of the place and with the feelings of the people.

A silence falls upon the town of Bayeux sometimes, as if the world were deserted by its inhabitants; a silence which we notice, to the same extent, in no other cathedral city.  We look round and wonder where all the people are; whether there is really anybody to buy and sell, and carry on business, in the regular worldly way; or whether it is peopled only with strange memories and histories of the past.

On every side there are landmarks of cruel wars and the sites of battles—­nearly every old house has a legend or a history attached to it; and all about the cathedral precincts, with its old lime trees—­in snug, quiet courtyards, under gate-ways, and in stiff, formal gardens behind high walls—­we may see where the old bishops and canons of Bayeux lived and died; the house where ‘Master Wace’ toiled for many unwearied years, and where he had audience with the travelling raconteurs of the time who came to listen to him, and to repeat far and wide the words of the historian.[21]

The silence of Bayeux is peopled with so many memories, of wars so terrible, and of legends so wild and weird, that a book might be written about Bayeux and called ‘The Past.’  We must not trench upon the work of the antiquary, or we might point out where Henry I. of England attacked and destroyed the city, and the exact spot in the market-place where they first lighted the flames of Revolution; but we may dwell for a moment upon one or two curious customs and legends connected with Bayeux.