Beyond This Is A Garden,
And Beyond The Garden Are The Other Buildings Of The
Convent, - Where The Placid Sisters Keep A School, - A
Test, Doubtless, Of Placidity.
The imperfect arcade,
which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury (I know nothing of it but
What is related in Mrs.
Pattison's "Rennaissance in France") is a truly en-
chanting piece of work; the cornice and the angles of
the arches, being covered with the daintiest sculpture
of arabesques, flowers, fruit, medallions, cherubs, griffins,
all in the finest and most attenuated relief. It is like
the chasing of a bracelet in stone. The taste, the
fancy, the elegance, the refinement, are of those things
which revive our standard of the exquisite. Such
a piece of work is the purest flower of the French
Renaissance; there is nothing more delicate in all
Touraine.
There is another fine thing at Tours which is not
particularly delicate, but which makes a great impres-
sion, - the- very interesting old church of Saint Julian,
lurking in a crooked corner at the right of the Rue
Royale, near the point at which this indifferent thorough-
fare emerges, with its little cry of admiration, on the
bank of the Loire. Saint Julian stands to-day in a
kind of neglected hollow, where it is much shut in by
houses; but in the year 1225, when the edifice was
begun, the site was doubtless, as the architects say,
more eligible. At present, indeed, when once you have
caught a glimpse of the stout, serious Romanesque
tower, - which is not high, but strong, - you feel that
the building has something to say, and that you must
stop to listen to it. Within, it has a vast and splendid
nave, of immense height, - the nave of a cathedral, -
with a shallow choir and transepts, and some admir-
able old glass. I spent half an hour there one morn-
ing, listening to what the church had to say, in perfect
solitude. Not a worshipper entered, - not even an old
man with a broom. I have always thought there is a
sex in fine buildings; and Saint Julian, with its noble
nave, is of the gender of the name of its patron.
It was that same morning, I think, that I went in
search of the old houses of Tours; for the town con-
tains several goodly specimens of the domestic archi-
tecture of the past. The dwelling to which the average
Anglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and
the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called
Maison de Tristan l'Hermite, - a gentleman whom the
readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten,
- the hangman-in-ordinary to the great King Louis XI.
Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of
Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled.
There are no illusions left, at all, in the good city of
Tours, with regard to Louis XI. His terrible castle of
Plessis, the picture of which sends a shiver through
the youthful reader of Scott, has been reduced to sub-
urban insignificance; and the residence of his _triste
compere,_ on the front of which a festooned rope figures
as a motive for decoration, is observed to have been
erected in the succeeding century.
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