Pillaged
By The Normans In The Ninth Century And By The
Huguenots In The Sixteenth, It Received Its Death-Blow
From The Revolution, Which Must Have Brought To
Bear Upon It An Energy Of Destruction Proportionate
To Its Mighty Bulk.
At the end of the last century
a huge group of ruins alone remained, and what we
see to-day may be called the ruin of a ruin.
It is
difficult to understand how so vast an ediface can
have been so completely obliterated. Its site is given
up to several ugly streets, and a pair of tall towers,
separated by a space which speaks volumes as to the
size of the church, and looking across the close-pressed
roofs to the happier spires of the cathedral, preserved
for the modern world the memory of a great fortune,
a great abuse, perhaps, and at all events a great pen-
alty. One may believe that to this day a consider-
able part of the foundations of the great abbey is
buried in the soil of Tours. The two surviving towers,
which are dissimilar in shape, are enormous; with
those of the cathedral they form the great landmarks
of the town. One of them bears the name of the Tour
de l'Horloge; the other, the so-called Tour Charle-
magne, was erected (two centuries after her death)
over the tomb of Luitgarde, wife of the great Em-
peror, who died at Tours in 800. I do not pretend to
understand in what relation these very mighty and
effectually detached masses of masonry stood to each
other, but in their gray elevation and loneliness they
are striking and suggestive to-day; holding their hoary
heads far above the modern life of the town, and
looking sad and conscious, as they had outlived all
uses.
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