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.

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