note being the cupola raised about the time of the Renaissance over the intersection of the nave and transept.  The barrel-vaulted nave, crossed by plain broad fillets, is in keeping with the early Romanesque severity of the facade.  The ornament is nearly confined to the tympan over the portal, the capitals of columns, and to the choir with its seven absidal chapels.  The choir itself is cross-vaulted, and the sanctuary, except at its junction with the nave, is enclosed by an arcade of narrow stilted arches, the only ornament of the capitals being acanthus leaves; but those against the wall are elaborately storied with little figures.  A moulding of small billets is carried round the apse.  The great height of the nave vaulting, obtained by a triforium and clerestory, is very remarkable in a Romanesque church of such early construction.  In accordance with the style of the period, the capitals of the nave show a complete absence of uniformity, some being carved with figures, and others with leaves or intricate line ornament.  To obtain an adequate impression of all the fantastic imagination expressed in these capitals, and the craftsmanship brought to bear upon the carving, it is necessary to climb to the triforium galleries.  The aisle windows are narrow and placed high in the wall.  The interest of the exterior is centred upon the bas-relief representing the Last Judgment, which fills the entire tympan of the arch covering the two main doorways.  The composition, which contains over a hundred figures, is singularly animated, and although the forms are uncouthly proportioned, and the treatment of the subject in some of the details touches what to the modern mind seems grotesque, it is an exceedingly vivid and faithful reflection of the religious ideas of the age that produced it.  What now appears grotesque was then sublime and awful.  We smile at the barbaric imagination that placed here, at the door of hell, the head of a vast and hideous monster of the crocodile family, into whose gaping jaws the damned are being thrust by a pantomime devil; but eight centuries ago Christian people had too lively a faith in the materialistic horrors of the infernal kingdom to perceive anything extravagant in this idea of stuffing a scaly monster with condemned sinners.  Eight centuries ago!—­the peasant of the Aveyron and of Finistere still look upon these Dantesque sculptures with genuine awe.  Those who blame the monks for giving the devil a forked tail and a pair of horns, and otherwise exhausting their invention in the endeavour to materialize the terrors of hell, are strangely unphilosophic.  The mass of humanity with whom the monks had to deal had the minds of children in regard to metaphysical ideas; only by the pictorial method could they be sufficiently impressed with the joys or horrors of the future life.  Bas-reliefs such as this must have had a great influence on the conduct of many generations; nor has their influence yet ceased, although, as popular education spreads, the interest taken in these quaint sculptures by those for whom they were especially intended, so far from being stimulated, is lessened.  Inasmuch as the mind needs deep ploughing for the new culture, and the majority can get no more than a superficial raking, the peasant of to-day is often a poorer man intellectually than his father was—­poorer by the loss of faith and the confusion of ideas.