In St. Ouen, they are more than commonly beautiful.  The northern one, the cause of death to the poor apprentice, exhibits in its centre the produced pentagon, or combination of triangles sometimes called the pentalpha.—­The painted glass which fills the rose windows is gorgeous in its coloring, and gives the most splendid effect.  The church preserves the whole of its original glazing.  Each inter-mullion contains one whole-length figure, standing upon a diapered ground, good in design, though the artist seems to have avoided the employment of brilliant hues.  The sober light harmonizes with the grey unsullied stone-work, and gives a most pleasing unity of tint to the receding arches.

Among the pictures, the-best are, the Cardinal of Bologna opening the Holy Gate, instead of the Pope, in the nave; and Saint Elizabeth stopping the Pestilence, in the choir:  two others, in the Lady-Chapel, by an artist of Rouen, of the name of Deshays, the Miracle of the Loaves, and the Visitation, are also of considerable merit.—­Deshays was a young man of great promise; but the hopes which had been entertained of him were disappointed by a premature death.

A church like this, so ancient, so renowned, and so holy, could not fail to enjoy peculiar privileges.  The abbot had complete jurisdiction, as well temporal as spiritual, over the parish of St. Ouen; in the Norman parliament he took precedence of all other mitred abbots; by a bull of Pope Alexander IVth, he was allowed to wear the pontifical ornaments, mitre, ring, gloves, tunic, dalmatic, and sandals; and, what sounds strange to our Protestant ears, he had the right of preaching in public, and of causing the conventual bells to be rung whenever he thought proper.  His monks headed the religious processions of the city; and every new archbishop of the province was not only consecrated in this church, but slept the evening prior to his installation at the abbey; whence, on the following day, he was conducted in pomp to the entrance of the cathedral, by the chapter of St. Ouen, headed by their abbot, who delivered him to the canons, with the following charge,—­“Ego, Prior Sancti Audoeni, trado vobis Dominum Archiepiscopum Rothomagensem vivum, quem reddetis nobis mortuum.”—­The last sentence was also strictly fulfilled; the dean and chapter being bound to take the bodies of the deceased prelates to the church of St. Ouen, and restore them to the monks with, “Vos tradidistis nobis Dominum Archiepiscopum vivum; nos reddimus eum vobis mortuum, ita ut crastina die reddatis eum nobis.”—­The corpse remained there four and twenty hours, during which the monks performed the office of the dead with great solemnity.  The canons were then compelled to bear the dead archbishop a second time from the abbey cross (now demolished) to the abbey of St. Amand[96], where the abbess took the pastoral ring from off his finger, replacing it by another of plain gold; and thence the bearers proceeded to the cathedral.