[Footnote 82:  The most interesting relic of Roman times yet found at Vieux, is a cippus of variegated marble, about five feet high by two feet wide, and bearing inscriptions upon three of its sides.  It generally passes in France by the name of the Torigny marble, being preserved at the small town of the latter name, whither it was carried in 1580, the very year when it was dug up.  The Abbe Le Beuf has made it the subject of a distinct paper in the Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions.  This cippus supported a statue raised in honor of Titus Sennius Sollemnis, a Viducassian by birth, and one of the high priests of the town.  The statue was erected to him after his death, in the Viducassian capital, upon a piece of ground granted by the senate for the purpose, in pursuance of a general decree passed by the province of Gaul.  The inscriptions set forth the motives that induced the nation to bestow so marked a distinction upon a simple individual; and, in the foremost rank of his merits, they place the games which he had given to his fellow-citizens, during four successive days.]

[Footnote 83:  Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, XXI. p. 489.]

[Footnote 84:  Archaeologia, XVII. p. 911.]

[Footnote 85:  Bayeux et ses Environs, par M. Delauney, p. 12.]

[Footnote 86:  I. p. 371-379; pl. 35-49, and II. p. 1-29; pl. 1-9.]

[Footnote 87:  VI. p. 739, and VIII. p. 602.]

[Footnote 88:  Anglo-Norman Antiquities, Appendix, No. 1.]

[Footnote 89:  Archaeologia, XVII. p. 85.]

[Footnote 90:  Archaeologia, XVIII. p. 359.]

[Illustration:  Sculpture at Bayeux]

LETTER XXVIII.

CATHEDRAL OF BAYEUX—­CANON OF CAMBREMER—­COPE OF ST. REGNOBERT—­ODO.

(Bayeux, August, 1818.)

Excepting the tapestry and the cathedral, Bayeux, at this time, offers no objects of interest to the curious traveller.  Its convents are either demolished, or so dilapidated or altered, that they have lost their characteristic features; and its eighteen parish churches are now reduced to four.  We wandered awhile about the town, vainly looking after some relic of ancient art, to send you by way of a memento of Bayeux.  At length, two presented themselves—­the entrance of the corn-market, formerly the chapel of St. Margaret, a Norman arch, remarkable for the lamb and banner, an emblem of the saint, sculptured on the transom stone; and a small stone tablet, attached to an old house near the cathedral.  The whimsical singularity of the latter, induced us to give it the preference.  It may possibly be of the workmanship of the fourteenth century, and possibly much later.  In all probability, it owes its existence merely to a caprice on the part of the owner of the residence, whose crest may be indicated by the tortoises which surmount the columns by way of capitals.  Still there is merit in the performance, though perhaps for nothing so much as for the accurate resemblance of peeled wood; and this I never saw imitated with equal fidelity in stone.