Ralph de Tancarville, however, was not fortunate in the selection of the inmates whom he planted in his monastery.  His son, in the reign of Henry Ist, dismissed the canons for whom it was first founded, and replaced them by a colony of monks from St. Evroul.  Ordericus Vitalis, himself of the fraternity of St. Evroul, commemorates and of course praises the fact.  Such changes are of frequent occurrence in ecclesiastical history; and the apprehension of being rejected from an opulent and well-endowed establishment, may occasionally have contributed, by the warning example, to correct the irregularities of other communities.  A century later, the abbot of St. Georges was compelled to appeal to the pope, in consequence of an attempt on the part of his brethren at St. Evroul, to degrade his convent into a mere cell, dependent upon theirs.—­The chronicle of the abbey is barren of events of general interest; nor do its thirty-one abbots appear to have been men of whom there was much more to be said, than that they arrived at their dignity on such a year, and quitted it on such another.  Of the monks, we are told that, in the fifteenth century, though their number was only eight, the dignitaries included, the daily task allotted them was greater than would in any of the most rigid establishments, in latter days, have been imposed upon forty brethren in a week!

Inconsiderable as is the abbey, in an historical point of view, the church of St. Georges de Bocherville is of singular importance, inasmuch as it is one of the land-marks of Norman architecture.  William, in his charter, simply styles himself Dux Normannorum; it therefore was granted a few years before the conquest.  The building has suffered little, either from the hands of the destroyers, or of those who do still more mischief, the repairers; and it is certainly at once the most genuine and the most magnificent specimen of the circular style, now existing in Upper Normandy.—­The west front is wholly of the time of the founder, with the exception of the upper portion of the towers that flank it on either side.  In these are windows of nearly the earliest pointed style; and they are probably of the same date as the chapter-house, which was built in the latter part of the twelfth century.  The effect of the front is imposing:  its general simplicity contrasts well with the rich ornaments of the arched door-way, which is divided into five systems of mouldings, all highly wrought, and presenting almost every pattern commonly found in Norman buildings.  A label encircles the whole, the inner edge of which is indented into obtuse pyramids, erroneously called lozenges.  The capitals of the columns supporting the arch are curiously sculptured:  upon the second to the left, on entering, are Adam and Eve, in the act of eating the forbidden fruit; upon the opposite one, is represented the Flight into Egypt.  Normandy does not contain, I believe, a richer arch; but very many indeed are to be seen in England, even in our