I know, (and men well qualified to judge,) who believe it Roman:  I have heard it pronounced from high authority, that it is of the eleventh century, others suspect that it is Italian, of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries; whilst M. Le Prevost and M. De Gerville maintain most strenuously that it is not anterior to the fifteenth.  De Bourgueville certainly calls it “une antiquite de grand remarque;” but we all know that any object which is above an hundred years old, becomes a piece of antiquity in the eye of an uncritical observer; and such was the good magistrate.

The church of St. Nicholas, now used as a stable, was built by William the Conqueror, in the year 1060, or thereabouts.  Desecrated as it is, it remains entire; and its interior is remarkable for the uniformity of the plan, the symmetry of the proportions.  All the capitals of the pillars attached to the walls are alike; and those of the arches, which very nearly resemble the others, are also all of one pattern.  In the side-aisles there is no groining, but only cross vaulting.  The vaulting of the nave is pointed, and of late introduction.  Round the choir and transepts runs a row of small arches, as in the triforium.—­The west end was formerly flanked by two towers, the southern of which only remains.  This is square, and well proportioned:  each side contains two lancet windows.  The lower part is quite plain, excepting two Norman buttresses.  The whole of the width of the central compartment, which is more than quadruple that of either of the others, is occupied below by three circular portals, now blocked up.—­Above them are five windows, disposed in three tiers.  In the lowest are two not wider than loop-holes:  over these two others, larger; another small one is at the top.  All these windows are of the simplest construction, without side pillars or mouldings.—­The choir of the church ends in a semi-circular apsis, divided into compartments by a row of pillars, rising as high as the cornice:  in the intercolumniation are windows, and under the windows small arches, each of which has its head hewn out of a single stone.—­The roof of the choir is of stone, and the pitch of it is very high.

Here, then, we have the exact counterpart of the Irish stone-roofed chapels, the most celebrated of which, that of Cormac, in Cashel Cathedral, appears, from all the drawings and descriptions I have seen of it, to be altogether a Norman building.  Ledwich asserts that “this chapel is truly Saxon, and was erected prior to the introduction of the Norman, and gothic styles[74].”  If, we agree with him, we only obtain a proof that there is no essential difference between Norman and Saxon architecture; and this proposition, I believe, will soon be universally admitted.  We now know what is really Norman; and a little attention to the buildings in the north of Germany, may terminate the long-debated questions, relative to Saxon architecture and the origin of the stone-roofed chapels in the sister isle.