[Illustration: 591. Spire at Cunault. (From Faultrier.)] It is in this province that, proceeding from the South, spires are first found in common use. The characteristic of the South is the square flat-roofed tower or octagonal dome. In Anjou, towers standing by themselves, and crowned by well-proportioned spires, seem early to have been introduced, and to have been considered almost essential parts of church architecture. The representation (Woodcut No. 591) of that attached to the interesting church of Cunault, on the Loire, is of the most common type. There is another at Chemillé, almost exactly like it, and a third on the road between Tours and Loches, besides many others which but slightly differ from these in detail. They all want the aspiring lightness afterwards attained in Gothic spires; but their design and ornaments are good, and their outlines well suited to the massive edifices to which they are attached. Most of the conventual buildings attached to the churches in this province have disappeared, either during the struggle with the Huguenots, or in the later and more disastrous troubles of the Revolution, so that there is scarcely a cloister or other similar edifice to be found in the province. One or two fragments, however, still exist, such as the Tour d’Évrault.[27] This is a conventual kitchen, not unlike that at Glastonbury, but of an earlier age, and so far different from anything else of the kind that it was long mistaken for a building of a very different class. Another fragment, though probably not ecclesiastical, is the screen of arches recently discovered in the hôtel of the Prefecture at Angers. As a specimen of elaborate exuberance in barbarous ornament it is unrivalled even in France, but it is much more like the work of the Normans than anything else found in the neighbourhood. Owing to its having been so long built up, it still retains traces of the colouring with which all the internal sculptures of this age were adorned. The deficiency in ecclesiastical buildings in this province is made up in a great measure by the extent and preservation of its Feudal remains, few of the provinces of France having so many and such extensive fortified castles remaining. Those of Angers and Loches are two of the finest in France, and there are many others scarcely less magnificent. Few of them, however, have features strictly architectural; and though the artist and the poet may luxuriate on their crumbling time-stained towers and picturesque decay, they hardly belong to such a work as this, nor afford materials which would advance our knowledge of architecture as a fine art. CHAPTER IV. AUVERGNE. CONTENTS. Church at Issoire—Clermont—Fortified Church at Royat.