The chancel is the only ancient part of the present church of St. Paul's, and even this must be comparatively modern, if any confidence may be placed in the current tradition, that the building, in its original state, was a temple of Adonis or of Venus, to both which divinities the early inhabitants of Rouen are reported to have paid peculiar homage. They were worshipped in vice and impurity[63]; nor were the votaries deterred by the evil spirits who haunted the immediate vicinity of the temple, and who gave rise to so fetid and infectious a vapor, that it often proved fatal! This very remark seems to indicate the scite of the church of St. Paul, with its neighboring sulphureous waters. St. Romain demolished the temple, and dispersed the sinners. Farin, in his _History of Rouen_[64], says, that the church was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt by the Norman Dukes, to some of whom, the chancel, which is now standing, probably owes its existence. The nave is evidently of much more modern construction: it is thrice the width of the other part, from which it is separated by a circular arch. The eastern extremity differs from that of any other church I ever saw in Normandy or in England: it ends in three circular compartments, the central considerably the largest and most prominent, and divided from the others, which serve as aisles, by double arches, a larger and smaller being united together. This triple circular ending is, however, only observable without; for, in the interior, the southern part has been separated and used as a sacristy; the northern is a lumber-room. In the latter division, M. le Prevost desired us to notice a piece of sculpture, so covered with dirt and dust that it could scarcely be seen, but evidently of Roman workmanship, and, probably, of the fourth century, if we may judge from its resemblance to some ornaments[65] upon the pedestal of the obelisk raised by Theodosius, in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Our friend's conjecture is, that it had originally served for an altar: perhaps it might, with equal probability, be supposed to have been a tomb.--The corbels on the exterior of this building are strange and fanciful. [Illustration: Sculpture, supposed Roman, in the Church of St. Paul, at Rouen ]