them be enabled to fix the date to a specimen of ancient architecture in our own country, more splendid than these, the Church of Castle Rising, whose west front is so much on the same plan, that it can scarcely have been erected at a very different period. Pavilly has considerably more to recommend it, as the "magni nominis umbra" than either of the others; it having been the seat of an abbey founded about the year 668, and named after Saint Austreberte, who first presided over it. Here, too, we have the advantage of being able to ascertain with greater precision the date of the building, which, in the archives of the Chartreux at Rouen[70], is stated to have been constructed about the conclusion of the eleventh century. The remains of the monastery are not considerable: they consist of little more than a ruined wall, containing three circular arches, evidently very ancient from their simplicity and the style of their masonry, and some pillars with capitals differing in ornament from any others I recollect, but imitations of the Grecian, or rather attempts to improve upon it. The inside of the parish-church is more interesting than the ruins of the abbey. It is characterised, as you will observe in the annexed sketch, by massy square piers, to each side of which are attached several small clustered columns, intended merely for ornament. One of them is fluted, the work, probably, of some subsequent time; and another, on the same pier, is truncated, to afford a pedestal for the statue of a saint. The capitals are without sculpture. [Illustration: Interior of the Church at Pavilly] The church at Yainville differs materially from either of the others: its square low central tower is of far greater base than that of Léry: the transept parts of the cross have been demolished; and, beyond the tower, to the east, is only an addition that looks more like an apsis than a choir, a small semi-circular building with a roof of a peculiarly high pitch, like those of the stone-roofed chapels in Ireland, which, I trust, I shall be able hereafter to convince you were undoubtedly of Norman origin. But the most curious feature in this building is, that one of the buttresses is pierced with a narrow lancet window; a decisive proof, that the Normans regarded their buttresses as constituent parts of the edifice at its original construction, and that they did not add them at a subsequent time, or design them to afford support, in the event of any unexpected failure of strength. Indeed, what are usually called Norman buttresses, such as we find at Yainville, and at the lazar-house at St. Julien, have so very small a projection, that they seem much more designed to add ornament or variety than for any useful purpose.--Yainville is a parish adjoining Jumieges, and was formerly dependent upon the celebrated abbey there, which will furnish ample materials for a future letter. Footnotes: [63] _Taillepied, Antiquités de Rouen_, p. 77. [64] Vol. II. part V. p. 8.