architects of the latter time seemed to have wished to adapt this glorious building to its site. All its divisions of parts, windows, and pinnacles, are narrower and more lofty than usual; and the projections are bolder, so as to be distinctly visible from below. The stranger is admitted to the mount by a gate, of the time of Louis XII. or Francis I. He proceeds along the walls, which continue leading upwards; and, traversing desolate towers, and staircases above staircases, hanging on the sides of the rock, all forlorn, grassy, and mouldering, he is conducted to the gate of the abbey. The outside of the first gate-way has round towers: the second has a pointed arch. One pile of buildings has a row of small arches round the top. The present population of the town amounts to about two hundred and fifty inhabitants, who derive their chief support from the fishery. Of the church itself, a view is given in the Bayeux tapestry; rude indeed, but curious, as coeval.--The following is a short chronological summary of the principal events connected with the building:-- In 1103, the roof fell in, and involved in its ruins a portion of the dormitory. Ten years afterwards, on the twenty-third of April, 1113, the lightning set fire to the abbey, which was wholly consumed, except the crypt and the great columns of the nave, and some other parts of the church. Roger, then abbot, repaired the injury, rebuilding the refectory and the dormitory, and the splendid apartment, called the Knights' Hall. [Illustration: Plate 96. MOUNT ST. MICHAEL. _Interior of the Knights' Hall._] Bernard, who was abbot from 1135 to 1140, rebuilt the north part of the church, and erected the tower between the nave and the choir. Of the works done at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in consequence of the injuries received by the church during the wars of Philip-Augustus, no particulars are preserved. It is only said in general terms, that they were considerable. Richard Turstin, abbot in 1275, began buildings upon an extensive scale, between the extremity of the cloisters and the barracks. On the thirteenth of July, 1300, the lightning again struck the church, and great part of it was burned, and the bells melted, and many houses in the town reduced to ashes. The chapel of St. John the Evangelist was added by John De la Porte, the twenty-seventh abbot, who died in 1334.