The main entrance is now by a beautiful porch to the north transept, which is, unfortunately, rapidly decaying--as much of the other work executed in Caen stone is doing everywhere. The small chapels of the apse are roofed with most extraordinary stone roofs, of very steep pitch, which at a little distance look like two great pinnacles, and when seen close at hand look like nothing else that ever was built or designed. There are very curious marks, in the exterior, of a change of plan in some respects as the work went on, some of the choir windows having been commenced with most elaborate mouldings outside as well as inside, but altered either in one jamb or at their heads into a plain double chamfer, in a most singular manner. There is some good arcading commenced outside, and a beautiful arcade runs all round the inside wall below the windows. The tower is just like Bretteville, but the spire must have differed considerably from it; unhappily it was struck by lightning some twelve years since, and there is now a poor slated roof in place of the spire. The angle pinnacles still remain and I think they prove that the transition from the tower to the spire must always have been very abrupt. I think from the character of all the detail and especially from the great love shown for the round trefoil, that this church must have been designed by the same man who built the eastern part of the cathedral at Bayeux. The mouldings are excessively similar and the abaci are constantly used octangular in plan in conjunction with square and circular. An interesting road took us from Norrey to Bayeux, where we arrived at 3 P.M. The general view of this cathedral is most magnificent,--owing to its two completed and similar western spires and to the great height of a central tower of flamboyant work capped with a pagan cupola which, though of bad details and inconsistent with all the rest of the work, certainly aids much in making the magnificence of the whole so great. This central steeple is on the point of being taken down, I believe, as the piers below are giving way; and the church is now filled with timber shores, etc. I do not like the steeple but cannot help regretting its loss.... There is a curious old chimney near the west front of the cathedral, rising out of a modern house. Attached to a seminary near the Hôtel Dieu is a good simple chapel of first-pointed date. It is a parallelogram groined simply and lighted with windows of two lights in each bay. The whole is wretchedly whitewashed everywhere and contrasts strongly with the magnificent colour of the stonework throughout the interior of the cathedral. _June 27._