The Musée is charming, both as to the disposition of its parts and its contents. It was once a convent, and has a square courtyard or promenade surrounded by an arcade. The courtyard is set about with green shrubs, and a lofty brick tower, pierced with little arched windows and mullioned with tiny columns, rises skyward in true conventual fashion. Altogether the Musée, in the attractiveness of its fabric and the size and importance of its collections, must rank, for interest to the tourist, at the very head of those outside Paris itself. As for the churches, there are many, the three greatest of which are the cathedral of St. Etienne, St. Saturnin, and the Église des Jacobins; in all is to be observed the universal application or adoption of _des matériaux du pays_--bricks. In the cathedral tower, and in that of the Église des Jacobins, a Gothic scheme is worked out in these warm-toned bricks, and forms, in contrast with the usual execution of a Gothic design, a most extraordinary effect; not wholly to the detriment of the style, but certainly not in keeping with the original conception and development of "pointed" architecture. In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc thoroughly and creditably restored St. Saturnin at great expense, and by this treatment it remains to-day as the most perfectly preserved work extant of its class. It is vast, curious, and in a rather mixed style, though thoroughly Latin in motive. It is on the border-line of two styles; of the Italian, with respect to the full semicircular arches and vaulting of the nave and aisles; the square pillars destitute of all ornament, except another column standing out in flat relief--an intimation of the quiet and placid force of their functions. With the transition comes a change in the flowered capitals, from the acanthus to tracery and grotesque animals. There are five domes covering the five aisles, each with a semicircular vault. The walls, with their infrequent windows, are very thick. The delightful belfry--of five octagonal stages--which rises from the crossing of the transepts, presents, from the outside, a fine and imposing arrangement. So, too, the chapelled choir, with its apse of rounded vaults rising in imposing tiers. This fine church is in direct descent from the Roman manner; built and developed as a simple idea, and, like all antique and classical work,--approaching purity,--is a living thing, in spite of the fact that it depicts the sentiment of a dead and gone past. It might not be so successfully duplicated to-day, but, considering that St. Saturnin dates from the eleventh century, its commencement was sufficiently in the remote past to allow of its having been promulgated under a direct and vigorous Roman influence.