the Abbey of Ste.-Foy itself, originally called St. Saviour's, was founded in the time of Charlemagne by Louis-le-Débonnaire, then Duke of Aquitaine ; reaching the climax of its prosperity under the rule of Abbot Odolric, who rebuilt the church, almost as we now see it, a hundred and fifty years after the original foundation. Time and revolution, however, have left but scanty vestiges of the monastic buildings of yore. Among these is the Abbot's Lodge; at an angle of which projects a turret inclosing a spiral staircase of unusual breadth, with stone steps so shallow as to be easier of ascent than many modern staircases. At hand, lone and desolate, stands a broken fragment of the Cloister. Farther down the hill, and on a considerably lower plane, rise a pair of round towers, side by side with several gigantic buttresses, both one and the other being built up against, and supporting, the broad platform on the mountain side, where once stood the historical abbey, now for the most part destroyed. To realize the position of these towers, it must be borne in mind that (resembling in this the Thracian town of Perinthus besieged by Philip of Macedon) the houses and streets at Conques rise one above another, like seats in an amphitheatre, so that the higher edifices overlook the lower. Thus it happens that the tops of

the two towers are nearly level with the upper plateau against which they rest.

A curious circumstance, not without archæological interest, associated with the rise of this House at the close of the eighth century, is worth recording. Louis-le-Débonnaire founded, at different times and places, as many as twenty-four separate monasteries, to each of which, with an eccentric fancy, he assigned by way of distinction one of the letters of the alphabet, presenting every House with an exemplar of its own particular letter, richly emblazoned in gold and silver. That assigned to St. Saviour's at Conques was the initial letter of the alphabet, A; and wonderful to relate, in the valuable treasury of ancient ornaments preserved there to this day, is the identical and, may be, unique specimen of early illumination in question applied to so singular a purpose as that of numbering and ticketing a batch of new-built abbeys eleven centuries since.

The actual monastery consists in part of the scanty remnants of domestic offices of former days, and partly of a small block of building after a Romanesque pattern erected by the Premonstrant monks as an earnest of the new home they purpose constructing in restoration of the ancient Carlovingian abbey. This latter was not among the hundreds whose suppression followed upon the events

of 1789. It had been secularized as far back as the year 1537 by conversion into a collegiate church. of secular canons, whom the revolutionary tempest found still in possession. From the early part of the sixteenth century, therefore, down to the Revolution, the church of Conques was collegiate, and after that simply parochial, till, by the advent of the Premonstrants within the last few years, it became once more conventual. This was brought about by the present Bishop of Rodez, who, bent on restoring the historical monastery of Ste.-Foy, placed in it a colony of canons regular of Prémontré, from the Abbey of St.-Michel de Frigolet in Provence. These recluses, as they flit about the aisles of their colossal minster in white gowns and with shaven heads, or make it echo with their anthems, contribute a marked feature to the strange mediæval aspect of the whole place.

And if, from the stately church, you stroll into the adjacent convent gardens, and look down over the parapet into the ravine at foot, you descry a wild torrent-the Louche-which, rapid and furious, discharges itself, as has been seen, all foam and uproar, into the neighouring Dourdou. On the farther bank of the rivulet, with their feet dipping into the clear though noisy stream, rise mountains pinnacled with craggy peaks; yet not so abrupt but that the toiling peasant has clothed their sides with

vineyards, which in September exhibit myriads of purple clusters of grapes, to be soon succeeded by the russet hues of autumnal leaves. And should the moon, with falling night (as happened more than once to the writer) peer above jagged hill and dusky dell and sombre Norman tower-causing light and shadow to alternate with one another, while the torrent below speeds in the darkness over its rocky bed-a lovely and romantic scene will unfold itself to the view, not to be soon effaced from the memory.

The chamber allotted by the brethren to their guest looked out upon the narrowest of steep, rough-paved alleys leading down, on the right, towards the bed of the Louche, and terminating in one of three mediæval gateways yet subsisting, though by far the least considerable of the trio. From his casement the stranger had before him the main body of the convent, separated from the wing where he was lodged by an intervening lane which a covered gallery served to bridge over. This street, if such it can be called, was almost deserted, save by a few peasant women, who oftentimes would repair hither to wash linen in a stone water tank that yet further straitened the passage. Or, should the laundresses not be plying their trade, a waddling troop of ducks, forsaking for the nonce their head-quarters in the irregular, uneven

little square fronting the church, would betake themselves to this cistern, making it a substitute for a pond; and forasmuch as it was raised a couple of feet above the pavement, the birds would be continually spreading their wings with a loud flapping noise, succeeded by a heavy splash into the water, which process repeating itself day by day, and hour by hour, constituted one of the monotonous and characteristic sounds of the place. Other sounds yet more characteristic, were the booming of the great bell in the church tower, or the sharper tone of one of lighter calibre in the bell-turret of the convent itself-sounds that, beginning at four in the morning, lasted on for one purpose or another, with but short intermission, till eight o'clock, after which hour they became fewer and further between. On a fine autumn evening the writer was glad to lean out of his cell window, taking in the scene before him, with the moon lighting up the firmament of heaven, even as we beheld it just now in imagination from the lower level of the gardens. To the left, the huge pile of the Norman Minster stood out boldly in the radiant brightness; while, through the vista formed by the sloping lane on the right, the eye rested on opaque masses of lofty hills but indistinctly seen, and on dense woods that appeared all the denser in the half-light.

Among a suite of apartments comprised within