hiding a fine Byzantine doorway. Next followed a report upon the monuments of the province of Saintonge, proving that many of the towers therein said to have been erected by the English during their occupation of that district, were not built until after their departure.
The Director then continued to put the archæological questions on the programme, and first, Whether the large Angevine windows of the twelfth century had any bas-relief on their archivolts—whether certain windows with exteriorly semicircular heads had not interiorly pointed heads, or vice versâ? (M. de Caumont being of opinion that many windows were originally so formed.) The usual decoration of doorways, and the symbolical meaning of the statuary columns at the western entrance of Angers cathedral, was next learnedly investigated, and the peculiarity of Angevine vaulting demonstrated to consist in the central portions of each compartment being somewhat higher than its sides, so that a series of longitudinal ribs (unless observed from directly beneath it) is seen to be a succession of curved lines, as those of King's College chapel evidently are when seen from between its two roofs. As to the most ancient vaults in Anjou—with the exception of the Byzantine cupolas at Loches and Fontevrault, which are completely domical—M. Godard stated them to be generally either of semicircularly wagon-form or very flatly groined and ribless; observing that Angevine churches, being usually without triforia, are not so lofty as those of other provinces. It appeared also that in Anjou pier-arches and their spandrels are plain, and that church-towers are mostly placed over the transepts, and consist of cubes surmounted with octagons. M. Biseul then read a learned report on the Roman roads of Anjou, and at eleven o'clock the morning sitting terminated.
The business of the afternoon sitting having been opened by a comparison of the sum expended for restoring the spires of Angers cathedral in 1839 with that of building them in 1516, the consideration of the questions in the programme was then resumed by the Director enquiring. What were the subjects generally represented on Angevine bas-reliefs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? upon which attention having been drawn to an infant Jesus on the Virgin's knees in the cloister of St. Aubin, the Director stated that, during the Romano-Byzantine epoch, our infant Saviour was almost always represented with the intellectuality of a good man, however inferior the art of sculpture then was in portraying the human figure, compared with that of representing vegetable substances.
With regard to the former existence of any canon for religious symbolical sculpture, M. Godard thought that sagittary-centaurs and mermaids holding fish—the emblem of Christ—should be so considered: but that many of the monstrous figures met with on corbels and capitals had their prototypes in the east, whence they were brought by Greeks and the early crusaders, referring in aid of this opinion to the figure of a camel at Nevers, and of several plants only indigenous in the Holy Land—not to mention other forms of gnostic or hieroglyphic origin. The mermaid, so common in Poitou, M.de Caumont, from having seen it often upon ancient fonts, could
