--The church at Louviers is very much injured, but very handsome;
and though reduced to a nave with its four aisles it is still a spacious
edifice. The south porch, which projects boldly in the form of a
galilee, is scarcely to be excelled as a specimen of pointed
architecture at its highest pitch of luxuriant beauty. Yet, even in
this, the saints have been torn from their pedestals by the wanton
violence of the Calvinists or democrats. The central tower is square and
short: it is, however, handsome. Two windows, very similar to those of
the tower of St. Romain, in Rouen cathedral, light it on either side;
and saints, placed under canopies, ornament the angles behind the
buttresses.--The great western door is closed, and the front defaced:
the eastern end, likewise, is altogether modern.--Within, the same kind
of architecture prevails as in the exterior, but the whole is so
concealed, and degraded by ornaments in the worst of taste, and by
painted saints in the most tawdry dresses, that the effect is
disgusting. I never saw so great an array of wretched representations of
the heavenly host: the stone images collected round the holy sepulchre,
are even worse than those at Dieppe. Near the chapel of the sepulchre,
however, are four bas-reliefs, attached to the wall, exhibiting
different events in our Savior's life of good execution, and not in had
taste: an open gallery of fillagree stone-work, under the central tower
on the south side, is an object really deserving of admiration.
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