IX. THE COL DE LA FAUCILLE 155

was written (say 1600 for surety), the town, then familiarly called “Faithful Abbeville,” contained 40,000 souls,

“living in great unity among themselves, of a marvellous frankness, fearing to do wrong to their neighbour, the women modest, honest, full of faith and charity, and adorned with a goodness and beauty toute innocente: the noblesse numerous, hardy, and adroit in arms, the masterships (maistrises) of arts and trades, with excellent workers in every profession, under sixty-four Mayor-Bannerets, who are the chiefs of the trades, and elect the mayor of the city, who is an independent Home Ruler, de grande probité, d’authorité, et sans reproche, aided by four eschevins of the present, and four of the past year; having authority of justice, police, and war, and right to keep the weights and measures true and unchanged, and to punish those who abuse them, or sell by false weight or measure, or sell anything without the town’s mark on it.”

Moreover, the town contained, besides the great church of St. Vulfran,¹ thirteen parish churches, six monasteries, eight nunneries, and five hospitals, among which churches I am especially bound to name that of St. George, begun by our own Edward in 1368, on the 10th of January; transferred and reconsecrated in 1469 by the Bishop of Bethlehem, and enlarged by the marguilliers in 1536, “because the congregation had so increased that numbers had to remain outside on days of solemnity.”

These reconstructions took place with so great ease and rapidity at Abbeville, owing partly to the number of its unanimous workmen, partly to the easily workable quality of the stone they used, and partly to the uncertainty of a foundation always on piles, that there is now scarce vestige left of any building prior to the fifteenth century. St. Vulfran itself, with St. Riquier, and all that remain of the parish churches (four only, now, I believe, besides St. Vulfran), are of the same flamboyant Gothic,-walls and towers alike coeval with the gabled timber houses of which the busier streets chiefly consisted when first I saw them.²

¹ [Often mentioned and drawn by Ruskin: see Vol. II. p. 398, and Vol. XIX. pp. 245, 275, 276.]

² [Here in the proof is an additional passage marked by Ruskin “Take out and keep”:-

“That first sight, after trotting down the chalk-hillside by the road from Montreuil, June 5th, 1835, was practically of more significance to me even than the sight of the Alps from Schaffhausen. I have wasted

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