The plan of this building is a Latin cross, with aisles to the nave, two little chapels on each side of the straight part of the choir, and a very narrow aisle behind the choir. A gallery or triforium runs round the building at the usual height, and a second within the windows of the clerestory. In Gothic churches, the glass of the upper windows is usually over the range of little shafts forming the triforium, here it is over the wall, forming the back of the gallery. At the rond point this gallery occupies the whole width of the aisle below; a very wide gallery, though a very narrow aisle; and it is there lighted by circular windows, but whether these belong to the original design I cannot tell. One end of the transept presents an arrangement somewhat similar to that of St. Leger, at Soissons, with five equal lancet windows below, and a rose window above. The work of the rose window fell out some time ago, and it is now quite naked. The five windows below are long and narrow, and without any tracery: indeed there is no tracery in the church. They have externally six shafts, at some distance from the wall, supporting little pointed arches; internally, there are only three shafts, which of course do not correspond with the windows; and they support flat scheme arches on little blocks. Over the intersection of the cross is a square tower, with a circular turret at each angle. The inside of this tower is ornamented with very slender shafts, and arches upon them, and was certainly intended to be exposed from below to the interior of the church; the present vaulting of that part being an awkward posterior addition. The old vaulting, above these shafts, was begun, but never completed.
While I was making sketches in this church, a girl took a chair just behind me, in order at the same time to perform her devotions, and to see what I was about; but religion and curiosity combined were insufficient to keep her awake. Soon after, the same blacksmith who had so well criticised the porch at St. Michel, came up and offered to conduct me all over the church, of which he had the keys. I assented to his proposal, and was not a little struck with the extreme thinness of the walls: those of the turrets, though rising 100 feet from the roof, are not 6 inches thick, and other walls are about in the same proportion. Indeed, the architect seems to have loved lightness ‘à la folie;’ for, in ornamenting the inside of his tower, he has used shafts 20 feet long, and only 7 inches in diameter, and one of these is of a single stone: several other shafts are about 15 feet long, and 5½ inches in diameter, each of a single piece, and all perfectly detached from the wall for their whole length. They are of a very hard stone, and so are also some of the thinnest parts of the masonry: the rest of the walls and piers are of a material less hard and heavy, and the vaulting, which is in oblique groins, is of a stone extremely light and porous. They are all found within a few leagues of the place.
The rain disappointed me in a walk I had projected, in order to see a little of the country about Dijon. Just out of the town is a noble spring, clear and abundant, and the use the people of the city make of it is to wash their foul linen. A shed built over it, and rows of stones in the water, make it very convenient for that purpose. It seems almost a profanation to contaminate the crystal fluid so immediately, with dirt and soapsuds. The soil is very rocky in the immediate neighbourhood, and full of quarries, which form excellent vineyards; but till we reach this place, Burgundy has as few vineyards as Champaine. The finest wine is made a little beyond Dijon, on the road to Lyon.
In England, we see sometimes written up working jeweller, working watch-maker, indicating, I suppose, the double advantage, that their employers will have to give their directions to the very individual who will execute them, and that it will be cheaper, as no intermediate profit is necessary. In France, on the contrary, we find marchands serruriers, marchands horlogers, &c.; the possessor of the shop apparently vindicating himself from the charge of being a mere workman.
I left Dijon on the morning of the 28th. One meets in French diligences, as well as in English stages, great variety of company, sometimes very agreeable, and sometimes rather the reverse. My companions from Troyes belonged to the latter class, but to make amends, I was this morning very fortunate, and met with a civil and very pleasant company. Both parties were I believe traders, going to the fair of Beaucaire. On leaving the town we observed a man sleeping under the walls of a church. He had made himself a sort of roof, and suspended to it a napkin, to keep out the rain, which descended heavily, and his goods were spread about, covered with old tapestry. It was a testimony to the honesty, or to the good police of Dijon; and perhaps if my companions had not thought it very ridiculous, I should have set it down as one of the customs of the country. On this road there was no longer any deficiency of vineyards. They lie at the foot of a range of hills almost all the way to Chalons sur Saone; these hills are of considerable height, (but not mountains) intersected frequently by deep, narrow ravines, sometimes rocky, and giving me something of the idea of the Mendip hills, between Wells and Chedder, but less bold, less lofty, and to the eye, less rich; for though the upper part is covered with wood, yet it is merely bushes and underwood. This is the famous Côte d’Or. All the lower parts are covered with the vineyards which produce the Burgundy wine, but some are much better than others, though the physical situation of all seems precisely alike. These hills were on the right; on the left was a fertile and well cultivated plain, not entirely flat, shaded with fruit trees, and here and there a little bit of wood: the vines sometimes extending also on this side. The rain did not permit me to see the extent of this lower country, or how it was bounded.
There is a cathedral at Chalons, of which the earliest part may perhaps be of the pointed architecture of the eleventh century. The choir is of the twelfth and thirteenth, and some parts of the edifice must be of the fifteenth, but I had little time to examine it. We found the floods so high, that the barge (Coche d’eau) which passes between Chalons and Lyon could not go, the tracking paths being covered with water. Three of my companions and myself engaged a voiture to take us to Macon. We breakfasted, or dined, as it is here usually called, at Tournu. In the north of France the meals are disposed pretty much as in England, but the breakfast is more solid. Here we dine at eleven or twelve, sometimes earlier, and it is the first meal. Supper is usually about eight.
At Tournu is a curious church. The body is of a rude sort of Norman architecture, apparently of high antiquity, with additions decidedly posterior, but still Norman, and some trifling alterations of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The choir has something like pilasters, and the intersection of the nave and transept is surmounted by a dome, which I cannot doubt to be part of the original structure.
The banks of the Saone at first are flat, but the scenery begins to improve about Tournu. The road from this place occasionally passes over moderate hills, and exposes views of distant mountains covered with wood, cultivated hills, and rich and populous valleys. The weather was beautiful, and while our carriage remained waiting at Tournu, I walked on and had truly a time of enjoyment. At Macon, my companions conducted me to the Hotel de l’Europe, and I felt myself so comfortable, and was so well pleased with the place and the people, that I was quite sorry not to be able to find a good Gothic cathedral, as a reason for spending a day or two there. On the 30th we found a passage boat, and descended to Lyon. The hills which bound the valley approach as we descend, and the entrance of Lyon is like the approach to Bristol from the sea, under the Slopes of Durdham and King’s Downs, and the rocks of the hot wells, but the river is larger and the cliffs not so high. There are a few curious looking chateaus in descending the Saone, and one or two churches one might look at, if employment were wanted, but nothing is very striking, and you may easily conceive that thus going down in a boat, I can hope to catch nothing but the most obvious features.