Page:Costello - A pilgrimage to Auvergne from Picardy to Velay - A 30154 1.pdf/16

2 THE BONDS OF ST. OMER. though you have to walk to the end of the ill-paved streets, where, in a faubourg, still stands a precious monument of architectural art, the beautiful tower of St. Bertin. It is even desirable that the lover of the picturesque should mount the three hundred steps, and view the immense extent of country spread out at his feet, for, from this height the town itself has a pleasing aspect, all the gardens of the bourgeoisie being collected together in a space without the walls and forming a kind of Mosaic floor of beautiful appearance and considerable extent. Nine towns, the frontiers of Belgium, the hill of Cassel, and a wide plain apparently fertile and smiling are seen from this commanding height.

All that remains of the Abbey proves its former splendour : nothing can exceed the elegance of its pillars, the grace and lightness of its tower, but little is left to mark out the precincts of a building once the most considerable and important in the country. The land was granted to St. Bertin in 659 by a lord ealled Aldroald, at the request of St. Omer, whose bones were laid in sanctuary within the walls of the monastery. Torn from their recess by force of arms the relics figured for some time at St. Quentin, but, after a struggle between the men of peace who were at the head of each establishment, the bones were once more