Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/522

 490 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. Pakt H, as the Tour d'Evrault.i This is a conventual kitchen, not unlike that at Glastonbury, but ©f an earlier age, and so far different from any- thing else of the kind that it was long mistaken for a building of a very different class. Another fragment, though probably not ecclesiastical, is the screen of arches recently discovered in the hotel of the Prefecture at Angei*s. As a specimen of elaborate exuberance in barbarous ornament, it is unrivalled even in France, but it is much more like the Avork of the Normans than anything else found in the neighborhood. Owing to its having been so long built up, it still retains traces of the coloring with which all the internal sculi)tures of this age were adorned. The deliciency in ecclesiastical buildings in this province is made up in a great measure by the extent and preservation of its Feudal I'emains, few of the provinces of France having so many and such extensive fortified castles remaining. Those of Angers and Loches are two of the finest in France, and there are many others scarcely less magnificent. Few of them, however, have features strictly architec- tural ; and though the artist and the poet may luxuriate on their crumbling time-stained towers and picturesque decay, they hardly belong to such a work as this, nor afford materials which would advance our knowledge of architecture as a fine art. ' This building is well illustrated in Turner's " Domestic Architecture.