Vézelay*

As you discern the long unbroken line of its roof, low-pitched
for France, above the cottages and willow-shaded streams of the
place, you might think the abbey church of Pontigny, the largest
Cistercian church now remaining, only a great farm-building.
On a nearer view there is something unpretending, something pleasantly
English, in the plain grey walls, pierced with long "lancet" windows,
as if they overlooked the lowlands of Essex, or the meadows of Kent
or Berkshire, the sort of country from which came those saintly
exiles of our race who made the cloisters of Pontigny famous, and one
of whom, Saint Edmund of Abingdon, Saint-Edme, still lies enshrined
here.
The country which the sons of Saint Bernard choose for their
abode is in fact but a patch of scanty pasture-land in the midst of a
heady wine-district.
Like its majestic Cluniac rivals, the church has its western portico, elegant in structure but of comparatively humble
proportions, under a plain roof of tiles, pent-wise.
Within, a heavy coat of white-wash seems befitting to the simple
forms of the "Transition," or quite earliest "Pointed," style, to its
remarkable continence of spirit, its uniformity, and cleanness of
build.
The long prospect of nave and choir ends, however, with a sort of graceful smallness, in a chevet of seven closely packed, narrow bays.
It is like a nun's church, or like a nun's coif.