That 'Saint Michael's Mount has become a popular lion, and can only be seen under the vexatious companionship of a guide and a party' is true enough; nevertheless, we can stay at the inn on the island, and thus be enabled to examine and make drawings of some of the most beautiful thirteenth-century work in the cloisters that we shall meet with in Normandy. These cloisters and open arcades (supported by upwards of two hundred slender pillars) are carved and decorated with grotesque and delicate ornament, the capitals to the pillars are richly foliated, and the fringe that surrounds them has been well described as a 'wilderness of vines and roses, and dragons, winged and crowned.'
Like the churches in Normandy, the architecture of these monastic buildings is in nearly every style, from the simple romanesque of the eleventh century to the rich _flamboyant_ of the fifteenth; and, like many of the churches, its history dates from the time when the Druids took possession of the island to the days when the storm of the Revolution broke upon its shores.
The ordinary time for visiting the rock is when the tide is out, but we have not seen Mont St. Michael to advantage until it is completely surrounded by water, as it is during the spring tides; it is then that, approached from the west, we may see it half-obscured by sea-foam, with its turrets shining through the clouds, and the heavy Atlantic waves booming against its foundations.
The little fishing population of Mont St. Michael, and the stories they tell of the dangers of the quicksands, will while away the time in the evening and reward us for staying; and we shall see such an exhibition of hopeless _ennui_ on the part of the French officers in garrison as will not soon be forgotten.
It would require a separate work to describe in detail all the buildings on the rock;[33] (it takes a day to examine the fortifications and dungeons alone); we have therefore only attempted to give the reader an idea of its general aspect; of what M. Nodier, in his '_Annales Romantiques_,' describes as 'l'effet poétique et religieux de la flèche du Mont St. Michael;' and indeed we have hardly dared to picture to ourselves the complete magnificence of the basilica of the Archangel, as mariners who approached these shores must have seen it three hundred years ago, with its lofty towers of sculptured stone; and the image of its patron saint, turning towards the western sun a fiery cross of gold.