It was burnt once or twice by each of these races in the struggle for supremacy.

But with a plucky tenacity of life, it arose successively out of its own ashes and spread its phoenix wings to a new and vigorous vitality.

A venerable cathedral looks down upon it with a motherly face.

Unique old buildings, with half their centuries unrecorded and lost in oblivion, stand to this day in good repair, as the homes of happy children, who play at marbles and the last sports of the day just as if they were born in houses only a year older than themselves.

Institutions and customs older than the cathedral are kept up with a filial faith in their virtue.