;i.>n ■yW. ,1, 1,1 < HorrDAY ^f- n *-V AMONi GLORIES OF FRANCE BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W, Sage 1891 i^ 3J DATF [UjF R- R m b ' ^CC 2 0137^^ m c^ O .t?^ DC 2O.B9T"'" '^"""^''^ "-ibrary ^™ffillllfflffiia,I!a,,'.tl« al°"«s of Fra 3 1924 024 296 174 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924024296174 THE GLORIES OF FRANCE PRINTED BY SP0TT.5WO0DE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STKEET SQUARE ^ 1 1 1 1 1 \ KOUEN CAi'HKDKAL: « EST I-KUNT SUMMER HOLIDAYS AMONG THE GLORIES OF FRANCE Ibcr (Iatbe^ral» an^ (Tburcbea BY T. FRANCIS BUMPUS Author of 'London Churches Ancient and Modern* ' Stained Glass in. England since the Gothic Revival' ' Kcclesiologia Germanica' WITH 94 ILLUSTRATIONS ' Qiiam dilectii tabernacula Tua, Domine vlrtutum ' LONDON THOS. B. BUMPUS 4 ST. MICHAEL'S ALLEY, CORNIIILL 1902 A 1^ , \S^\\^A- Scioihi /mpi-cssicn April It^ol. TO THE RIGHT HON. AND RIGHT REV, THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON THIS LITTLE WORK IS, WITH HIS PERMISSION RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY I I. SOME CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF NORMANDY : DIEPPE, CAEN, AND BAYEUX 20 II. SOME CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF NORMANDY {continued) : coutances and s^ez . . . . 39 III. A SUNDAY AT CHARTRES 50 IV. LE MANS .72 V. TOURS 86 VI. BOURGES 100 VII. A SUNDAY AT BOURGES: ETAMPES . . . .112 VIII. SENS AND JOIGNV 122 IX. PONTIGNY AND AUXERRE 1 36 X. A SUNDAY AT TROVES 160 XL CHALONS-SUR-MARNE I /I XII. CHAUMONT AND LANGRES 184 XIII. DIJON 194 XIV. AUTUN 210 XV. MOULINS-SUR-ALLIER 223 XVI. SOUVIGNY ' 228 XVII. NEVERS 240 XVIII. NEUCHAtEL, ST. GERMEK, AND l!l':AUVAIS . . . 25I XIX. CIRES-LES-MELLO, CREIL, AND SENLIS . . . 268 XX. NO^ON 276 INDEX 285 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGK ROUEN CATHEDRAL : WEST FRONT . . facing Tille-page WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL AT ANGERS ... 3 i^A ngevin£ School) ANGOULEME CATHEDRAL 5 iJSpechnen o/ the Early Gothic 0/ IVestent France) WEST ENTRANCE TO AUTUN CATHEDRAL .... 7 i^Slwwing the Burgitndian e-vtcrjlal narthex) METZ CATHEDRAL II TROYES : WEST END OF ST. NICHOLAS [3 {S/>ccij'ien 0/ Iccole Troycjtnc) ST. REMI, DIEPPE 22 BERNliiRES 27 ST. JEAN, CAEN 29 LA TRINITE, CAEN 3 1 ST. ETIENNE, CAEN 33 EAVEUX CATHEDRAL : FROM THE SOITTH-EAST • • • 35 BAYEUX CATHEDRAL ; THE CHOIR 37 COUTANCES : THE CATHEDRAL AND ST. PIERRE ... 40 COUTANCES CATHEDRAL : FROM THE BISHOP'S GARDEN . . 4 1 COUTANCES CATHEDRAL : THE NAVE 43 COUTANCES CATHEDRAL : POURTOUR OF CHOIR . . . 45 SEEZ CATHEDRAL : THE WESTERN PORTAL .... 47 CHARTRES CATHEDRAL: THE PORTE ROYALE . . . . 5I CHARTRES CATHEDRAL: THE WEST FRONT ... 5:5 xii Holidays among the Glories of J^'rance CHARTRES CATHEDRAL : INTERIOR LOOKINC WEST . CHARTRES : ST. PIERRE CHARTRES CATHEDRAL : THE SOUTHERN PORTAL CHARTRES CATHEDRAL: SOUTH AISLE OP CH01R . CHARTRES CATHEDRAL: VIEW ACROSS TRANSEPT CHARTRES: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE HASSE-VII.I.E . LE mans: west FRONT OF THE CATHP:DRAL LE MANS CATHEDRAL : FROM THE SOUTH-EAST LE MANS CATHEDRAL : INTERIOR LOOKINC EAST LE MANS : CHURCH OF NOTRK-DAME DE LA COUTURE . TOURS : WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL TOURS : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL .... TOURS CATHEDRAL : SOUTH AISLE OF THE CHOIR TOURS : APSE OF THE CATHEDRAL .... TOURS : ST. JUI.IEN TOURS : BASILICA OF ST. MARTIN, AND ONE OF THE TOWERS OF THE ABBEY BOURGES CATHEDRAL: FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. BOURGES CATHEDRAL : WESTERN PORTALS BOURGES CATHEDRAL : SOUTH PORCH .... BOURGES : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL BOURGES CATHEDRAL : THE CRYPT ETAMPES : SOUTH TRANSEPT OF NOTRE-DAME SENS : WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL .... SENS CATHEDRAL : THE NORTH TRANSEPT SENS CATHEDRAL : THE LADY-ALTAR SENS CATHEDRAL: GRILLE IN NORTH CHOIR AISLE SENS CATHEDRAL : ROSE WINDOW IN SOUTH TRANSEPT SENS : CHOIR OF THE CATHEDRAL .... PONTIGNY : WEST FRONT OF ABBEY CHURCH PONTIGNY: INTERIOR OF ABBEY CHURCH 57 59 6i 63 65 70 7i 77 79 S5 S7 89 91 94 96 97 103 105 107 109 113 117 123 125 127 129 131 133 137 139 L ist of Illustrations Xlll ST. £tienne, auxerre ST. ETIENNE, AUXERRE : THE CHOIR FROM THE SOUTH TRANSEPT ST. ETIENNE, AUXERRE : THE LADY-CHAPEL ST. GERMAIN, AUXERRE ST. fiTIENNE, AUXERRE : CHOIR LOOKING WEST . ST. FLORENTIN : ROOD-LOFT TROVES : ROOD-LOFT IN THE MADELEINE . TROYES CATHEDRAL : WINDOWS IN THE NAVE TROVES : INTERIOR OF THE C.'VTHEDRAL, LOOKING EAST TROYES CATHEDRAL : TRANSEPTAL ROSE i^The parapets shtyw the crossed keys and the _fleitr-de-lis in alternate conipartnien ts) TROVES : ST. JEAN CHALONS : ST. ALPINUS CH.4L0NS : NORTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL WEST FRONT OF STE. MARIE DE L'EPINE . INTERIOR OF STE. MARIE DE L'EPINE, NEAR CH.\LONS CHALONS : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL CHALONS : NOTRE-DAME, WEST FRONT CH.^LONS : NAVE OF NOTRE-DAME .... CHALONS : EAST END OF NOTRE-DAME LANGRES : THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-EAST LANGRES : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL . DIJON : NOTRE-DAME DIJON : WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL . AUTUN CATHEDRAL : WESTERN DOORWAY AUTUN CATHEDRAL : FROM THE SOUTH-WEST . AUTUN CATHEDRAL : A CAPITAL IN THE NAVE AUTUN : NORTH SIDE OF CATHEDRAL .... MOULINS CATHEDRAL; EXTERIOR OF THE CHOIR . SOUVIGNY ABBEY CHURCH ; VIEW ACROSS NAVE 141 144 i6[ 163 165 167 169 172 173 175 176 177 179 180 i8t 187 191 199 205 213 215 217 219 225 231 xiv Holidays among the Glories of France TAr.r; NEVERS : NORTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAT 24 1 NEVERS CATHEDRAL : THE APSE 243 PARIS : WEST FRONT OF NOTRE-DAME 249 ST. OERMER : THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE 255 KEAUVAIS : ST. feTIENNE . . ■ 257 BEAUVAIS : WEST DOOR OF ST. fiTIENNE 259 BEAUVAIS : NORTH DOOR OF ST. ETIENNE .... 261 BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-EAST . . . . 263 BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL ABOUT 1830 265 {Froi?! a liTaiving by Chas. l^'ilif) BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL : TRANSEPT DOOR 266 SENLIS : THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST . . . . 27I SENLIS : DOOR IN TRANSEPT OF CATHEDRAL . . . . 273 NOYON : WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAI 277 NOYON : EAST END OF THE CATHEDRAL 279 NOVON : ENTRANCE TO CHAPTER-HOUSE 2S1 SUMMER HOLIDAYS AMONG THE GLORIES OF FRANCE INTRODUCTORY The subject of church architecture in France — closely aUied with that of our own country in certain districts — is one of inex- haustible interest and extent. Grand as it is, and in not a few respects worthy of imitation among ourselves, French archi- tecture must not be indiscriminately admired or regarded, as too many do, vvith a blind faith ; for while the cathedrals and churches of France are, generally speaking, conceived on a more gigantic scale than our own, they present fewer varieties and blendings of style, besides being less interesting historically, and it may also be added, less truthful and lovable. It was not until the thirteenth century that France was com- pacted out of a number of States or divisions, each distinguished by peculiarities which were retained long after these provinces were welded together under St. Louis and Philippe-Auguste into a kingdom, which then, as now, had for its centre the lie de France, i.e. the country immediately surrounding Paris. Even when this was accomplished these provinces retained much that was peculiar, even to their architecture, so that in this respect at the present day each affords a distinct field for the pursuit of ecclesiology, as much difference existing between the Romanesque of Provence and Normandy, and the First Pointed of Anjou and B 2 Holidays among the Glories of France Burgundy, as between the Early English of Wells Cathedral and the Yorkshire abbeys, the Perpendicular of Somerset and that of the Eastern Counties. The Societe des Monuments Historiques has published an architectural map of France, showing it to have been the home of no fewer than thirteen provincial styles. Most important among these arc the style of the He de France or Domaine Royal ; the style of Normandy ; those of Burgundy and Auvergne ; that of Provence ; of Languedoc, Poitou, and Sain- tonge, all included in Aquitania ; the Angevine style, marking a small district on both sides the Loire between Aquitaine and Normandy ; and, lastly, though not a very important one, that of the extreme north-east bordering on the Rhine and Belgium. Gradually blending tints in lieu of sharp lines explain the boundaries of these styles, which in some instances overlap each other, for the influence of each province was felt by its neigh- bours, and this most forcibly in frontier regions. Beginning with the south of France, it may be observed that the long continuance of Roman civilisation there, and, as a natural consequence, the large number of buildings erected in imitation of Roman remains, besides the early existence of a colony of Greeks who left numerous churches, Byzantine in plan and construction, are sufficient reasons for our finding the greater part of its cathedrals and churches Romanesque in style. But it would be tedious to indicate the various niceties and dis- tinctions existing between the Romanesque of Provence and of the Auvergnat, between the Transition of Aquitaine and of Anjou ; briefly, therefore, the architectural peculiarities of these provinces must be pointed out, leaving the reader to glean more detailed information from Fergusson's ' Ancient and Mediajval Architec- ture,' one of those fascinating books which can only be laid aside with reluctance when once in hand, or from Petit's ' Archi- tectural Studies in France.' The especial value of the latter was that it opened to the architect and ecclesiologist several new and unusually rich fields of study, such as the Touraine and the Auvergnat, with the advantage of an intelligent practical com- mentary on the examples adduced. The larger number of illus- trations were engraved on wood from the drawings of Uelamotte, and these with respect to scientific accuracy and artistic beauty leave nothing to be desired. Other plates are anastatic repro- ductions of the author's own sketches— too roughly and hastily WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL AT ANGERS {^An^ci'iiie School) 4 Holidays among the Glories of France executed to be useful in matters of detail, but so admirable in their representation of broad outlines and general picturesque effects as to render the subjects recognisable in a moment ; a view across the nave of the cathedral at Autun, St. Basile at Etampes, St. Sernin at Toulouse, and the church at Langrune, near Caen, being a few among the subjects that engaged Petit's fertile pencil. Like the Romanesque architects of Rhenish Germany, those of the southern French divisions — Provence, for example, with Aries for its centre — were content with their style, giving them- selves up to its refinement, and not striving after fresh develop- ments, as was the case with their northern neighbours. For, as with the Germans, the complete Gothic does not seem to have been imported here until the thirteenth century was far advanced, and then it was neither so perfectly understood nor practised with the success observable in the northern regions. One of the first churches of central France in which it appeared is that of Notre-Dame at Clermont-Ferrand, whose choir is a very grandiose example almost rivalling Amiens in size ; other specimens confronting us in the apsidal chapels of the cathedral at Bordeaux, in portions of St. Etienne at Limoges, in the cognominal church at Toulouse, and in Notre-Dame at Bayonne. The Romanesque and Transitional architecture of southern France, with its imitation of classical detail, its domical roofs, barrel vaults, and speluncar character, may be said to extend con- siderably above that generally acknowledged architectural boundary line — the Loire — as far as Le Mans, where we see it in the church of Notre-Dame de la Couture, and in the opposite direction as far as Langres. Within the limits of Provence, which occupies the whole valley of the Rhone as far as Lyons and along the coast between the hills and the sea towards the Pyrenees, there is barely one church that can be called Gothic. Some are so purely Romanesque that, although they date but from the age of Charlemagne, they rival some of the finest buildings of imperial Rome in classical purity of detail. Others show a more Gothic tendency, as, for instance, St. Trophimus at Aries with its noble porch and its cloisters, which, as well as those at Fontefroide, are lovely specimens of Romanesque work in which their architects revelled in freedom from restraint, and where parsimony of care and pains is imperceptible. The churches of Alat, Aix, Cuxa, Introductory 5 St. Gilles, and Tarascon are remarkable chiefly for their porches, while a lovely doorway in the fortress-like church of Magnelone has quite a Saracenic air. In Aquitaine, the richest field for the study of the Roman- esque of that province is the department of Charente, with Angouleme for its centre. What an architectural feast is here spread forth by such churches as Chatres, Monthiers, St. Amand de Boixe, Roulet, Trois Palis, Plassac, and La Palud, gloomily grand structures upon whose western facades their architects lavished so much skill ! ANGOULEME CATHEDRAL {Spccii)iC)i o/tke Early Gothic of Western Franec) Still farther south we find Perigueux, Roulet, and Souillac, and the vast five-aisled St. Sernin at Toulouse. Round arches and tunnel vaults, pointed arches and domical roofs are features peculiar to the churches of this province — more remarkable, perhaps, for grandeur of conception than for the success which has attended their achievement. Proceeding northwards, we find in Poitou, Anjou, and Touraine, 6 Holidays among the Glories of France with their capitals, Poitiers, Angers, and Tours, a much more dehcate handling of both Romanesque and Pointed forms than in Aquitaine. Absence of aisles is a striking feature of many Romanesque and Transitional Angevine churches — a peculiarity depriving them of that mystery derivable from the interminable perspective of the piers and arcades of the more advanced Pointed examples. The cathedral of Angers, St. Martin and La Trinite in the same city ; Blois, Loches, and Fontevrault are noble types of Angevine First Pointed. The Auvergnat Romanesque — a school with as distinct and marked a tradition of its own as that of the Rhine, Lombardy, and Normandy — is extremely beautiful. The western narthex, with or without a gallery, and the apsidal east end with one pair of chapels to the north-east, another to the south-east, and an apse to each transept on its eastern face, are characteristic features of churches in this part of France. They are, however, unlike Noyon or Tournai, rarely or never transverse triapsidal. Issoire, Notre-Dame du Port at Clermont- Ferrand, the cathedral of Le Puy, and St. Etienne at Nevers — the last somewhat distant, but partaking of all the peculiarities of the Auvergnat style of Romanesque — are specimens most worthy of citation. Another feature in the churches of the Auvergnat is the use in their construction of different coloured materials for external ornamentation, such as tiles inlaid in stone in the face of the wall, patterns formed of white stones and black lava from the neighbouring volcanic region — a system of natural polychromy very grateful and refreshing to the eye. There is no doubt that the magnificent Roman monuments preserved in Aries, Nismes, and Orange gave something of a Classical character to the church architecture in their own neigh- bourhood — a peculiarity to be found in such churches of the dioceses suffragan to Lyons as Autun, Langres, Saint-Claude, and (Jrenoble. In the naves of Autun and Langres cathedrals the pointed arches separating them from the aisles spring from fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals. Ionic columns appear in the apse of the cathedral at Lyons, and Corinthian ones, fluted, support pointed arches in the apse at Beaune, between Dijon and Autun. At the angles of the octagon of Avignon and in the tower of the abbey at Tournus Corinthian pilasters occur ; in- deed, the Auvergnat and Burgundian churches present manifold examples of Classicism, which, by the wa)', must not be confused hitrodtutory 7 with the vandah'sms committed during the eighteenth century in the apses of Paris, Bayeux, Fecamp, Lisieux, Chartres, and other northern cathedrals. Burgundy is a most interesting province architecturally ; indeed, its Early Pointed style, as exemplified in the abbey church of Pontigny, the choirs of St. Etienne at Auxerre and Vezelay, and the churches of Semur and Notre-Dame at Dijon, is quite sui generis. In the last-named city the original cathedral WEST ENTRANCK TO AUTUN CATHEDKAL ^Showing ilic BurguHiiian cxtcJ'naL na?'thcx) of St. Benigne was one of the oldest in Burgundy, and doubtless afforded an excellent example of the Romanesque of that pro- vince ; but its total destruction at the Revolution, and the insuffi- ciency of plates illustrating it, published by Dom Plancher, preclude our gaining any satisfactory idea of it. Open western porches of great height, with or without storeys above them, as at Autun, Beaune, and Notre-Dame, Dijon, and used through all the ages of Pointed ; great ante-churches or narlhexes, as at Vezelay ; absence of aisles to the apse, but the employment 8 Holidays among the Glories of France of smaller apses on the eastern sides of transepts ; closed triforia ; and the cylindrical column, with its stiff-leafed capital, are among the most prominent peculiarities of Burgundian Gothic. The abbeys of Citeaux and Cluny, Pontigny, Charite-sur-Loire, Tournus, and Vezelay attest the fact that Burgundy, like York- shire, early became the favourite resort of religious, who founded here those great monastic establishments which spread their influence, not only over France, but over the whole of Europe, controlling to a most extraordinary extent all the relations of mediaeval European society. Some of these great establishments have almost entirely dis- appeared ; for example, Citeaux and Cluny. The church of the latter was the grandest in Europe, being, within a few feet, as large as St. Peter's at Rome, and possessing five aisles, double transepts, and seven towers. Pontigny, Tournus, Vezelay, and Souvigny — the last, by the way, is in the Bourbonnais, but it may not inappropriately enter into this great group — still retain their enormously long churches, but the busy courts which once surrounded them now lie desolate. In other provinces neighbouring to Burgundy, i.e. Berri, the Nivernais, the Bourbonnais, Touraine, Maine, and the Orlean- nais — provincialisms, although they may present themselves to the practised eye, must not be looked for in the cathedrals of Bourges, Nevers, Tours, Le Mans, and Chartres, belonging as they do to the great church-rebuilding ages, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but among the churches of the smaller towns and villages. Those of Blois, Loches, and Meung in the Touraine present specimens of First Pointed detail hardly surpassed for elegance of effect and delicacy of execution. Both here and in the contiguous Orleannais we meet with the square eastern ter- mination, as in St. Julien and Notre-Dame-la-Riche at Tours, and in three of those fine churches which render Etampes so delightful a place for a brief sojourn. Churches in the Orlean- nais, especially in that district of it known as La Beauce, cluster almost as thickly as in Leicestershire. Travelling from Orleans to Etampes — whose churclies, by the way, seem to form a sort of frontier line between the architecture of northern and southern France— the almost universal saddleback steeples of its village Introductory 9 churches form the only rehef to a pays etuiiiyeiix, as La Fontaine termed this, the granary of France. The tedium of the railway journey across the monotonous plains of Champagne, Picardy, and French Flanders is relieved by the great churches of Sens, Troyes, Chdlons-sur-Marne, Rheims, Meaux, Beauvais, Amiens, Abbeville, St. Quentin, St. Omer, and Tournai. Generally speaking, the predecessors of these glories of France have made way for larger and more splendid buildings which the increasing wealth and population of their cities demanded. Tournai, however, retains its peculiar Romanesque nave and its apsidal Transitional transepts, while the choir and transepts of Beauvais, respectively Geometrical and Flamboyant, soar aliove the severely simple ninth-century basse a'uvre. A more gradual development is offered by the church of Montier en Der, near Vassy, where to a very simple Romanesque nave was added in the thirteenth century a First Pointed choir of the same dimensions. In Champagne there is hardly a town or large village whose churches will not repay the trouble of breaking the journey, especially those with which the banks of the Marne between Rheims and Meaux are studded. Of Early Champenois Gothic the two finest representatives are the choir of St. Remi at Rheims and the greater part of Notre- Dame at Chalons-sur-Marne. The apses of these two churches are almost identical in plan and construction, the former retaining its simple, solemn Romanesque nave. The cathedral of Chalons is a fine specimen of Geometrical Decorated, but certain features, notably the imposing range of isolated cylindrical columns and the position of the towers to the east of the transept, have a very German appearance ; indeed, Teutonisms are more or less apparent in the majority of the churches in this north-east corner of France neighbouring to the Rhine and Belgium. The long, aisleless choir of another church at Chalons, that of St. Loup, ending in a three-sided apse, recalls Belgian and German examples of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as does the spacious church of St. Maurice at Lille, with its five aisles separated from each other by tall cylindrical columns of the most graceful character. Five miles east of Chalons is Notre-Dame de I'Epine, perhaps the loveliest creation of the mediseval architect on French soil : the windows exhibit a curious mingling of Geometrical and Flowing tracery ; lo Holidays among the Glories of France it possesses that rare feature in France — a rood-screen, and is altogether a structure that has given rise to no httle speculatiim as to the nationahty of its designer. Further eastward we have the cathedrals of Toul and Metz, whose doubtful locale creates a feeling of diffidence in the mind when assigning them a nationality. The ground-plan of Metz, with the procession path and radiating chapels around its chevet, is French, while the exaggeration of the clerestory at the expense of the aisles is a feature essentially German. The cathedral of Magdeburg offers an example of this : the side aisles there being practically little more than one-third of the whole height of the church, and there being no triforium arcade, a disagreeable effect is created by the portion of unrelieved wall-space intervening between the apex of the nave arcade and the string-course below the clerestory windows. At Metz this space is richly arcaded and the openings glazed, but there is no triforium passage of any depth. Fascinating as this arrangement may appear, sober reason tells us that such vagaries should not be attempted externally ; but within, this defect is neutralised partly by the perspective and by the rich old stained-glass which not a few of the windows in this part of the church have succeeded in retaining. There is a wealth of detail in Metz Cathedral, especially in its foliaged ornament, and to the traveller who sees it after the poor Middle Pointed work of the Rhine provinces, the relief is most agreeable ; but should he approach the capital of Lorraine through so richly churched a district as the He de France he will experience a feeling akin to disappointment, which is, however, to some extetit compensated for by the vastness and elajue character of this, the most imposing structure of its class in Europe. In the Troyes district of Champagne we find a peculiar type of Flamboyant pervading the churches of its towns and villages, its leading characteristics being absence of capitals to the piers, the arch ribs dying off into them, and of foliation or cusping to the reticulated tracery of its windows. To an English eye, accus- tomed to the richness of our contemporary Perpendicular, such work appears tame and nerveless, but there is much that is grand and imposing about the scale of these churches, while a certain amount of picturesqueness has been secured for them by the retention of their old fittings, benches with tall straight open backs being used in lieu of chairs. In the city of Troyes churches cluster almost as thickly as MKTZ CAIHKIJKAL 1 2 Holidays among the Glories of France in Cologne. Not a few of them are rich in old stained-glass, but especially that gem of thirteenth-century Gothic, the unfinished church of St. Urbain. The vitreous decoration of the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in the same city is unusually splendid ; indeed, nowhere in Europe can this particular branch of ecclesio- logy be seen in such profusion and magnificence as in the French cathedrals north of the Loire. The towns of Melun, Montereau. and Pont-surYonne, oc- curring on the line of route from Paris to Sens, contain much interesting work, as do Joigny and St. Florentin, which are passed in going from the latter archiepiscopal city to Auxerre. The Early Renaissance in the churches of Joigny and St. Florentin is particularly rich and interesting. Troyes and Chalons can be reached either from St. Florentm, a route of comparatively recent opening, or by the older and more interesting one from Sens, passing through Villers I'Archeveque, where a few hours will not be deemed misspent. We now come to the He de France, a small province, it is true, but enshrining within it some of the noblest buildings of the Middle Ages. Much fine work will be found in the Seine-side village churches lining the railway from Paris to Mantes, but these are eclipsed in architectural splendour and importance by those along the Oise, for the exploration of which the town of Creil — itself not wholly uninteresting in an ecclesiological point of view — will be found an admirable centre. And not for these only, but for the beautiful architecture of the country of the Soissonnais, the cradle of Early Pointed French Gothic, will Creil be found a convenient point de depart — Senlis, Compiegne, Noyon, Laon, Soissons, and Braisne all being within easy reach. As a whole the village church architecture of France may be said to fall far below that of England, but the succession of churches alluded to above as standing on the banks of the Oise — St. Leu d'Esserent, Champagne, Persan-Beaumont, and Auvers, together with others of equally beautiful detail — is probably surpassed only by that glorious line extending all the way from Sleaford to King's Lynn, or by that remarkable Nene Valley series between Welling- borough and Peterborough. The above-mentioned line of churches is met, going Paris-wards from Creil. In the direction of Beauvais are the contiguous villages of Cires and Mello, each with a noble and refined specimen of Early Pointed, while a short walk from Creil brings the ecclesiologist to Nogent-les-V.iergesand Introductory i 3 Villers St. Paul. In all these churches the late twelfth and early thirteenth century Gothic of France can be seen in perfection. But of all the French provinces, that of Normandy, from the fact of its history having been for so many years interwoven with that of his own country, is to an Englishman indubitably the most interesting architecturally. Perhaps nowhere in France do we see all the styles brought to such a degree of perfection as in TROVES : WEST END OF ST. NICHOLAS (^Specimen of I'ecole Trcyenne) this, the most delightful of her provinces. The Romanesque style of Normandy must not, however, be looked for in its capital, the cathedral of Rouen and other churches of that enchanting city having been rebuilt during the First and Middle Pointed epochs. But in the department of Calvados it is difficult to point to a village that does not present a specimen of ' Norman ' work, as for instance Bernieres, Fontaine le Henri, Bieville, Thann, and Fresne Camilly, all within easy distance of Caen, 14 Holidays among the Glories of France which, with its two great mainly Romanesque abbatial churches of St. Etienne and La Trinite, and its desecrated St. Nicholas, is quite a mine of study. Other large and important specimens of Norman work are the abbey church of Montivilliers and the humbler St. Honorine at Graville, near Havre; Cerisy, between Bayeux and St. L6 ; St. Georges de Bocherville, near Rouen ; and the collegiate church of St. Hildevert at Gournay, in the Pays du Bray, on the line of railway from Dieppe to Beauvais, and richest of all in the nave of Bayeux. The First Pointed of Normandy is represented on the noblest scale in that most picturesque, if not most perfect, of French cathedrals, that of Rouen — with its strikingly dissimilar western towers whose prolongation beyond the line of the aisles, as at Wells, gives such majesty to the facade ; its glorious transeptal roses ; its nave with quadruple division of height, as at Paris, Laon, and Noyon, and its graceful clusters of slender shafts ; its triforium stage open to the aisles, a Normandy feature found also at Eu ; its wealth of old painted-glass, and its elongated Lady-chapel. Next in point of size and completeness stand the lovely cathedral of Coutances and the once cathedral church of St. Pierre at Lisieux ; other early thirteenth-century work of a style quite its own, and which for delicacy and refinement can hardly be surpassed, being the nave clerestory and the whole choir of Bayeux cathedral ; the choir of St. Etienne at Caen ; the nave and west porches of Seez cathedral ; the minster-like church of Eu, near Treport ; the transepts and choir arcades of St. Jacques, Dieppe ; Fecamp and St. Germer's abbey churches ; the choir, transepts, and tower of Norrey church, between Caen and Bayeux; and the steeples, with their elongated belfry stages, of St. Pierre, St. Jean, and St. Sauveur, Caen ; of Bretteville, near Norrey ; and of Bernieres and Langrune, both on the sea coast, about ten miles from Caen. Geometrical Decorated of a very high order occurs in the transepts at Bayeux ; in the side chapels to the naves of Coutances and Rouen cathedrals ; in the transepts and choir of Seez ; in St. Etienne-le-Vieux (now desecrated) at Caen ; in the exquisite SainteChapelle at the east end of St. Germer's abbey, a contemporary of the Parisian one, and doubtless from the same hand ; and on the grandest scale of all in the church of St. Ouen at Rouen— one of the very few great French churches which, erected during the latter half of the thirteenth century, fill Introductory i 5 up the gap between the period when rehgious art had attained its highest excellence, and that which saw its decline ere the fifteenth was very far advanced. Perhaps there is no part of the Continent in which the Flamboyant Gothic may be seen worked with such a degree of refinement combined with vigour as Normandy. Examples are numerous, but it is necessary to mention only the western fa(jade of Rouen cathedral ; St. Maclou in the same city ; the church of Caudebec, on the Seine between Rouen and Havre ; the porches at Harfleur and Louviers ; the tower of the Madeleine at Verneuil, and the upper portion of the nave of St. Jacques, Dieppe. From Normandy we pass into Brittany, which, in architecture as in everything else, seems to have been behind the rest of France, but portions of the churches of Dinan, Dol, Folgoat, Guingamp, Nantes, Quimper, St. Pol de Leon, and Treguier are fine. Specimens of Romanesque or Early Pointed are rare, and much discrimination is required in fixing the dates of buildings, many of them having an air and style more ancient than they really are. The use of granite as a material is very frequent. Flamboyant, of a peculiar type, is the style par excellence of this corner of France, while the English look pervading many of the details and plans, and the manner in which so large a number of churches have retained their ancient primitive furniture, delight the antiquary, the ecclesiologist, and the lover of the picturesque. In the rood-lofts of Folgoat, St. Fiacre, and Lambader we find a minuteness and delicacy of carving, especially in the foliaged ornament, hard to find among the works of an earlier and purer age. Its roadside crosses are a feature of Brittany ; hardly a single point of intersection of two roads can be passed which is not marked by a cross — more or less mutilated— oftentimes restored by the piety of recent generations. A good idea of the French and Enghsh character may be gathered from a study of their respective architecture. VVithout indulging in that indiscriminate eulogy which forces one to exhaust every interjection in the dictionary expressing admiration of everything big, and anything belonging to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it is impossible to dilate with sufficient enthusiasm upon the exquisite art of the French churches, upon the skill observable in the disposition of their ground plans — perhaps unequalled elsewhere — upon the vigorous beauty of their sculpture, and upon the combined boldness and 1 6 Holidays among the Glories of France lightness of the art in nearly all the buildings of the best period^ at least in those of the Domaine Royal, Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, and Normandy. But that regard for the unities which elicits one's admiration in the art, literature, and drama of France seems, somehow, to be lacking in her ecclesiastical architecture. Magnificent and awe-inspiring though the French churches be — from Gris Nez in the north to the Pyrenees in the south, from Bordeaux in the south-west to Metz in the north-east — it cannot be said that, externally at least, there is a single great church that succeeds in satisfying the mind in the same way that Beverley, Exeter, Lincoln, Salisbury, or Wells does, the greater reticence ob- served in their proportions not only enabling the designers of those more humbly dimensioned structures to impart to them that playfulness of outline which constitutes one of their greatest charms, but permitting their towers to bear due relation to the masses which they surmount. Where in France, except perhaps in the Departments bordering on the English Channel, has the architect been able to produce a group of steeples comparable in beauty and completeness with those of Canterbury, Durham, Lichfield, Lincoln, or York ? For the ambitious scale upon which so many of her churches were conceived has, save in a few instances, precluded their equipment with steeples of sufficient dimensions either to relieve their enormous masses or to impart true dignity and picturesqueness of outline. Again, while there are certain of the great French churches exceeding our own in length, they do not appear so long, either from their great height, or from the absence of a high, open or close rood-loft. Nearly all the ancient examples of this feature, together with other medifeval insirumenta of worship, disappeared from France during the religious troubles of the sixteenth century, or under the misdirected zeal of the clergy themselves in the eighteenth, and not having been equipped like our own cathedrals and parish churches with modern works of the kind, the majority of the great French churches lack that air of mystery and impressiveness which constitutes so charming a feature of English religious edifices and of such in Germany where piety has retained or reinstated the rood. On the other hand there are features in the great French churches to which those of our own land can lay no claim — their portals ' scooped into the depth and darkness of Elijah's Horeb Introductory 1 7 cave' and lined with sculptured effigies, but, it must be confessed, not always well proportioned to their facades ; their chevets with graceful coronee of chapels ; their rose windows, and their wealth of ancient painted-glass — a wealth surprising when the fanaticism of the Huguenots, the vitiated taste of the Louis Quinze period, and the fury of the Great Revolution are in turn reflected upon. Comparing the historic interest, architecturallv, of the gene- rality of the French cathedrals with that of our own, it must be admitted that while ours are as a rule less valuable as monuments of one great church-building epoch — the re-ediflcation, enlarge- ment, and embellishment of them extending over several centuries, whereas in France the majority of her great cathedrals were com- pleted in all essentials ere the thirteenth century had more than half passed away— the blending of one style with another has always been so much more felicitously accomplished with us as to render an English cathedral that constant source of delight, and that endless field for study and research to which, with all its grandioseness, a French one can hardly lay a similar claim. Indeed, in certain instances, as in the fagades of Paris and Sens, the combination of styles has been far from satisfactorily achieved. It is interesting to observe the relative situations of our own and the French churches, we ever evincing a love of the beautiful and picturesque when selecting a site for religious edifices, thus securing for them, even when in the crowded town, that hallowed temenos which is rarely, if ever, met with in the environments of those of our neighbours across the Channel. In France, where the majority of the great churches rise sheer from a market-place or a stony street, it is difficult to meet with a cathedral retaining, in anything like completeness, those environments of cloister, chapter-house, bishop's palace, and residentiary houses which almost everyvv-here in England have been preserved — dependencies whose inferior proportions .make the central monument tell to still greater advantage. Ttie grandeur of the great French churches, like all earthly grandeur, requires points of comparison in order to be more thoroughly appreciated. Absolute isolation would be fatal to a French cathedral, and although, in the absence of our English entourages, it was not right at Rouen and elsewhere to permit of the erection of parasitical secular tenements, there was something undoubtedly picturesque in the manner in which the French churches rose above the crowded dwellings and the c 1 8 Holidays among the Glories of France narrow streets of the ancient cities, dominating and raising our imaginations by ttieir colossal proportions — symbols of the truth and authority of a Church of which each cathedral was its image in stone. With regard to the removal of the houses from around Rouen Cathedral of late years, M. Loth, an accomplished archaeologist, picturesquely remarks : — 'La metropole Normande etait, peut-etre, encore plus feerique, lorsque au lieu de se montrer a peu pres toute degagee, comme elle I'est aujourd'hui, elle emergeait du pittoresque Marche aux Fleurs installe sur son parvis, au sein d'un fouillis de maisons accroche'es a ses flancs, et paraissait comme la synthese de ce vieux Rouen aux cent clochers, aux hautes tours, aux Gothiques maisons de bois, qui faisait dire a Victor Hugo, au temps deja lointain oil Ton ne voyageait qu'en diligence : * , . . J'ai souvent fait ce reve De I'aller voir avant qu'on ne Tait demoli.' Unlike the great churches of Belgium and Germany, which are many of them closed during the afternoon, those of France are open from early morn to dewy eve, and except in three instances — Rouen, St. Denis, and Paris, I believe — you may roam about them, choir aisles included, the livelong day, quite unchallenged by those nuisances a ' visitors' book ' and a verger. It is needless to say that such unrestricted circumambulation is a great boon to the student, while constituting one of the greatest charms of the French cathedrals. As a rule the matutinal Offices of Terce, Chapter or Canons' Mass, and Sext will be found proceeding between nine and ten o'clock ; the post-prandial ones of None, Vespers, and Compline between two and three, when, although no objection is raised to the visitor's perambulating the aisles, it is in better taste to take a chair, listen to the plain chant, and watch the ceremonial, which, in such cathedrals as Paris, Le Mans, Amiens, and Tours, is performed with much solemnity and decorum. The laity not being expected to participate in these offices, they are, as a rule, almost entirely unattended. There are, however, a number of great French churches of what may architecturally be styled 'the first class,' in which no daily Offices — Low Mass, of course, excepted — can be attended or music heard except on a Sunday or a festival. Such are Auxerre, Introductory 1 9 Laon, Lisieux, Noyon, Senlis, St. Omer, and Treguier — noble structures which, although of cathedral proportions, are now reduced to the rank of parish churches, and for their size very inadequately served ones. For at the Concordat of 1801, upon the re-establishment of religious order in France after nearly ten years of interdict following upon the Reign of Terror, the sees of which these grand churches formed the cathedrals were — inter pcurima alia — suppressed, the dioceses being so reconstituted that there should be one to each Department. To have paced the aisles, then, of these Gothic Cathedrals , whose glories have been, it is to be feared, but inadequately portrayed in the ensuing chapters, is a matter of gratulation and contentment ; and when it is explained that the continual use of the first person singular has perforce been dictated by the fact that the three tours in France of which these pages are descriptive were, from inability to meet with a travelling companion of sym- pathetic tastes, taken entirely alone, the reader will, it is to be hoped, peruse them with consideration, as the narrative of an appreciative and unprejudiced witness, rather than of an ego- tistical narrator. 20 Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER I SOME CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF NORMANDY : DIEPPE, CAEN, AND BAYEUX Whether the Channel passage has been agreeable or the reverse, it is always pleasant to find oneself sauntering across the sunny market square of Dieppe, and to be presently standing beneath the Late Gothic tower of St. Jacques — one of its two minster-like churches. The exterior of this building is apparently almost entirely Flamboyant, but a closer inspection will reveal many beautiful details of earlier epochs, only requiring a quiet con- servative restoration to bring them out in a more complete manner. St. Jacques is one of those many French churches which, as far as distribution of parts and general arrangements go, would pass with us for cathedrals, including in its ground plan a nave with lofty clerestory, aisles, flanking chapels, and nobly propor- tioned, but— like many another in France — unfinished south-west tower, rich in detail ; transepts ; and choir, with procession path, from which projects a well- developed Lady-chapel with tall transomed windows. The oldest parts of St. Jacques at Dieppe are the transepts and the arcade of the choir and apse, the latter being truly graceful specimens of French thirteenth-century work. Their clustering shafts and well-moulded arches are especially deserving of study. The next portion in order of date is the nave arcade, whose pillars are of a form very frequent in France, but rare with us, viz. cylindrical with a slender shaft at each cardinal point, the capitals of each being foliaged. The tall clerestories of both nave and choir are noble features. That of the nave is of a far superior order of Middle Pointed to that of the eastern limb, where a deterioration in style is very palpable. As throughout Normandy, there is much Late Flamboyant and Early Renaissance work about St. Jacques, chiefly in the side chapels, where quaint featur&s are the models of ships suspended as votive offermgs. Normandy : Dieppe, Caen^ and Baycux 1 1 A quantity of mediocre painted-glass very similar in drawing and tincture to that wliich \Vailes used to place in Middle and Third Pointed churches at home, when not under the superintendence of an architect, or when it did not call for or secure peculiar exertions on his part, fills many windows in the lower parts of the church. As one of our most versatile writers ' has observed, the Later Flamboyant period of French Pointed may not inaptly be termed its autumn. Every delicate shoot has thrust its farthest, every leaf has become puckered, and every flower has fruited. All the splendour which precedes decay characterises the Flamboyant of France. It possesses none of the strength, vigour, or nerve of our English Perpendicular, but it is the perfection of abandon — light, frivolous, marvellously beautiful ; in a word, thoroughly French. One of the most curious and striking features of St. Jacques at Dieppe is found in a chapel at the west end of the south aisle, from which it is separated by an elaborate Late Gothic screen, viz. a group of statuary representing the Entombment. Our Lord is being placed in the sepulchre by Nicodemus and St. Joseph of Arimathrea, and on the inner side of the tomb are the Holy Women and St. John the Evangelist, who supports the drooping figure of the Virgin. The effigies are about life-size, and by the light of some tapers placed by the faithful along the cresting of a low grille, this solemn group has a truly weird effect to the spectator who encounters it for the first time. Its date is 1612 — so says Noel, a French author writing in 1795 — audit was executed at the expense of a pious traveller who returned from the Holy Land. This may be correct when it is borne in mind how accurately the work of better and purer epochs was reproduced in F'rance at a period long posterior to the extinction of the Pointed styles, but anyone unaware of this fact would assign it to a date at least half a century earlier. St. Jacques abounds in charming bits for the artist in the shape of Early Renaissance screens to the chapels opening from the processional aisle ; indeed, the whole interior to those visiting France for the first time is a perfect revelation, and picturesque ' views across ' present themselves very frequently to the visitor. Dieppe possesses another church, generally overlooked by the ' Rev. S. Baring- 2 2 Holidays among the Glories 0/ France savants and bookmakers, and whose internal aspect, almost unchanged since the days of Wild and Coney, must always please the artist more than the air of Parisian smartness that pervades St. Jacques — I mean St. Rerai, with its three grandiose Renaissance facades and its pewed, heavy-pillared, Flemish-looking interior. Like St. Jacques, St. Remi is crucilorm, but of very Late Gothic. The choir was finished in 1545, but owing to the religious wars the nave was not completed until the seventeenth century was far advanced. Three grandiose fronts in the Louis XI V^ ST. KEMI rUEPPE Style contain the entrances, the western fa(;;ade being particularly miposing. The choir of three bays has ponderous cylindrical piers, very tall, with coarsely foliaged caps and arches very narrow and stilted. The arcades are so high as to admit of no clerestory to speak of. There is some rich late stained-glass in the apse clerestory with figures of bishops. The choir aisles open into chapels by very simple arches on piers without caps or bases, and of a type common in I^ate French Gothic. These are surmounted by a low clerestory. The four arches at the Normandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayeitx 23 ' crux ' recall AVorcester. A fine Renaissance screen opens into the last chapel from the south choir aisle, while another fences off the north-west choir aisle from the transept. Westward the view is terminated by one of those imposing organ-cases so common in the north of France; one equally rich is in St. Jacques. The nave has huge cylindrical piers with plain uncarved caps and very small arches, the aisles opening into chapels by plain arcades surmounted by a clerestory, as in the choir — perhaps a humble imitation of the same arrangement at Coutances, Le Mans, and Bourges. In one of the Flamboyantly traceried north-aisle chapels is some rich stained-glass (modern), with figures of Prophets and Evangelists. The baptistery, formed in the last chapel towards the west, is enclosed by a Renaissance screen whose door has a carving of the Infant Jesus in act of blessing. Altogether, St. Renii, although of debased architecture, is marvellously picturesque, and no one should leave Dieppe without paying it a visit. By those visiting the north of France for the purpose of studying its ecclesiastical antiquities Dieppe will be found an admirable starting point. Given fine weather, a delightful trip may be made by omnibus, via St. Valery-en-Caux, to Fecamp, with its cliff walks and glorious abbey church of La Trinity. In another direction lie the quaint fishing-town of Treport, and within a short walk of it the great First Pointed church of Eu. Thence Amiens is easily reached. The railway line from Dieppe to Paris by Pontoise enables the ecclesiologist to visit Neuchateh Gournay with the neighbouring abbey of St. Germer, Beauvais, Creil, and the beautiful Oise-side village churches of St. Leu, Champagne, and Auvers. Lastly, there is the route via Rouen, Louviers, Pont de I'Arche, and Mantes. To the student of Norman village church architecture and hfe, no more charming day's excursion can be devised than a walk or cycle ride along the road between Dieppe and Rouen as far as Auffay, the little river Arques ' Wimpling, dimpling, staying never — Lisping, gurgling, ever going, Sipping, slipping, ever flowing, Toying round the polished stone ; ' accompanying him the greater part of the way thither, and at sundry points of its sinuous course inviting a plunge. Auffay has a fine cruciform church with circular columns 24 Holidays among the Glories of France having stiff-leafed capitals, and apparently of the thirteenth century, but which I shrewdly suspect is, like the one at Triel, between Mantes and Paris, not quite so ancient as it looks, the work of earher periods having been so successfully copied at later ones as to deceive the uninitiated. Unfortunately, the external view is spoilt by a clumsy modern spire. The saddleback would have had a far more pleasing appearance ; but the fact of this type of steeple not being a localism in this district of Normandy may have militated against its adoption in this instance. At Malaunay carriages are changed for Havre, but the journey, though naturally delightful, is barren of architectural interest. Harfleur's noble crocketed spire and Graville's elevated square- ended Norman church — both close to Havre — however, reward us at the end of the journey, while Montivilliers, with its great Romanesque abbey church, equipped with a typical pair of Norman spires, lies a little inland, a short ride only from Graville. Notre- Dame at Havre, a curious mingling of Late Gothic and Palladian, seems hardly lofty enough for the head church of such a town, but it covers much ground, and those who are sufficiently liberal in their architectural ideas may spend a pleasant half-hour among its columned aisles. Despite its architectural solecisms, Notre- Dame de Havre-de-Grace — to give it its full title — is pleasing. It has a long unbroken vista from the west door, terminating in the painted windows of the apse, whose tracery, like that throughout the church, partakes of the unfoliated Flamboyant character one sees in certain Oxford college chapels. There is a great deal of painted-glass, some ancient, but all in the landscape style so dear to the artists of the Renaissance. The aisles and flanking chapels are separated from each other by isolated Tuscan pillars, those composing the nave arcade being half-circles attached to a square pier. Some grisaille glass in the clerestory, and in the small circular windows above either side entrance, is com- mendable. Externally, the unfinished south-west tower, with its clumsy crocketed pinnacles, does not assist in giving the church any extra height, dwarfed as it is by the huge houses in the Rue de Paris; indeed, taken all in all, the interior of this church is more imposing than the exterior ; the one and the other respectively proving, by the comparative absence and presence of the quality, how especially effective height is in a town. Inside, there being no rival to distract attention from the positive pro- portions, the church pleases by its breadth and repose. Normandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayeitx 25 The sea trip from Havre to Caen is a very enjoyable one in fine weather, with which, on the occasion of this visit, I was favoured, and in about three hours — two and a half of which were spent in open sea, and the remainder in the Orne, or its canal — the towers and spires of Caen rising ' above the houses in bold architectural masses,' causing the city to assume ' a character of quiet monastic opulence, comforting the eye and the mind,' came into view, affording promise of a rich architectural treat. I had, however, decided upon making a short stay at one of those bracing seaside resorts within a few miles of Caen before commencing my ecclesiological researches among its numerous and beautiful churches, selecting Berniferes— a picturesque, scattered village— as being less sophisticated than the other watering-places on the same line of coast. Bernieres has a noble Late Norman and Early Pointed church, with a spire the work as of an angel architect, one of the most beautiful of those steeples which, built upon one general principle, seem to have been dis- persed through a considerable distance round Caen. Some of them have been much mutilated — that at Langrune, for example — while those of Norrey and Audrieu are still incomplete. An excellent drawing of Bernieres' spire will be found in Nesfield's 'Continental Sketches ' ; also one of the graceful trefoil-headed doorway to the west porch. It would be difficult to select a more charming spot than this for a few days' quiet sojourn. To say nothing of the architectural treasures presented by almost every village church in the vicinity, there is in front the fine open sea, with its excellent bathing, while on the other side lies the rich, fertile tract of country, dotted with veritable Norman churches, between C^aen and Bayeux. Then, should the weather prove unfavourable for country excursions, a short railway journey lands one in Caen, with its treasures of ecclesiastical art. Lisieux and Bayeux are also within easy reach ; so that, altogether, no ecclesiologist need repine should bad weather overtake him at Bernieres. The sole attraction of this somewhat decayed-looking village is its above- mentioned noble church, consisting of western steeple and pro- jecting porch, nave, and lofty chancel, in common with many others in Normandy, square-ended. The aisles are carried along- side the tower to the extreme west. The nave, very rich Norman, bears marks of recent restoration. It is long and low, with lean-to aisles and lofty First Pointed north porch. The western 26 Holidays among the Glories of France tower, which is First Pointed, is in three stages ; the two upper ones are lofty and enriched with four lancets, of which the two centre ones are pierced. The lower stage, which does not rise above the apex of the nave roof, has its north side relieved by a row of arcades broken by a traceried circle ; the spire has open angle pinnacles and squinches, but is unrelieved by bands. The chancel, a good piece of First Pointed work, soars above the Romanesque nave, but it sadly wants restoration. Its western gable has flanking pinnacles and its windows consist of two unfoliated broad lights of a plate-traceried character. Internally the nave, entered from the tower by a Pointed arch of singular beauty, has a noble Norman arcade of six bays, and is groined, as are the aisles. CSood open benches seat the nave, from which the chancel opens by a fine Norman arch ; two graceful First Pointed arches open to the aisles, a Renaissance balus- trade serving as triforium ; the vaulting is rather depressed. On the north side of the sanctuary is a low arch surmounted by a trefoiled triforium arcade and a lofty clerestory, of which the upper part is pierced by a two-light window as in the choir. The foliated arcade alluded to above is carried round the east end, but is hidden in the centre by a tall Renaissance altar-piece of good workmanship, and although incongruous, better perhaps than the miserable modern Pointed reredoses one sees in French churches. The square east end has three fine P'irst Pointed windows of two foliated lights each, with sexfoiled circlets. At the time of my visit some few years ago restoration had not extended to the choir, which retained its eighteenth-century panelling, painted white. Above the arch opening to the nave was a copy in fresco of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper,' fast hastening to decay. Two windows on the south side of the sanctuary are lofty ones of three lights trefoiled, and curiously crossed twice by transoms, three foliated and plate-traceried circlets filling the head. The whole church abounds in most dehcate detail, and is worthy of careful study throughout. A delightful walk was that from Bernieres back to Caen, distant about ten miles, on a brilliant summer morning, heralded by a mist which obscured the upper portion of the spire, there being just enough breeze to ward off the heat. Passing through Langrune, I stopped to rest and examine its church, a F'irst Pointed cruciform structure, low and long, and with a finely proportioned central steeple, which, however, has a rather forlorn NoDiiaiidy : Dieppe, Caen, and Jhiyenx 27 appearance, since it has lost not only its squinches and broaches, but also its capstone and vane.' Langrune Church abounds in delicate detail, the clustering shafts supporting the arches of the BERNIERES ' A general view of the exterior of this church at Langrune is given iri Petit's Architectural Studies in France. It is one of those professedly rough copies of rough sketches with which the author partly illustrated his fascinating book. Intended to convey little more than the general character of the buildings, such drawings, though useless in point of detail, arc marvellously faiLhfuI as regards ou;line and enscinbte. 2 8 Holidays among the Glories of Fi ance tower and the groining of its apse being especially worthy of admiration. With the nave I was hardly so pleased. The arcade is a low one of eight bays, with short piers and Pointed arches. Above is a blind arcaded triforium and clerestory of single lancets. The effect of this is no doubt pretty, but conveys the impression that more has been attempted than is consistent with the limits of the elevation. Resuming the walk I soon reached La Chapelle, whose large modern church of Notre-Dame de la Delivrance, with its pair of spires, is visible at Bernieres and for a consider- able distance beyond it. To admire this church e.xternally was impossible, it being, like most modern Continental Gothic, lean and poor and quite unpoetical. It is cruciform in plan, and just east of each transept, German fashion, is a tower and spire, differing, however, in design. Beyond is a pentagonal apse with incipiently traceried lancets, and at the apex of the roof a huge gilt angel. Internally this church is a really masterly conception, and entering it as I did from the sunlit square, I was hardly able at first to dis- tinguish its details owing to the profusion of stained-glass. Low arcades on either side of the nave admit to pentagonal chapels in lieu of aisles, and support a lofty clerestory of Early-traceried windows. The chancel is long, devoid of aisles, but richly arcaded beneath the windows. Against the northern pier of the arch opening into it stands an image of the Blessed Virgin and Holy Child, both attired in long blue robes, placed beneath a spiral canopied niche, reminding one of a (jerman Sakramentshauskin . A cafe Ml lait having been quaffed in the pleasant place in front of this votive church of La Delivrance, I pressed on to Caen, arriving there about five o'clock, after a thoroughly enjoyable, because so diversified, walk, but without coming across anything very noteworthy from an ecclesiological point of view. Proceeding first to the modern church of Notre-Dame de la Gloriette— an Italian structure on the motif of St. Roch at Paris, but contain- ing nothing very remarkable beyond the finely carved organ-case and baldacchino over the high altar — I soon quitted it for St. Michel de Vaucelles, to which there is a pleasant walk across some fields and along the banks of the Orne. This is a very interesting church, consisting of a low cavernous nave without clerestory or triforium, a Norman tower on the south, and a very lolty square-ended chancel. From the flight of steps leading to the Italian fayade a fine panoramic view of Caen is obtained. Normandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayeux 29 This church is chiefly Late Decorated, and in the same style is the fine large cruciform St. Jean in the street of that name, with its two unfinished towers, the western one having those reed-like shafts to the belfry stage noticed before as so common in the Caen district, the central one Ixenaissance. No good general view of St. Jean can be obtained, shut in as it is on three sides by houses ; but of St. Pierre, a structure whose noblest feature is its steeple, and which, from the large size and juxtaposition of its clerestory windows, ought to claim the 1 / /M 1 1 1 II . L|g| 1 j ] ST. JEAN, CAEN title of ' The Lantern of Normandy,' views can be had from any point. The erection of St. Pierre seems to have occupied almost the entire duraticn of the Pointed styles, for the church consists principally of First and Middle Pointed work, while its apse and fringe of chapels show the unsparing labours of an architect of the Renaissance. Curious and interesting are these chapels from an historical standpoint, but they accord ill with the rest of the building ; one looks in vain for a style like our Perpendicular to blend the two — the transition is too sudden. The elliptical arrangement of the apse clerestory, with its two 30 Holidays among the Glories of France windows in lieu of the three usually seen, may have furnished Street with the motif for his noble vaulted sanctuary at St. Saviour's, Eastbourne. Those who only know the interiors of the Renaissance chapels at St. Pierre from Roberts' and Prout's pictures can form no idea of their present appearance, equipped as they are with niched figures and altar-pieces, and glowing with a profusion of rich post-Gothic glass. The only defect of the interior of St. Pierre is that it is too light. This may be accounted for by the immense size of the clerestory and the absence of stained- glass which may at some period have graced them. Hence I strolled up to the Abbaye aux Dames, or church of La Trinite — symbolised in the three figures holding a scroll within the tym- panum of the restored western portal. Here again the Renais- sance architect has shown his contempt for earlier and purer forms by substituting work of his own at the tops of the western towers. That the original work was removed is clear from the fact that the whole of the south-east angle turret of the south tower still remains, and one can plainly see where the arcade was cut away. Although smaller than the sister church of St. Etienne, the Abbaye aux Dames is richer Romanesque ; remarkably elaborated are the westernmost bays of the nave between the towers. The nave alone is used for parochial purposes, its last three bays being screened off for the chorus cantoi-iiin and sanctuary, the paro- chial altar standing under the western arch of the lantern. East- ward of this the transept space is reserved for the malades and sontrs of the adjoining large hospital, for whose benefit an altar has been reared, backing against the parochial altar. Did the Abbaye aux Dames contain nothing else, the two exquisite First Pointed bays of the south transept would alone be worth coming to see ; they resemble the nave arcades at Wells, but are some- what loftier. In walking hence to the Abbaye aux Hommes I noticed two desecrated churches — St. Gilles, opposite La Trinite, and St. Etienne le Vieux— both fine specimens of Middle Pointed which may, it is to be sincerely hoped, at no distant date be restored to their sacred uses. The great pile of St. Etienne, or the Abbaye aux Hommes, whose simple, solemn Romanesque facade may be regarded as the prototype of those of nearly all the great French Pointed churches, has, viewed from the cast, a rather strong Teutonic character, and, with its spires, central steeple, and pinnacles flanking the apse, recalls in ensciiibk certain Rhenish churches. Noriuandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayciix 31 Throughout, the work is bolder and ruder than in the church of La Trinite, ornament in the nave at least being conspicuous by its absence ; but the choir in First Pointed is very graceful, and in the lancets of the clerestory there is some good modern glass. LA TK INITIO CAICN Very beautiful features are the small rose windows lighting the triforium passage in the choir, and peering through the unglazed openings in a very felicitous manner. Other noteworthy features are the clusters of vaulting shafts between the chapels in the choir 32 Holidays among the Glories of France aisles, which, with their First Pointed stained windows, when viewed from the western extremity, brought Canterbury to my recollection very strongly ; the plain but massive Henri IV stalls, and the grand open lantern above the tower arches, Early on the next morning, which was Sunday, I was strolling in the little churchyard of St. Ouen, a picturesque Late Gothic edifice which, with its saddleback tower filling up the angle between the south aisle and transept, is apt to be overlooked by the ordinary run of visitors ; the west dorr stood open, and the white-chasubled priest reciting Mass at the altar had a strikingly picturesque look. Those interested in the ritual and musical aspects of foreign ecclesiology will be gratified by attendance at the ten o'clock High Mass at St. Etienne's, presenting, as it does, several features not noticeable in cathedrals and churches where the Roman rite has completely superseded the ancient Gallican one. For previous to iS6o almost every diocese in France had some peculiar Use of its own, extremely interesting, no doubt, to the student of ritual matters, but which from a practical point of view was very per- plexing. Thus in 1S56 we find a mandement put forth by the bishop of the united sees of Beauvais, Noyon, and Senlis, ordering the adoption of the Roman liturgy in place of tbe ordinary local Uses, of which he says thete were no fewer than nine in his diocese, so that it often happened that the same priest, ' charge de deux paroisses, trouve dans I'eglise ou il va celebrer une premiere messe une liturgie differcnte de celle qui s'observe dans la paroisse ou il reside ; le chant, les ceremonies, les couleurs des vetements, les usages, tout est change.' Such reforms were not, however, carried out without opposition, certain dioceses insistmg on a large Pro- prium Sanctorum. One Use retained by the diocese of Rouen was the pro- cession round the entire church before the commencement of High Mass, and this, on the occasion of my visit to St. Etienne at Caen, was headed by the crucifer, vested in a cope, the nave and aisles being traversed to the chanting of some rather lugu- brious Plain Song. I was once at Coutances when a similar procession took place, the cantors and officiants wearing green copes, a colour not often seen on Suntlay in Roman Catholic churches, some saint's day or other, except under certain rules, being allowed to take precedence, when the vestments seen are either crimson or white. j\nother interesting feature of the ser- . Normandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayeitx -^,1 vice at St. Etienne this Sunday, wliich happened to be the octave of the feast of a saint locally celebrated, St. Exuperius, Bishop of ST. ETIEXXF., CAEN Bayeux, was the singing of a Sequence or Prose in his honour. Commencing thus — ' Mittit in Xeu^triam Per Exuperium Legis notitiam Redux ad .Solium ' — it was taken to so very graceful and ear-catching a melody of the u 34 Holidays among the Glories of France modern CJallican school as to render it an agreeable relief to the Plain Chant, which was, however, extremely well sung, accompanied by the organ in the choir, and responded to by the great one at tne west end, to a setting of Dumont's. Yet another interesting Normandy Use came under my notice the preceding evening — the singing, at St. Pierre, of the Miserere in procession to a very melodious elongation of the Second Tone, thus bringing to an impressive conclusion one of those Pricres du Soir which are so largely resorted to by the poorer classes all over France. Having a mind to assist at Vespers at Bayeux Cathedral on the afternoon of this feast, train was taken thither in good time, the graceful steeples of Norrey, Bretteville, and Audrieu, and sundry ' saddlebacks ' which it was not possible to identify, glad- dening the eye at frequent intervals during the journey. The Afternoon Offices at Bayeux comprised None, Vespers, Compline, and Benediction, but presented few features of interest from an ecclesiological point of view, the music being particularly jejune. However, they concluded early, thus permitting a lengthy survey of the building to be taken before proceeding to Coutances. It is in its proportion.s, which are nearly assimilated to those of our own cathedrals, that the charm of Bayeux lies ; nothing is distorted or overstrained, and there is a repo.se about it which is eminently satisfactory, though it is not possible to bestow commendation upon the bulb-like dome of its Flamboyant central steeple. Perhaps no church in Normandy abounds in such exquisite detail as Bayeux ; indeed, it is a hard matter to decide what to admire most — the Norman nave arcade, with its wealth of diapering in the spandrels, its First Pointed clerestory and choir, or the magnificent Early Middle Pointed of its transepts. Indeed, the whole fabric is extremely mag- nificent. Built upon ground which slopes rapidly from we.st to east, it is cruciform in plan, with Romanesque and First Pointed western steeples and afore- mentioned bulb-like central dome surmounted by a fleche, erected about thirty years ago to replace a cupola and spire of Italian design. The western steeples are noble from their simplicity, having their surfaces carved in imitation of tiles, and had the central steeple been carried out in First Pointed, somewhat on the model of the graceful ones in the vicinity, Bayeux Cathedral might have Normandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayciix 35 been the possessor of one of the most perfect spire groups in France. Chapels are grouped around the apse ; the Decorated transepts project but two bays, and there is a fine south porch with double BAVEUX CATilF.DKAL: FROM THE SOUTH-EAST opening ranging with the chapels which the same epoch has added to the nave aisles on either side. Taking a stand in the north transept I first noticed the magnificent window in each. That in the south transept is modern, the original tracery having at a D 2 36 Holidays amQug the Glories of France debased period of the art been removed, as may be seen by one or two windows in this part of the building, but which it is to be hoped will ere long be restored. The character of these two great transept windows differs^the north or original window ' is of seven lights with a large wheel in the head, tracery of a more Geometrical character above each of the lights falling into the subarcuations. The south window has six lights, divided into triplets by a shaft bearing a niched figure, the large wheel above having a simple quatrefoil. In both these windows is modern glass, with brilliantly tinctured effigies of saints well balanced by white quarries. From either transept most beautiful views across the cathedral can be had ; indeed, the detail, especially of the choir, is so profuse that it is difficult at first to know upon what to concentrate the attention. Owing to the rapid slope of the ground there is a descent of several steps from the nave into the transepts, the crypt being confined to the centre of the church, and entered through a door in an arcuated wall in the first bay of the south choir aisle. The walls of the transepts below the windows are richly arcaded ; in the north transept I noticed a statue of St. Peter vested in a flowing chasuble, from the chisel of Dupont. The arches opening into the choir aisles from the transepts have foliated circlets in the spandrels, which impart great richness. The choir, entirely First Pointed, may be accepted as a typal work of that period, so graceful are the combinations of its slender shafts, multitudinous lancets and vaulting ribs. Fine grilles enclose the arches of the sanctuary ; the choir stalls, canopied, and surmounted on the north by the ' organ of accompaniment,' are placed wittiin the arcades, allow- ing the whole length of the pillars to be seen, as at Wells, and are of a chaste Renaissance character. Unfortunately the coupled columns in the apse have been fluted by an Itahanising hand. The spandrels of the choir groining are relieved by a series of heads of saints and bishops with their narnes in large letters, all carefully restored ; while from the centre boss of the lantern radiate painted angelic figures. In walking round the choir aisles it was gratifying to observe the total absence of those glass chandeliers and imagery from the toy-shop with which the altars of French churches are too frequently disfigured, some having reredoses with predells in good medieval taste. The first two ' Figured in Parker's Introduction as a typal window of the Early Middle Pointed French period. Normandy : Dieppe, Caen, and Bayeux ;2^'j bays on the south side of the south choir aisle are enclosed by a solid screen of fine First Pointed work, enriched with two tiers of arcading, the lower stage being pierced with a door adrtiitting to the sacristy. In the nave the work of three periods meets : the EAVEUX CATHEDRAL : THE CHOIR arcade is richest Norman ; the clerestory First Pointed ; and the aisle chapels Middle Pointed ; much of the tracery in the windows here is beautiful, some curious. One window in the north aisle, a low one of six lights in pairs, is traceried with a huge wheel of a very stiff and Geometrical character; another 3S Holidays amoi/o^ the Glories of France window in this aisle is similarly traceried. Here is a good quantity of stained-glass, varying, however, in quality. Generally speaking it is creditable, and, inserted as some of it was before 1850, resembles that produced by O'Connor, Wailes, and Willement when not under strict architectural supervision. A most picturesque feature in this cathedral is the flight of steps leading from the space formed at the west end between the towers down into the nave, of which arrangement an admir- able idea may be gained from the delicate outline engraving in Pugin and Le Keux's 'Architectural Antiquities of Norn andy.' A prolonged saunter about the peaceful precincts, listening to the bells as, ever and anon, they chimed the first two strains of the beautiful old Latin melody, Sa?ictoriim meritis, inclyta gaiidia; another turn round the exquisite choir aisles, looking doubly impressive in the fast gathering twilight struggling feebly through the storied lancets, and tenanted only by a few devotees before the altars in the radiating chapels, and it was time to seek the outer door, regretfully to close it upon such a combination of attractions. Steps were bent towards the prosaic regions of the railway, and Coutances was reached long after ' the crimson of the sunset sky ' had left the old saddleback and other steeples that lined the route cold and grey once more. 39 CHAPTER II SOME CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OK NORMANDY, CONTINUED : COUTANCES AND SEEZ The Cathedral of Coutances, nobly situated on a plateau at the summit of streets whose tortuous, hilly, roughly paved character recalls those of our own Durham, is, perhaps, one of the most grace- ful churches of the First Pointed age in France, the only additions in a later style being the chapels or oratories fringing the nave, separated from each other by fenestriform screens, and carried out in a very pure Geometrical Decorated style. Unfortunately the building is so confined that no good general view can be obtained. It consists of nave with western steeples, aisles, and flanking chapels ; transepts, central lantern which under certain conditions of light bears a resemblance to the great rood tower at Lincoln, and apsidal choir with double aisles. Round this is a fringe of chapels, the Lady-chapel projecting considerably beyond the rest. E.xternally the lantern and western spires form a group which, even in the unfinished state of the former, presents one unrivalled in France for gracefulness. Ruskin used much beautiful language in praise of the western spires at Coutances, but it must be confessed that a somewhat awkward appearance is imparted to them by the huge buttresses projecting from the north-west and south-west sides of their towers, which in their upper stage, like the central lantern, are octagonal, with a pinnacled turret joined by a small flying buttress to each semi-cardinal side. A low octagonal pyramidal capping surmounts the great central lantern, of which a fine view, including the transepts and choir, can be had from the episcopal gardens. FVom each tower projects a deep porch ; the northern one is especially fine. In the tympanum of its inner door at the time of my visit were some headless figures which restoration, at that time in progress on this side of the nave, has, it is to be feared. 40 Holidays among the Glories of France swei)t away be\oncl recall, when one remembers how recklessly buch works are too often conducted in France. Six bays of traceried windows, the perfection of Early Decorated, and of three compartments, each varying in design, light the nave aisles, to which statues of kings and queens niched in the buttresses give additional richness, as do the traceried parapets, but on the south side of the nave a falling off in elaboration is apparent. Owing to the almost total absence of colour, especially in the nave, the impression of Coutances Cathedral on entering is cold. but the eye soon learns to dwell contentedl)' on the grand Doric simplicit\' of the First Fointed piers and arches. I'he organ loft, supported on four Corinthian columns coupled, is the first object that attracts attention on descending the several steps leading from the porches to the interior of the church. Unfortunately this piece of furniture conceals the fine inner west door of First Fointed work. The nave piers are all attached ; above the arches runs a low arcade composed of five quatrefoiled circlets, forming the balustrade (to borrow a non dothic word) of a triforium gallery ; the triforium is closed and takes the form of two arcades Normandy : Coutaiices and Sik'z 41 under a wide arch equal to the bay below ; between the sub- arches is a richly moulded circlet, and within these subarcuations the wall is relieved by two narrow uncusped arcades. The lancet lights composing the clerestory are extremely simple, being without shafts or mouldings, but having in front a low COUTANCES CATHKDRAL: FROM THE BISHOP S GARDEN trefoiled arcade on short pillars. Full of study is the moulded string-course, as, indeed, is all the detail here. Looking across the church, in whose vault we desiderate the ridge rib so dear to the English eye — indeed, it is rarely met with in France — most picturesque views are afforded by the side chapels, each separated 42 Holidays among the Glories of France from the other by a light, open-tracericd screen — an unglazcd window, in fact. All these chapels are richly arcaded, each having below the traceried screen a constructional reredos of trefoiled arcades. The last chapel on the south has on its east, west, and south sides two tiers of figures under canopies ; all are much mutilated, but a Crucifixion on the east side has been restored. Many of the reredoses retain traces of colour. The work on the interior of the central tower is most rich. Immediately above the great arches, where it becomes octagonal, occurs a low balustrade of trefoils ; then a lofty double arcade, of which there is a pair to each of the eight sides ; then an elaborately carved .string-course ; next, another low balustrade ; after this a blind arcade, then lofty coupled lancets, and lastly the vaulting. In the choir, owing to the omission of the triforium, the arcade assumes very stilted proportions, the piers in the a[)se being circular, and placed back to back in couples, giving a very substantial, but at the same time claiicc character to this part of the cathedral. The choir has two aisles on either side of it, .separated from each other by a series of arches on short cylindrical piers with foliaged capitals. Above this series of arches is a low triforium of unpierced arcades, surmounted by a clerestory of coupled lancets within a round-headed containing arch, a charming arrangement, and one occurring also at Bourges and Le Mans. The first chapel on the south has some polychromatic ornament, the walls and shafts being painted chocolate brown and vivid green, and on the western wall some restored mural painting may be ob- served. In the second bay of this aisle a door leads out into the narrow lane on the south side of the cathedral, and the ensemble presented to the visitor who enters for the first time by this way is of great richness and solemnity, owing to tlie painted-glass with Avhich the windows in this part of the cathedral are filled. All in the chapels is modern and generally good ; in the great clerestory windows of the choir and apse, and in the transept triplets — the rose does not occur at Coutances — the original glazing remains, remarkable not only as being the earliest speci- men of vitreous decoration in Normandy, but for the manner in which the shadows are produced by cross hatching with a brown pigment. Some of the tinctures are truly superb. The windows in the southern range of chapels round the choir are sometimes composed of two lancets and a trefoil, indicating a more advanced form of I'irst Pointed. The second chapel - St. Martha's — has a N^oniiandy : Contanccs and Secz 43 good stained window not too archaic, as has the next chapel, St. John Baptist's ; here both the windows are tripled lancets, the centre light figured, the sides simple patterned. I'he filth chapel has a rather too antiquated First Pointed stained window. All rfH'I'ANCKS CATUEDKAI, these chapels except the first are apsidal. The Lady-chapel, long and apsidally terminated, is most delicately polychromed, as becomes that dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, cream colour being the prevailing tint of the walls, and light blue of the glass. Nothing worthy of note occurs in the northern chapels of the 44 Holidays among the G/oJ'ies of France choir; all have good modern First Pointed glass, of which I especially noted an exquisite diaper in the two-light window of the first chapel in this aisle from the west. The chorees cantoi'um, extending, as at Bayeux, across the lantern, is very spacious, but its fittings call for little notice. From the nave into the transepts is a descent of four steps, and one more from the transepts to the choir aisles, an arrangement contributing not a little towards picturesqueness of effect. Besides the cathedral, Coutances possesses two large churches, inferior architecturally, but not wholly uninteresting. That of St. Nicholas is situated in a small place on the east side of the hilly street leading to the cathedral ; it is cruciform, with a poor Renaissance central lantern copied, perhaps, from that of the mother church, and a low western pack-saddle roofed belfry which does not reach the apex of the nave roof. Internally this church, which, apparently, is a seventeenth-century building in imita- tion of a thirteenth-century one, greatly .surprises by its extreme length. The choir, a tolerable copy of First Pointed work, has a series of rather wide arches on circular columns of a rich, dark, granite-looking material, with foliaged caps. In the apse are five narrow arches, a low delicate triforium galleri, like that in the cathedral, and a First Pointed and very simple clerestory. The lancets in the choir aisles are exaggerated things, like those pro- duced in churches built at home during the Early Victorian era, but all filled with Renaissance glass. The choir itself, with its grilles and stalls, is most imposing owing to its great length. The nave piers are without caps, the arches dying off into them, a low arcade carried round into the transepts forming a species of tri- forium. The high Renaissance western gate to the choir, and the pulpit on two Corinthian columns, with a sounding-board like one of the Wren pulpits, are picturesque insirumenta. Here may be noticed pews withdcors—afeatureoncevery common in Normandy, but which, from a picturesque point of view, it is to be regretted is fast disappearing before the luxurious Parisian p>-ie-dieii. The other church of Coutances— St. Pierre — stands down the hill south of the cathedral, and is a good specimen of a late Flamboyant church, merging into Renaissance, cruciform in plan, with a western steeple and bulky octagonal lantern at the crossing. Seen from the railway this church forms with the cathedral an imposing architectural group. Internally it has a lofty arcade of round arches on piers without caps or bases, and COUTANCK.S CATIIEIiRM, ; POURTOUR OF CHOIR 46 Holidays among llic Glories of France an elaborate string-course below the triforium arcade. The most richly decorated part of the interior is the great central lantern — a really noble piece of Renaissance work, some of who'e details have quite a Romanesque air. It is curious to note here, as at St. Nicholas, how much the cathedral must have influenced the architects of these two churches. Here again were the pews with doors, which, taken in conjunction with the plain round columns, suggested a Dutch interior. Some of the windows contain Flamboyant tracery ; in others it has entirely disappeared, the broad lancet being divided into two acutely pointed and unfoliated lights, as at Oxford Cathedral before it passed into the hands of Scott for Perpendicularisation. The choir, enclosed by high grilles and a western gate, the former erected on the wainscot, does not extend into the lantern, nor does a Lady-chapel project from the circumambient aisle. A great deal of Renaissance glass, chiefly modern, fills the choir windows, and the suspension of the organ gallery at the west end without any visible support is note- worthy. Anxious to be at Chartres on a certain day, I returned to Caen, journeying through Lisieux, St. Pierre-sur-1 )ives, and Argentan to Seez, the most noticeable features of the village churches passed en route being their saddleback towers. This is a favourite form of steeple in nearly every northern district of France, but especially in that part of Normandy lying between Cherbourg and Lisieux, but it rarely appears to be used on a large scale in town churches. Since the English Gothic revival the ' saddleback ' has been employed by architects in town churches with much success, as, for instance, by Mr. Hutterfield in St. Matthias, S'oke Newington, and Mr. Champneys in St. Luke's, Kentish Town, where it is exhibited, as forming the chancel of those churches, with extremely grand effect. When funds are not forthcoming for a spire, such a termination will frequently be found both economical and effective, and at the same time out of the ordinary. With the cathedral of the comparatively unknown Norman city of Seez I was much charmed, though not a little chagrined to find the choir and its aisles in process of reconstruction, and for that purpose cut off from the rest of the building ; for Seez, while presenting many features of great beauty, was the worst con- structed of all the French cathedrals. During the present century vast sums have been expended upon this edifice, which, owing to its defective foundations, has had at different times to be ; ^%^^^ '^i hi:i'.y. rATiiKDXAi. : Tin.: \vkstkr\ voktm. 4^ Holidays among tJic Claries of France taken down and rebuilt. Hence the far-reaching buttresses of the western steeples, which, taken in conjunction with the dis- proportionately large but finely detailed portal, impart an air of such peculiarity to this part of the building. The nave of Seez Cathedral, one of a number built during the early part of the thirteenth centur)', at a period when the secular clergy, rising into greater influence, were attempting to rival the religious, is distinctly Normim in its First Pointed character, and is only one of the many noble works which were in course of erection all over the north of Europe during this Augustan age of her ecclesiastical architecture, an age which, comprised between trgo and 1250, saw the construction of some of the noblest Gothic buildings the world can show — Amiens, Auxerre, Bayeux, Beauvais, Beverley, Bourges, Chalons - sur - Marne, Chartres, Coutances, Notre-Dame at Dijon, Laon, Le Mans, Lincoln, Lisieux, Loches, Paris, Rheims, Rievaulx, Rouen, Salis- bury, Semur, Soissons, Tours, Troyes, Wells, Westminster, Worcester, York ; and the great German group so strangely behind the rest of European buildings, yet so worthy of admira- tion in many respects — Bamberg, Gelnhausen, Herford, Limburg on Lahn, Miinster, Naumburg, Neuss, Paderborn and the great Rhenish series. To what an age of religious and artistic activity do all these noble buildings, each characteristically beautiful, bear witness ! The transepts and choir of Seez Cathedral, more Prankish in style, are Middle Pointed, and although deprived of much interest historically by reconstruction, these portions abound in exquisite detail — the rose window lighting each transept, and set within a square, being a noble specimen of its class. Much delicately foliaged ornament is presented by the smaller doors in the base- ment of the steeples, and the central porch is a truly fine example of its school, though not, I think, very felicitously proportioned to the upper stages of the facade. A dead wall filled up the eastern arches of the crossing and transept, materially impairing the general view of Seez Cathedral internally, at the time of my visit, but there was much to admire in the portion westward. The nave piers are immense cylindrical ones with finely foliaged caps, the vaulting shaft being continued right down each, not corbelled off, as in some thirteenth- century examples. Tripled lancets light both aisles and clerestory, those to the former ha\ing a plate-traceried character, while in the Normandy : Contances and Sc'cz 49 latter we perceive the adumbration of tracery. Seez being one of the very few French cathedrals in which the old bnsilican arrange- ment is retained, the high altar— in Revived Italian — stands under the crossing, being surrounded by a good marble pavement. The two easternmost bays of the nave are screened off for the ' chorus ' by a marble balustrade. It was not possible, however, to bestow commendation upon the parcloses — tall masses of wood painted in imitation of white marble, but enriched in the centre of each compartment by a carved subject within a medallion, though they might in the present state of Revived french (lothic have been replaced by something worse. Seez is a very quiet old place, more like an overgrown village than a cathedral city, solitude and repose being its most charm- ing characteristics ; but, if a very rich modern Romanes^jue chapel attached to the Petit Seminaire be excepted, is devoid of architectural interest after the cathedral. A delay of several hours at Dreux, owing to the awkward timing of the trains to Chartres, enabled a visit to be paid to its' fine chiefly Flamboyant church, and another object of considerable ecclesiological interest — the mortuary chapel of the Orleans family within the precincts of the chateau, a singular structure in the semblance of a Roman temple, erected by Louis-Philippe before his elevation to the throne of France in 1830. It consists of a central round vaulted chamber of Classical architecture, and constituting the original building, but which externally was metamorphosed into a Gothic edifice. From this circular nucleus have sprouted four arms connected together, and with the original Classical shell, by a circular ais!e which encom- passes the latter. This aisle and its transeptal appendages are both internally and externally in the ' Gothic of once upon a time,' or that familiarised to us by the illustrations in the romances of the last century. Anomalous though the work be as a whole, there is much internally that is of extreme beauty. The royal tombs exhibit exquisitely sculptured statuary ; the painted-glass from Sevres is good, and the place, apart from its artistic character, must always command attention on account of the ill-starred historical associations with which it is invested. At seven o'clock, after an hour's railway journey from Dreux, the gigantic cathedral of Chartres appeared on the horizon, seen for along time before the station was reached, towering grandly above the city, which rises from out the golden cornfields of La Beauce. Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER III A SUNDAY AT CHARTRES What can be more delightful than a Sunday in and about the cathedral of Chartres, which, justly taking its place as one of the most prized arch^ological treasures of France, enjoys perhaps the most popular renown of any ? Who has not heard of its vast extent ; its crypt, awful in its solemnity ; its colossal proportions ; the beautiful statuary equip- ping its great portals ; its Scripture history in stone, sculptured upon the screens enclosing the choir ; above all, of its unrivalled collection of ancient painted-glass ? Few great churches of the * Middle Ages can be selected as embodying so complete an expression of the architecture of the period, so perfect in its development, so evidently the majestic and magnificent product of one master mind. 'Chartres,' most truly said Didron, 'est un poeme, dont chaque statue ^quivaut a un vers ou a un strophe, un poeme dont la conception est plus vaste que celle de I'Eneide ou de ITliade, que celle meme de la Divine Comedie, puisqu'elle comprend I'histoire religieuse de I'univers, depuis sa naissance jusqu'a sa mort, de la Genese a I'Apocalypse.' With these thoughts I wake in this most enchanting of French cathedral cities on August 6, the Festival of Our Lord's Trans- figuration, a Holy Day spent more than once in and about some ' dim and mighty minster of old time.' It is barely six o'clock ; however, the 'jalousies ' of the windows are thrown aside and a lovely patch of blue sky greets me above the hotel courtyard, on whose red-tiled roofs some white pigeons are cooing and pluming themselves as if in celebration of the day. An omnibus, about to start for the purpose of conveying to the hotel anybody who may happen to arrive by an early train, waits A Sunday at Cliartrcs 51 below ; the horses are stamping on the paved eourtyard, tossing their heads, janghng their bells, chaniiiing their bits, and sniffing the fragrant morning air. Presently the great bourdon from Jean Texier's exquisite steeple booms over the city for the six o'clock Mass, but except for these sounds the stillness of early morning is unbroken. The omnibus has clattered off ; the Graces have been sacri- ficed to, and on descending to the courtyard I find pussy and doggie, who advance with erected tails to tender their morning 'HAKTKKS CAI'IlKDKAr. ; THK I'OKTK KOVAI greeting, the latter accompanying me as far as the gateway, and after expressing au revoir in a few staccato barks, trotting back to the culinary regions with the self-satisfied air of a dog who has done his duty. Wending my way across the sunny Place d'Epars towards the cathedral, I find that I am not the only person abroad at this early hour, soon falling in with quite a stream of old citoyennes, all looking so neat and fresh in the simple black dress, shawl, and closely fitting white cap. Paroissieiis in hand- wrapped in 5 2 Holidays among the Glories of France some instances in a white pocket-handkerchief — the dames on reaching the 'Close ' pursue their different ways. Some enter the great dim cathedral by the Porte Royale, or one of those grand transeptal porches where colossal figures of Apostles and Prophets, priests and kings keep guard, to one of the Masses about to he celebrated in the chapels round the choir. Others descend a little flight of steps in the base of a tower flanking the north transept. I follow them, turn to the right, traverse a passage, open a glass door and find myself in perhaps the most solemn interior of Christendom — the crypt under the north aisle of Chartres Cathedral. To the right (westward) this crypt is com- paratively light, having small windows in its north wall revealing frescoed historical subjects on the opposite one. Eastward a most impressive picture is presented by the long aisleless vault, depending for light upon the lamps suspended at intervals, or by the private candles placed by the devotees on their chairs, but culminating in a perfect blaze where, above the altar, encircled with numerous lamps and candles, and before which the white- chasubled priest is moving softly to and fro, sits enthroned one of the two figures of the Virgin so venerated at Chartres — that of Notre- Dame-sous-Terre. I do not linger long here, being anxious to regain the morning air. Daws are wheeling round and round those matchless spires which rise up into the cloudless blue heaven, chasing each other in and out of all sorts of nooks and crannies, while uttering their cheerful ' Jack ! Jack ! ' The contrast presented by these two western spires of Chartres Cathedral — I may not inaptly term them the Alpha and Omega of spires — is most striking. There is a Doric simplicity, a solemn grandeur of design, in the south-west or Vieux Clocher — 'coloured on its stony scales by the deep russet, orange chen's melancholy gold ' — but it was robbed of its true proportions when the western fai^ade was raised subsequent to the fire of 1194, thirty years after the completion of this steeple, the reconstruction of the church being undertaken on a much more grandiose scale. The other spire, the work of Jean Texier, is too of its kind unsurpassed, and though the antipodes of the Vieux Clocher in every respect, groups well with it from all points of view, and thus we are in possession of two steeples each in itseli a chef d'ceuvre. There is no central lantern at Chartres, a feature that becomes rarer the farther one travels from the English Channel ; but CHARTRES CATHEDRAL : THp: WEST FRONT 54 Holidays among the Glories of France steeples, wliich at present rise no higher than the sjning of their gables, were designed to flank the transepts. The late William Burges, in a valuable paper on 'Ornanienlal \Vood\vork,' contributed to the number of the Ecc/esio/oi^is/ for December 1856, however, informs us that this cathedral once possessed two fleches, one in the usual place at the intersection of the transepts, and the other between this last and the angel which surmounts the chevet. Its destination was to contain a bell which was rung from inside to warn the ringers in the great towers w'hen to sound the bells. We are not told, however, whether these two interesting specimens of mediaeval lead-work were in existence immediately prior to the great fire of 1836, when the whole timber-work of the roof was utterly destroyed, and all the bells and lead-work melted by the heat. Fortunately, the admirable strength of the vaulting was such that it endured so severe a trial without injury, and it is pleasing to relate that the French Governvnent voted nearly 50,000/. for the present roofing, which is of iron covered with copper sheeting. After a saunter in the precincts of this Titanic pile, I enter it by the Porte Royale, which, apart from the grandeur and interest it derives from its sculptured effigies, is a charming bit of natural colour — a rich cinnamon brown melting as it ascends into a delicate pumice-stone-like grey. So dark is the cathedral on entering it from the bright sun- shine outside that only after the lapse of some moments is it possible to discern the details of the building, very dark in its western part, increasing in luminosity towards the great crossing, and with the choir and apse bathed in the glorious early morning sunshine. The silence is unbroken, save every now and then by the tinkle of a bell in some remote chapel, or by the occasional foot- fall of a devotee on the way thither along the dusky nave aisles. The silver pipes of the great organ, by and by to pour forth its voice in the showy Interlude or Offertorium, gleam out from the dusky heights of the clerestory, where, as at Metz and Strasburg, it is disposed with such grand effect. The gigantic piers sup- porting the simply moulded arches which divide the nave from its aisles are on the very common French plan of four shafts surrounding a central drum. At Chartres these cores are alter- nately circular and octagonal, the circular ones having their attached shafts octagonal, and via- versa. All have foliaged A Sunday at Chartrcs 55 capitals, bold almost to coarseness. In plan and arrangement these columns at Chartres are assimilated to those in the choir of Tours and that of St. Hugh at Lincoln, both these examples being, however, a few years in advance of Chartres. The uniformity in the design of this great church is not the least interesting of its features. Begun in 1194, and completed in all essentials in 1260, one fails to discover any evidence of a change from the first scheme during the long progress of the work. Nothing seems to have been left for subsequent ages to carry out, the only accretions observable being the chapel of St. Piat opening out of the eastern ambulatory, and that of Vendome, which forms an agreeable break in the line of the south nave aisle. The dates of these additions are respectively 1340 and 1415. Throughout the aisles, and in the clerestory of the great apse, the lancet window prevails, while in the clerestory of nave, choir, and transepts the fenestration is effected by coupled lancets sur- mounted by an immense plate-traceried rose, formed of an octofoil, round which are sixteen small quatrefoils. The semicircular form of their containing arches causes these great clerestory windows at Chartres to impart a quasi-Romanesque air to the pile ; and their roses, glowing as they do with magnificent old stained-glass, have been not inaptly compared by an imagina- tive modern French writer to ' saxifrages of flame opening in the pierced wall.' Each of the great lancets composing these windows is 8 feet 5 inches in the clear ; their only moulding is a chamfer, and the painted-glass with which the whole series is filled is, in quantity and quality, unrivalled. Executed chiefly at the same time as the building, these windows form, together with those of the aisles, a most interesting study of the progress made in the art of glass painting during the first sixty years of the thirteenth century, single figures occupying the former, and small subjects treated medallion-wise the latter, and their interest is enhanced a thousandfold when we recollect the glorious pageants their ruby stains have assisted to exalt and the storms and revolutions which seem to have left these masterpieces of the vitreous art unscathed. Seating myself in a chair with my back to the central western door, I have on either hand the ' respond ' of the narthex belong- ing to the immediate predecessor of the existing cathedral, of which the lower portions of the western towers are the only 56 Holidays among llie Glories of France remains. \Mien the present noble building was reared on the ashes of the one that perished in the fire of 1194, the western fa(;ade was brought flush with the towers, which in the old building projected beyond it, but with the porch or narthex between them. To left and right is graceful Transitional work, arches on piers with Corinthianising capitals admitting into chapels formed in the bases of the towers. The baptismal chapel is on my left, the Chapelle du Calvaire opposite. Here is one of those enormous crucifixes so frequently seen in French churches, and erected, like many others, in commemoration of the mission held in 1826. Seen subsequently on Sunday night at sunset, this crucifix, rising to the roof had a most solemn and awful effect. Passing up the shallow flight of steps which leads from the floor of the nave to the aisles, I pace them silently, glancing on the way at the Chapelle de Vendome with its tall Flamboyant window, the only relief to the prevailing sternness of the cathedral, and crossing the vast transeptal space, gain the choir aisle ; but as early Masses are prDceeding at two or three altars here I am unwilling to disturb those attending them ; so, postponing my visit to this portion of the building for the present, T retire to a secluded seat near the great southern transept door. Here is the bcniticr, for at Chartres you are not confronted immediately upon entering, as in many Parisian churches, by an old person who holds a brush protruding with a dozen fingers made of bristle. Anything less suggesti\'e of the beauty of holiness one cannot imagine. It is ugly, slovenly, greasy — in short, filthy. No, at Chartres the bciiitiers are large and filled with pure, clean water, and while sitting near this particular one it is touching to notice the smallest children making ineffectual efforts to reach the stoup, till some elder comes along to the rescue and gives the little ones the water wherewith to cross themselves. Quitting the building by the southern portal I descend into the Basse Ville, where cats are sunning themselves at the doors of their several domiciles, and where almost every rc-.-dc-chaiissce is the scene of much slopping and besoming by sturdy bourgeoises in sabots, busied in making all taut and trim for the day. Here is St. Aignan, a quaint mixture of C.othic and Crecian, but how picturesque ! A simple structure, like a huge ark outside, it has not even a spirelet to mark the separation between nave and choir. Entering by the enchanting little Renaissance door at the west end of the north aisle, one finds oneseJf in a fairy A Sunday at Cliaiires 5) church i.'f translucent colour, not so gorgeous, or deep, perhaps, as the Saiiite-Chapellc at Paris, or Notre-Uame de Bon Secours at Rouen, hut exceedingly devotional. JUit how come Romanesque CH\KIKLS CAlHIIJkil INlliKRlK LOOKING VVi',ST clerestory and triforium to surmount a somewhat fragile-looking Flamhoyant arcade? anyone unacquainted with the history of •St. Aignan will ask himself on seeing it for the first time. The 58 Holidays among the Gloi^ics of France fact is, this church is a clever imitation, but not the correct thing. Buildings of the same age as St. Aignan (1623) require a very practised eye to mark the distinction between original and copied work, so admirably did the seventeenth-century architects adapt the early medieval styles. The fancy of the architect of St. Aignan for putting a triforium of small Byzantine Romanesque arcades and a simple clerestory of round-headed windows over his Flamboyant arches was,, it must be supposed, an architectural conceit. And he has surmounted the whole by a W'Ooden coved roof with tie-beams (of the same character as that employed by Surges in his Early French (iothic churches at Brisbane, Cork, and Stoke Newington), charming in its simplicity and for its appropriateness. Still descending, I gain a stone bridge crossing a little stream, and stay awhile admiring the picturesqueness of the whole scene — the great cathedral occupying the summit of the hill and the centre of the city, towering like a mighty giant over the dwellings of the people that seem to cling to it for protection, and, nearer in view, the apsidal east ends of St. Aignan and St. Pierre. Towards the latter I now repair, glad to escape from a dusty and uninteresting boulevard into the old town again. St. Pierre, whose Lady chapel enshrines some remarkable Limoges enamels, is a grand church, resembling in plan some of those built by the Preaching Orders in Belgium and Germany, and consisting of a lofty clerestoried nave and chancel under one line of roof, the separation between the two being marked by a slender fleche. There is an early tower at the west end, but it only rises to the height of the present nave clerestory. The oldest part of St. Pierre is the arcade and apse of the choir, in very early First Pointed. More advanced than but not unlike that of the cathedral is the nave arcade, with its tall clerestory — broad lancets in couples, with a very small circlet within the discharging arch. Next in point of dale is the Middle Pointed glazed triforium and clerestory of the choir, forming a perfect lantern of old glass little inferior to that in the cathedral. Returning thither at the conclusion of a petit premier dejeuner in the courtyard of the Grand Monarque, ' assisted at ' by the canine and feline denizens thereof, I circumambulate the choir aisles with their matchless sixteenth-century screens — a New Testament history in stone — and presently arrive at the celebrated black image, ' la A'ierge Noire du Pilier ' — hoisted into a wooden ^■I Sunday at Chartrcs 59 shrine of the feeblest Pointed eliarncter, decked out with trinkets and imagery from the toy-sliop— and before which clusters of candles are flaring and guttering the livelong day on round and triangular tin stands, whose equilibrium is disturbed by the slightest touch. (_)n great days the galaxy of candles is con- siderably augmented, rendering the duties of the little acolytes in cleansing the trays of grease by no means a sinecure. Notre- IJanie at (Jhartres being at once parochial and cathe- dral, there are two sung Masses on Sundays and all great feasts — the ]jarish Mass at nine, and the Chapter Mass, carried out with r' ^ ^SIPKi/ 1 g ^ \'.y^^% ^^MtlttK/^ Nl H Ba H* {texts' .J iH 1 i^^H kA 1 Wa bh S /W^fj y bB'V^' j|J 1 1 hh i ■ CIIAKTKKS ; ST. I'll-.RKK greater pomp and circumstance, preceded and followed by the Offices, at half-pa.st ten. On the occasion of my visit the parochial one — a Mis.5a Cantata, at which, however, incense is offered — presented but few features of interest to the ecclesiologist, ritual or musical. There is a tolerably large congregation, made up chiefly of women and children, as almost everywhere in France, a few men occupying stalls in the choir. The other parts of the cathedral most favoured at this Mass are the procession path commanding a view of the high altar, and the nave in the im- mediate vicinity of the pulpit, while at the extreme west end a 6o Holidays among tlie Glories of France pretty and pleasing sight is presented by an assemblage of the poorer classes of women, some of whom, owing to the obscurity of this part of the cathedral, have lighted candle ends stuck on to the ledges of their chairs, and in several instances I find three or four looking over one book. At the sermon all those hitherto seated in and around the choir adjourn to the nave ; some, bringing their chairs with them, dispose themselves about the centre alley of the nave or as near the pulpit as they can get in the side aisles in a very picturesque and elastic manner. Opposite, in the banc d'ceuvre, upon whose ledge two candles are burning on either side the crucifix, the celebrant and his assistants are comfortably ' y-park'd.' Not only are the preliminary notices almost inaudible, but also the subsequent discourse, which, however, has the merit of brevity ; so giving up the attempt to listen, I muse upon the extremely picturesque scene presented by the nave on this occasion— one which Prout or Wild would have loved to paint had they lived now instead of when they did. Dwelling upon the glorious old thirteenth-century windows, ' Each the tiright gift of some mechanic guild. Who loved their city, and thought gold well spent To make her beautiful with piety,' but particularly upon the quintuplet of lancets below the great south transeptal rose, wherein on either side the effigy of the Blessed Virgin are those of the Major Prophets, each bearing upon his shoulder an Evangelist, in a very quaint fashion, I reflect upon the centuries of suns and storms that have successively glorified or expended their fury upon this marvellous wall of colour. Throughout the Office the Plain Chant is uninterestingly monotonous, nor is it relieved by a melody that can be caught up and stored in the memory for long after. It is only on the great feasts that it is possible to hear a grand swinging air to such hymns as the Plaiidaiiuis cum Superis on the Assumption, or the /en/sale in et Syoii fliiE on the P'east of Dedication. ' Plait il, Madame, a quelle heure commencent les Offices Capitulaires ? ' I inquire of an old dame, who is putting chairs back in their places at the conclusion of this service. ' A dix heures vingt, Monsieur,' she politely rejoins. There is no time for an extended ramble about the city, so I sit quietly about under the trees in the precincts and listen to the great bells, or meditate before the triple northern portal which, with its ' stones '/ Sunday at Char Ires 6i like concrete full of shells, and suggesting to the fancy a sea grotto left high and dry,' is dight with ' dedicated shapes of kings and saints,' who seem to say, ' ^'t; ci.jme and go incessant ; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past ; lie reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realised as this.' w/ ^ y^//^'/ ^ ~^'^Mii^^y d .H I HAHTRKS CA'rillCURAI. : I'lIK SOrTIII'-.UN I'OKTAl, 62 Holidays among tlic C lories of France In a lecture on the thirteenth-century architecture of France dehvered shortly before his death to the students of the Royal Academy, Oeorge Edmund Street descanted enthusiastically upon these great transeptal porches at Chartres, in which the architect ' has shown such a mastery over delicate detail as has seldom been seen, and this with an originality of design and a fertility of invention which cannot be too much praised. Both porches are generally similar in outline, but extremely different in the detail of their planning, which, in the case of the northern one, is very varied and beautiful. ... It is as if the architect had felt himself tied and bound in his scheme for the church, and found himself breathing freely again when he had to complete the porches.' The three western doors, or Porte Royale, have seldom been excelled for the finished beauty of their workmanship. They are quite a hundred years older than the transeptal porches, and as specimens of richest Romanesque may be compared with the north and south doorways at Bourges, the south door of the nave at Le Mans, and one in St. Benigne at Dijon. Already those who are to take part in it are dropping into their appointed places for the great Office of the day. First, les etifants du chceur, in scarlet cassocks, lace surplices confined at the waist by a pink sash, scarlet skull-caps and slippers, file slowly in with folded arms by the gate on the south side of the sanctuary. F'orming in a double line before the high altar, they make a most profound genuflexion — indeed, the ' bowings and scrapings' all day at Chartres, from the most juvenile choir-hoy to the most venerable canon, were simply perfection. Some short devotions concluded, at a given signal they rise, face the west, bow to such of the cathedral dignitaries as are present, and pro- ceed in single file to their deskless stools on either side of the choir. Anon the cantors, in black cassocks and ugly sleeveless sur])licep, arrive and take up their j)ositions by the lecterns, on which rest the big noted books. Then a few more canons drop in, next a small procession of about a dozen seminarists ; the organist takes his seat, strikes a keynote, and off they all start upon Terce, with the Pater Nosier, Ave Maria, JJeiis in adjii- loriiim, and the sublime Office hymn. Nunc sancic nobis Spirifus. The choir organ is silent during the long Psalms, but at the versicles following the (.'apitulum proper for the Transfiguration {Suhmiorem expectamus, etc.), and while the six great candles are being lighted, it accompanies a bo) whose limpid soprano CHAin'KKS CA'I'llKORAL : SOUTH AlSI.Ii OF ClIOIK 64 Holidays ainojig ilic Glories of Fi-ancc voice rings through the vast building with an effect most thrill- ing because so unexpected. Gloriosus apparuisti in coHspectu Domini, Alleluia! Alleluia ! Alleluia ! sings the boy to \\\, it becomes intractable, causing the poor cure to get crimson of visage and to cast sundry agonised glances across the choir at the biretta'd canons. But these dignitaries seem quite unmoved, sitting in their stalls with closed eyes and folded hands, affecting to take no notice whatever of the matter. Not so sundry of the choir-boys, whose faces give tokens of risibility. One young urchin, whose head ought to have been well ' punched,' literally shook with suppressed laughter. The Plain Song to the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc., is accompanied smoothly and well, the Domine salvum fac, the Tonus Regius, and several very beautiful ' Amens ' bringing the Mass to a solemn and restful close. The Morning Offices ended, I proceed to inspect more closely the architectural features of St. Gatien's, a church which has peculiar claims to the interest of Englishmen, having been com- menced by our Henry II. Built almost immediately after the destruction (from incendiary causes, as usual) of the Romanesque cathedral— a structure apparently of very considerable extent — the radiating chapels and arcades of the choir are in the Earliest Pointed ; indeed, the windows of the former cannot be said to have quite emancipated themselves from Romanesque tradition. Although inferior in size and importance to the vast northern cathedrals. Tours yields to none in solemnity of effect and' Tours 89 delicacy of detail. At a first glance it appears, both externally and internally, commonplace (if such a term may be used), but a lengthy or repeated visit will serve to dispel this feeling, and the building will be found, after a careful survey, to enshrine every- thing that is elegant in detail and harmonious in proportion ; TOUKS : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL besides which it has the merit of being one of the few French cathe- drals showing finish in all its parts and no traces of incomplete plan. The choir and its surroundings are the earliest portions, if we except some remains of Romanesque work in the bases of the towers. That the arcades of the choir at 'fours lack that rich- go Holidays afiiong the Glories of France ness of foliaged ornament common to Auxerre, Troyes, and Bayeux cannot be denied, yet, viewed from either transept, the Doric simplicity of its five acutely pointed arches on piers com- posed of a cylinder with four encircling shafts, all with boldly foliaged capitals, is undeniably imposing. So are the narrow stilted arches of the apse. Next in point of date come the choir clerestory and triforium, the transepts and the first two bays, counting from the east, of the nave. These belong to the Middle Pointed period, which they admirably represent. Of especial beauty are the windows in the clerestory and triforium of the choir, presenting a perfect lantern of old stained-glass— the glory of Tours and the subject of a monograph from the pen of the late Chanoine Bourasse,' who, associated in his ecclesiological studies with Chanoine Manceau, did much towards the improvement of the cathedral about 1846-4S. Till nearly the middle of the fifteenth century, when the nave from the second bay east was commenced, no further progress seems to have been made at Tours, but the work once taken in hand was carried steadily on into the Flamboyant and Early Renaissance periods — the mar- vellous west front, with its twin towers crowned by small scaled domes, from which, unhappily, the ' melancholy gold ' has been scraped, completing the work. All the splendour which precedes decay characterises the style in which this western fagade of Tours — by no means on the gigantic scale of Rouen or Troyes — is built. A difficulty occurred in the construction of Tours Cathedral, which occasioned a somewhat unsightly irregularity in the north transept. It appears from an inspection of the plan of this church that its constructors, being anxious to lessen the width of the building from the commencement of the nave, found it requisite to deviate from the line of the choii' piers by bringing the large transeptal columns at the north-east angle a few feet inwards. This materially had the effect of disarranging the vaulting of the westernmost end of the north aisle of the choir, making it necessary to construct the east wall of the transept at an acute angle, and to throw out an enormous flying buttress from the outer angle of this transept. So great is the span of this buttress that a street and part of a garden run under it. The ' An excellent little volume on the Cathedrals of France, put forth in 1S43 by this ecclesiastic, has formed the basis of later works on the suliject. TUUKS CATHEDRAL : SOUTH AJbLE OF THE CHOU'! 92 Holidays among the Glories of France transeptal roses are magnificent, though tlie effect of the northern one is impaired in some degree by a huge buttress carried up its face, from the causes enumerated above. The diminution of width in the nave as it approaches the west is very marked, but it has the effect of increasing the length and adding considerably to the charm of the view westward, which terminates in a noble traceried and stained-glass window free from organ gallery or any other encumbrance. The Flamboyant work at the west end of the nave aisles is likewise extremely bold and fine. I know of few French naves so beautifully arcadedas this of Tours : long did I linger during several enraptured visits at its north-west or south- west angle, wrapt in admiration of its graceful attached piers, which seem to melt one into another. The ritualism of the cathedral of Tours is not remarkable. Tall pseudo- Gothic grilles surround the choir, and from its roof depends a chandelier with three lights. The great organ is in the south transept, as at Le Mans. The nave aisles of few French cathedrals are so contracted as those of Tours — a narrowness rendered still more conspicuous by the chairs which project from the nave, leaving only a very narrow passage between them and the flanking chapels. One of these chapels (that of the Sacred Heart) at the east end of the north aisle has a modern altar and reredos of singular beauty. The former, of stone, is, as usual, without antependium, and its mensa rests upon three small columns with gilt caps and bases. The stepped predella has eight arcades with niched figures, and sup- ports the candlesticks. In the centre of this rises a lofty Gothic arcaded tabernacle richly painted and gilt. Another good modern altar is that of the Lady-chapel, which, as usual, has been [iro- fusely coloured. Its three lancets contain old glass from the church of St. Julien, collected from several windows there, the north and south walls having frescoes of the Marriage and Death of the Virgin, and of her Annunciation and Assumption. A throned figure of the Virgin and Child above the tabernacle struck me as most graceful, as did the predella with paintings of the Presentation and the Entombment. Other interesting points in the choir aisle at Tours are the fenestration of the first oblong chapel on either hand by a couple of plate-traceried two-light windows, having in the head a sexfoil ; and some paintings in the northern of these chapels, curious, solemn, naturalistic, and repre- senting in oblong panels the A[)ostles, St. Luke taking the place Tours 93 which belongs to St. Matthias. As I quit the cathedral by the west door a Sister of Charity approaches the bcnitier and takes the holy water very reverently, kneeling. The great central door is thrown wide open, and never shall I forget the air of simple, solemn grandeur which the nave, ruby-stained by the great window, presented about half past six in the afternoon of my second day in Tours. The exterior of St. Gatien's does not present many features of interest. The lofty clerestory, nave chapel, and transept windows make a goodly show ; but in point of splendour and leaf-like delicacy the tracery cannot compare with that in the same posi- tion at Troyes. Perhaps the most pleasing external feature, after the harmonious Flamboyant west front, with its tall flanking towers and graceful series of arcades just under the central gable, is the apse of the choir, spreading itself out at the base where the chapels cluster in dignified amplitude, soaring, but not at all exaggerated in its clerestory. There is no tower at the crux, the masses of roof meeting at an insignificant nondescript turret sur- mounted by a tall cross ; for I am in France now, and not in Normandy, where the central tower almost always constitutes one of the grandest external features of the churches — as at Rouen, Fecamp, lisieux. Dives, Coutances, and Evreux. Altogether Tours is a most fascinating and instructive cathedral. Arriving prepared for disappointment, I went away enchanted ; while its situation in the eastern part of the city, remote from the busy streets, seems to impart to its immediate surroundings an air of calm seclusion, wanting, however, in those picturesque environments which, almost without exception, con- front us in an English cathedral precinct. I have so dilated upon the architectural glories of St. Gatien as to render a notice of the other churches of Tours some- what short. Dismissing, briefly, Notre-Dame-la-Riche and St. Saturnin as large late Gothic churches, with few features to recommend them beyond their spaciousness, town-like air, and elaborate fittings, I proceed to speak more particularly of St. Juhen's and of the imposing but as yet incomplete modern basilica of St. iVlartin's. Turner depicts St. Julien's, in his 'Seine and Loire,' at 'an hour after sunset, with no moon, and torchlight.' At that time it was a diligence office, and the drawing, which shows the south side of the nave and transept, was made from the Hotel d'Angle- 94 Holidays among the Glories of France terre, where the artist was probably deposited on arrival. Ruskin cites this drawing as an instance of Turner's love of chiaroscuro, and as being especially remarkable for its preservation of deep points of gloom, because the whole picture is one of extended shade. Rescued from the degraded state to which it had fallen in 1S47, ■''t- Tulien's at Tours has since been well restored, and now presents all the features of a grand cruciform church built during the palmiest days of French Gothic— the age of St. Louis. It TOUliS : .\FSli OF THE C ATIIKDK AI. Stands so hidden among the houses at the corner of the Rue Nationale and the Rue Colbert that its grand nave, clerestory, and transept came upon me quite by surprise — a surprise by no means diminished when, descending the few steps leading from the south door to its interior, I beheld its almost minster-like proportions and distribution of parts. It consists of a low Romanesque western tower, a five-bayed nave with triforium and clerestory, transepts, and choir with double aisles, of which the external one on either side is prolonged into a poor sixteenth- Tours 95 century apsidal chapel. The choir has a square east end, lighted by a noble window of eight lights, below which, ex- tending the whole width of the wall, a Cenacolo is frescoed on a gold ground. Taken in conjunction with the excellent glass in the window above — small subjects in roundels — this picture has a very rich appearance. The same arrangement of fenestration occurring in the square-ended choir of the cathe- dral at Dol may be accounted for by the fact that Tours was formerly the patriarchal see of Brittany. At St. Julien's the choir, dating from about 1220, is the oldest part, its tall cylindrical columns, with their stiff-leafed capitals, being set upon raised bases, which are also foliaged at the angles. The transepts and nave are later, and belong to the more advanced Pointed of 1 240. Here the pillars are thick cylinders, with a slender shaft at the cardinal points. Throughout the church the workmanship is very fine, and so lengthy has been my inspection that by this time the afternoon has worn away, so I take tea at a cafe in a fine open space formed at the junction of the Rue Nationale and the Boulevards Heurteloup and Beranger, and then set out for a stroll round the walls in the direction again of St. Julien's, where prayers and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament are announced to com- mence at eight o'clock. The walk takes me along the boulevards in a north-easterly direction, there being a gentle rise all the way, so that, having the walls on the right, I look down upon the Loire and Cher Canal and market gardens. On the left hand rises the enormous mass of the cathedral, its outline clearly defined against the sunset sky. The two great towers of St. Martin's are brought into the picture, and extremely grand they look. It being requi- site to pass the cathedral, I cannot resist a walk round in the now quickly gathering darkness. Truly awful is the silence of the vast building — a silence broken only now and then by a cough or a chair scrooping. I make just one complete circulation, regaining the west door as the sacristan jangles his keys, eager to lock up, and then resume the walk to St. Juhan's, whose interior, impressive by day, looks doubly so illumined here and there by a few gas-jets, which serve to throw out very markedly its exquisite details, many of which, notably the flat soffits of the arches, seem to have influenced Sir Gilbert Scott when designing such churches of the later 'fifties' as St. Mary's, .Stoke Newington, All Souls', Halifax, and St. Matthias, Richmond. I should not omit to 96 Holidays among the Glories of France state that the shafts supporting the arches of the three lancet windows in the south transept repose on grotesque figures of about a foot and a half in height, a remarkable feature for this TOUkS ; ST. JULIEN epoch of Gothic, and one which is, I believe, only met with else- where in the nave of Nevers. To the sumptuous but as yet incomplete modern basilica of St. Martin, a satisfactory visit was paid early on the ensuing morning. All that remains of the once far-famed abbey are the H 98 Holidays among the Glories of France clock and Charlemagne towers. These noble masses, which formerly stood at the north-east and south-west angles of the nave, are now separated by one of the principal and busiest streets of Tours, which traverses the entire site of the nave, and beyond them not a trace remains of this large and time-honoured church, which for the alleged reason of superfluity and needless expense was ruthlessly destroyed during the early years of the present century, having survived the shock of the Revolution. In 1 86 1 the rock-hewn tomb, believed to have been that of St. Martin, was discovered under a house which occupied the site of the high altar. Over this a chapel, and subsequently the present noble church, in the style which brackets the Angevine and Auvergnat types of Romanesque, have been raised. With the exception perhaps of the great church of Sacre Cceur which crowns the hill at Montmartre at Paris, this is perhaps the costliest and most imposing of modern French basilicas. It is built in the form of a cross, the transeptal and eastern limbs being, however, very short, from which rises a dome surmounted by a figure of St. Martin. The drum of this dome is lighted by a succession of small round-headed windows within pilastered arcades, and is enriched internally by a figure of the soldier-bishop vested in a chasuble, and seated against a background of gold mosaic. At present only three bays of the nave have been completed. This portion of the church has a wooden roof gabled, but not very acutely, a clerestory of small, coupled, round- headed arches, and an arcade, also round, upon tall cylindrical columns of grey marble, with some- what Corinthianising capitals. At the east end of the nave a noble sweep of balustraded steps leads up into the transeptal portion beneath the dome. This space is chaired, and screened beneath the north and south transept arches by parcloses with pillars of grey marble, forming an arcade on either side a square- headed door. Some delicate stained-glass in the small round- headed windows of the transepts elicits my admiration. fust under the eastern arch of the crossing are the Epistle and Gospel ambones, formed of the costliest materials, while in the simple but grandly sweeping apse, whose conch at the period of my visit exclaimed for pictorial enrichment, is placed the high altar, its mensa resting on four marble shafts, and its predella being exquisitely worked in mosaic, the pattern presenting vine leaves and birds on a gold ground. The six candlesticks stand in front Tours 99 of this predella, which supports a baldachin — a cusped and gilt arch on banded Corinthian pillars. Each transept opens east- ward into a chapel, that to the north being dedicated to the Blessed Virg'n, that to the south to St. Joseph. Altars of an equally costly description grace both these chapels, similar in many respects to the high altar. The pulpit, on the motif o{ \\\& celebrated marble one at Messina, stands against one of the nave piers on the north side. Right and left of the steps leading up to the transepts from the nave is a short flight conducting down to the crypt, whose roof is sustained by thick red granite piers. Here is the great object of veneration — the tomb of St. Martin. The shrine, a species of twin-gable temple, with two rows of foui columns, is raised on a lofty plinth inlaid with mosaics in bands, gratings at the north and south ends giving a view of the tomb, before which a lamp is burning. Altogether, new St. Martin's is a superb piece of work, and one that atones, in some measure, for the loss of the mediaeval abbey. loo Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER VI EOURGES Among the wonders of the fair which had contributed not a httle towards rendering Tours more than ordinarily cheerful on the occasion of my visit, was a pair of pelicans who, at intervals, were put through a variety of quaint performances before one of the shows lining the river-side. When not called upon to exhibit, these birds took up a position one on either side the platform, from which they regarded the whole scene — its dust, crowds, glare, and noise of a dozen organs playing as many different tunes — with an air of dignified serenity that was truly amusing to witness. Feeling quite an interest in these creatures I seize the oppor- tunity, while strolling along the quais on the following morning, before service at the cathedral, to make their closer acquaintance, so inquire after them of the proprietor who is enjoying a matutinal pipe outside the show, the glories of which are, it need hardly be remarked, sadly diminished by the searching light of morning. 'Ah ! Oui ! oui ! Monsieur, les grands oiseaux Wanes ! lis ne sont pas encore leves,' is the somewhat amusing rejoinder, 'being somewhat fatigued with the representations ; there was much of the world here last nijiht.' A subsequent inquiry ehcited the information that they were making their toilettes, ' la bas,' pointing in the direction of the river, and on advancing to the quai wall I observe my friends of the preceding evening pluming and disporting themselves at a little distance with evident enjoyment in the Loire, which at this season looks little more than a thread, the bridges bestriding more sandy shore than river. A distant farewell has been taken of the pelicans, and a closer one of an old magpie, whose friendshi[) I had secured by some Bonroes i o i <^> fruit while taking the air in his wicker cage outside the toll-taker's house on one of the bridges, and it is more than fully time to start for Bourges, the journey thither passing without incident as far as Vierzon, where trains are changed. In this part of France the long, open third-class carriages are far superior to those of the rabbit-hutch kind with which I had become so familiar on the northern railways. The seats are cushioned, there is the additional luxury of a window on either side the door, and people hang their hagages on pegs from the roof all down the com- partment, where they present at times some very odd combina- tions. A polite youth in a blouse assists me with my knapsack into the carriage at Vierzon, for, if you are equipped with one of those useful articles, the doors of French third-class compartments being somewhat contracted, a crab like mode of entering is requisite, unless you wish to stick fast on the threshold. The aforesaid polite youth, his compagnon de voyage, and two ladies of an uncertain age — whose tongues, it is no exaggeration to say, never stopped once from their entry into the carriage at Vierzon until the debarkation of one of them at some village station a little farther on — constitute our party. In the next division an old peasant woman, with a couple of fowls in a basket, has put up her umbrella to protect them from the afternoon sun. This is thought an exquisite piece of drollery, and as nobody can do any- thing in France without half a dozen others proffering their opinion upon it, everybody else leans over the partition of his or her compartment and puts in a remark. The polite youth and his mamma, or his aunt, or whoever she may be, then proceed to partake of some refreshment, whereupon the aforesaid garrulous lady, who has said good-bye to her companion, opens fire upon them, peradventure with the view of being asked to assist at the demolition of the savoury viands, but not being invited to do so becomes less communicative, subsiding by degrees into dignified silence. It is about half-past two when the first glimpse of the great transeptless cathedral of Bourges rising at the summit of its city is caught, seen athwart a rich tract of pastoral country intersected by willow-bordered streams inviting a dip, of which I make a mental note. At the Hotel Jacques Coeur, where, on account of its historic appellation, I had decided upon taking up my quarters, I find myself the only guest, so that there is no lack oi attention from I02 Holidays amovg the Glories of France host and hostess, who, with their two sons, evince the greatest interest in Monsieur I'Anglais and everything pertaining to him. The younger of the sons, one of Thomas Ingoldsby's 'sharp httle boys about twelve years of age,' is elated at the no distant prospect of being permitted to conduct Monsieur to the Musee and other ' lions' of Bourges. Under the guidance of this vivacious juvenile — who, not thinking his scholastic costume of blouse, etc., sufficiently soignee, comes out for the walk attired quite fashionably— 1 'do' these ' lions,' lingering somewhat longer in and about the cathedral than is agreeable to my small mentor. The eariier part of the afternoon having been spent in the commodious bed-sitting room allotted to me, I stroll through the hilly streets towards the archiepiscopal gardens on the south side of the cathedral, where the tasteful laying- out of the flower-beds — a border of ageratum enclosing a medley of geraniums, roses, and heliotrope— does not fail to call forth admiration. Next morning we are all up betimes, and after an invigorating plunge in one of the willow-bordered streamlets, followed by a brisk walk, I do ample justice to an eight o'clock breakfast, taken en famille with Monsieur, Madame, and their olive branches, and then, armed with notebook and pencil, repair for a long morning's work to St. Etienne. Operations cannot be commenced at once, as the canons are reciting their Morning Offices in choir. Their rising alto- gether as the clock strikes nine is very impressive. In the north aisle two girls with market baskets are eating their morning meal, thus, I suppose, gratifying their organs of admiration and alimentiveness simultaneously. Although the Mass is not sung the officiating canon is served by several red-cassocked and cotta'd boys, who, having been shod with the slippers of silence for the sanctuary, emerge from the sacristy when all is over, very sublunary mortals indeed, in hobnailed boots, making a tremen- dous clatter, and with no collars or wristbands to speak of. Each kneels for a short space at the choir gate as he passes, and is understood to go through a prayer. Then the Blessed Sacra- ment is carried down the aisle and out at the south porch preceded by a boy in cassock and surplice bearing a Clothic candle-illumined lantern on a pole, and very picturesque the little procession looks as it descends one of the narrow streets near the cathedral in the bright sunshine, and halts before the door whence the 'sick call' has come. I04 Holidays among the Glories of France '1 hough one of the finest and largest in France, covering 73,170 square feet, the cathedral of Bourges,' says Fergusson, 'is still one of the shortest, being only 405 feet in extreme length ; yet owing to the central aisle being wholly unbroken it appears one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the most majestic of all.' After some rather disparaging remarks about the five unequally graduated aisles, the writer continues : ' It is singularly beautiful in its details and happy in its main proportions, for owing to the omission of the transept the length is exquisitely adapted to the other dimensions. Had a transept been added, at least 100 feet of additional length would have been required to restore the harmony, and though externally it would, no doubt, have gained by such an adjunct, this gain would not have been adequate to the additional expense incurred. ' The greater part of the western fagade of this cathedral is of a later date than the building itself, and is extended beyond the proportions required for effect so as to overpower the rest of the building, so that it is only from the sides or the eastern end that all the beauty of this church can be appreciated.' There are five great western portals at Bourges which, viewed by themselves, are truly noble. The spirit with which the historical sculptures are designed is admirable, and even in the most serious subjects there peeps forth that grotesque slyness which the mediaeval artists knew so well how to render telling in subordination to their grand design. I spent quite an hour in deciphering the wonderful sculptured groups portrayed in these porches. In that of the Expulsion from Paradise the serpent — or rather dragon — is seen hurrying out before Adam and Eve with a look of most intense disgust ; but a little farther on in one of the recessed orders is the Deluge, with miserable creatures struggling in the agonies of suffocation, while the serpent peeps round the corner truculently joyful. It is in the tympana of these five great western portals at Bourges that the chief beauty of their sculpture resides, the various groups reminding one of a delicate ivory triptych. The varied expression of the counten- ances, the elevated character of many, the easy flow of the drapery, and the good execution of the whole, bespeak the work of an eminent sculptor, but his name, as well as that of the architect of the cathedral, is unknown. The Last Judgment, in the central portal's tympanum, is fearfully and wonderfullv por- trayed. Unfortunately only five of the full-length figures lining BOURGES CATHEDRAL ; WESTERN PORTALS io6 Holidays among the Glories of France the sides have as yet been restored. 'I'hese are on the right ot the central door, above which is a large six-light window of early Flamboyant character. And here praise of the fac^ade of Bourges must cease, an incompleteness in detail and absence of accom- paniments from the upper stages precluding it from ranking with those of Amiens, Paris, or Rheims. Of the towers flanking the far;ade that on the south is First I'ointed, and does not rise above the apex of the great central gable, with its patriarchal cross, yet it is very beautiful and harmonious in its parts. The northern one is entirely a lofty late (lothic erection (1508-38), and, like the great south-western tower of Rouen, is called 'Tour de Beurre,' from its having been erected with the money raised from indulgences to eat butter in Lent. It is best viewed from the north-east, on which s'de of the cathedral the rapid slope of the ground from west to east is most marked. There is likewise a declivity from south to north, so that you enter the building by a porch opposite the archi- episcopal gardens, without ascending or descending steps, while to the one on the northern side there is a considerable flight. The view of the cathedral from the north-east is undoubtedly a noble one. We do not seem to feel the want of transepts, the eye dwelling contentedly on the fine range of clerestory windows and flying buttresses, while the aisles are agreeably broken up by the numerous projecting chapels and the porches. These have for outer doors a couple of beautiful thirteenth-century cusped arches, but the inner doors are Romanesque, and, resembling those in the west front of Chartres, a doorway in St. Benigne at Dijon, and that on the south side of the nave at Le Mans; date from about the middle of the twelfth century, being formed of fragments of sculpture belonging to the former cathedral. ' They are remarkable,' says the la*e Mr. C. E. Street, ' not only for the really astounding skill of the mechanics who wrought the curious sculptures with which their columns and other members are covered, but for the remarkable fact that, among the branches of foliage, in which the utmost skill of Byzantine artists is rivalled, nude figures and animals are represented with a feeling for nature which is all the more surprising when compared with the stiff and conventional representations of life-sized human figures in the same work.' Entering by the southern of these portals, I am perfectly overwhelmed with the breadth and m.ijcsly of this cathedral of Bouro;es 107 Bourges. Its enormously lofty nave (123 feet) ; its grand un- broken range of columns (huge C)linders, round which several slender ones cluster) ; its double aisles continued right round the tOUKGES CATIIEUKAL : SOUTH POKCII choir in one sweep, the inner one (71 feet high) furnished with its own triforium and clerestory, as at Coutances and Le Mans ; the lovely glimpses of stained-glass seen dimly athwart the great io8 Holidays among the Glories of France thick-clustered columns dividing these two aisles — all this bursts upon us in such a manner that it is impossible for some time to turn to the actual details of the building. The first feeling of wonder having subsided, one of slight disappointment arises in the mind of the true artist at the somewhat slovenly and coarsely designed triforium, and the too small clerestory, compared, that is to say, with the great arcades, where, by the way, we miss the grand deep series of mouldings our English arches of the same date have. The triforia consist only of five or more trefoiled and slender-shafted arcades, and in the earlier portion of the church — the choir — the tympanum of the arch in which they are pierced is left plain. One cannot help wishing that these triforia had been dispensed with altogether, as at Coutances and Le Mans, and greater height given to the clerestory windows, which in the apse are of the plate-traceried kind, and composed of two unfoliated lights with a large sexfoiled rose in the head. In the sides of the choir and nave the clerestory windows, still plate-traceried, take a three-light form, increasing in richness, together with the tri- forium, as they progress vyestward. There is a noble array of saintly figures in the choir windows of this range ; while a simple grisaille, with, however, a subject in the circle, fills those of the nave. It is almost needless to say that this glass, taken into view with that of the inner aisle's clerestory and with that in the encircling chapels, presents a coup d'a'il of combined solemnity and magnificence surpassed only by Chartres. Of the fittings at Bourges, perhaps the most striking is the great coro?ia lucis, suspended just at the point where the choir begins. Modelled on the celebrated one at Hildesheim, it must form, taken in conjunction with the smaller coronje of less happy design hung all down the nave, a superb picture when lighted up on dark afternoons, or on the rare occasion of an evening service. I once had the good fortune to be present in Amiens Cathe- dral during a late week-night service. It was July 29, and the festival of St. Martha, the patron saint of cooks, a large body of whom were present, and accommodated with chairs in the choir between the two rows of celebrated carved stalls. Anything more impressive in a continental church than this service I do not remember, the ritual being most magnificent, and carried out with that pomp for which Amiens has always been celebrated. Bourges 109 The music was commensurate, and the manner in which one of the Psalms was sung to the fifth ending of the First Tone will long live in the memory, while the immense building, dimly HDUKGIiS : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL lighted by a few candles placed at intervals amid the chairs in the nave, with the last rays of daylight struggling through the painted-glass in the transeptal roses, the high altar and its I lo Holidays among the Glories of France surroundings being in a blaze of light, formed a scene which is not presented to the everyday traveller on the Continent. At Bourges, as in the majority of French cathedrals, the high close screen is absent, its place being taken by a low modern Gothic grille of iron, delicately and beautifully wrought. This runs right across the church, including both aisles, and forms the only visible separation between nave and choir. Modern French ecclesiologists seem to have no idea of the light open jube of wood or brass with which our cathedrals of Ely, Hereford, Lichfield, Salisbury, and Worcester have been equipped since the Gothic revival, nor of the suspended or ele- vated rood and attendant figures, modern examples of which have, with the approval of the clergy and to the delight of many a devout congregation, been placed of late years in not a few of our ancient and modern parish churches. Mediaeval or Early Renaissance jiibes of a solid character exist in the Madeleine at Troyes, Notre-Dame de I'Epine near Chalons, Notre-Dame at Brou, St. Florentin near Auxerre, St. Etienne du Mont at Paris, pretty frequently in Brittany, and in the cathedrals of Albi, Limoges, and Rodez, but the churches retaining their original rood-lofts are very few, considering the immense number of ancient Gothic edifices that France possesses. This diminution must not always be attributed to the blind fury of the Huguenots and Revolutionists, but to the vitiated taste of the clergy themselves during the Louis XV period. Nowadays the low grille separating the choir of too many a great French church is but a sorry substitute for the tall light open rood, which not only imparts an air of solemnity and mystery to the building, but performs the functions of a mile- stone by which we may in imagination measure the length of a church, and thus in the most legitimate manner makes it appear longer. ' If anyone says that he loves Pointed architecture and hates screens, I do not hesitate to denounce him as a liar,' was a pithy remark of that enthusiastic pioneer of the revival of mediaeval architecture, Augustus WelbyPugin, who fought many a battle over this subject with members of the Church which he had embraced. And indeed, speaking artistically, the nave and chancel of a church are such actually distinct portions of a building that it is but reasonable they should be made to appear as such ; while, without straining symbolism beyond its most common-sense Boiirires ' in 'i import, some dignified means is needed, both practically and aesthetically, for separating this more sacred part of the building from the other, particularly in these days when, throughout the length and breadth of England, churches may be found open for private prayer and meditation during the greater part of the day. With regard to the treatment of the chapels in the outer pro- cessional aisle at Bourges, it is not improbable that they present us with the same arrangement that Notre-Dame at Paris must have done before its fringe of Early Middle Pointed chapels was projected at the close of the thirteenth century. Here the outer wall of the second aisle has three compartments for every one in the central ap^e, and from the centre division of each of these a small circular-ended chapel with a triplet of lancets is thrown out. The wall on either side the entrance to these chapels is pierced with a couplet of very broad lancets — one of the finest and most marked features of the early chevets, and one which occurs in that of Le Mans. When we go outside we see that each of these projecting chapels is bracketed out oriel-wise above the crypt, which, visible externally, is of vast extent and of the most refined thirteenth-century work. Several of the nave chapels have been Flamboyantised, but with these exceptions few cathedrals in France have remained so unaltered by late accretions and additions as the majestic edifice which forms the subject of this chapter. It is not often that one visits a world-famed church without disappointment. That of Bourges not only equalled but much surpassed all previously conceived ideas of it, while its situation at the summit of gently rising streets, whose picturesque houses give scale to its immensity, with the light freely admitted on all sides, and with the archiepiscopal gardens extending the whole length of its south side, is one enjoyed by few other great French churches. The yellow sunlight of the July afternoon renders the gay parterre of bee haunted flowers in the unshaded part of these gardens too dazzling to look upon, but it only trickles down in a golden shower through the encircling avenues of lime-trees upon picturesque knots of smartly coiffured bonnes, and upon a happy- looking group, occupied with books and work, gathered about a Sister of Charity, who occasionally hands round a bag of cakes. 112 Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER VII A SUNDAY AT BOURGES : I^.TAMPES A STILL, hot, perfect morning. The brown cliff-like western fagade of the cathedral towers up against a sky guiltless of a cloud, and an awful stillness reigns throughout the vast interior, whose eastern portions are glorified by the newly risen sun, while its western end lies in comparative shadow. Involuntarily I recall the opening stanzas of two grand mediseval Latin hymns for the morning of the Lord's Day : — En dies est Dominica Summo cultu dignissima ; ■ Ob octavam DoniinicLii ]\esurrectionis sacrue ; and Omnes una celebremus, Celebrando venerenius, Christ! nunc solemnia. Ecce Dies magnus Dei, Dies Summce requiei, Dies est Dominica. But these hallowed feelings are somewhat rudely dispelled, for on approaching one of the side chapels on the north side of the nave I find two small servers, supposed to be preparing its altar for an early Mass, indulging in a little private pantomime — hitting one another over the head with the elongated silver dish in which the cruets ordinarily repose, thrusting up each other's noses the taper with which the altar candles have just been lighted, playing ' catch who catch can ' round the confessional box, and so on — performances which, concluding with a mad race to the sacristy, the slamming of whose doors reverberates through the sacred building, are, to an English Churchman with an English Church- man's reverence for holy places and holy things, exceedingly improving and pleasant, of course. Sunday at Bourgcs 1 1 At half-past nine the Parochial Mass is performed, sine caii/i/, in the Lady-chapel ; outside it, and in the poinioiir, the congrega- tion, a fairly large one, is disposed all over the floor in chairs, the scene being strikingly picturesque. Their elasticity, if we may :ArHEIJK.\L use such a term in connection with these great French churches, constitutes one of their greatest charms. Vou go to the Offices of Mass or Vespers and stand about as you [)lease. You do not feel in anybody's way ; are not stared at ; you do not feel obliged to fix yourself in a seat at once for the whole service ; you may I 1 14 Holidays among the Li lories of prance take a chair if you please, and where you please — nearer or farther from the choir or altar as you like. Should you choose, you may attend the whole or part of the service without sitting down at all, and you fall into a far more easy and natural position than in our benched and closely chaired churches at home. The Parish Mass concluded, everyone, thinking no doubt his or her duty done for the day, hurries off, a very scanty congrega- tion assisting at the subsequent grandly rendered Chapter Mass at half-past ten. While sauntering round the choir aisles listening to the solemn roll of the Plain Chant at Terce, I encounter a very benevolent- looking old cathedral dignitary, M. le Chanoine Darrenguet, with whom a lengthy conversation upon the architecture of the cathe- dral had been enjoyed the day before, and who had in the most polite manner conducted me round, pointing out its most interesting features, and drawing attention to such others as I might have overlooked. Thus it happens that on Sunday morning I am accosted with a courtly bow, and an invitation to take ' un banc pres du maitre autel,' which, however, is declined. For once at F(5camp I got so unpleasantly near the gentleman who performed on the ophicleide, or some analogous instrument, as to render a repetition of the experiment undesirable. I therefore elected to seat myself in the nave, whence a good view could be had of the various ceremonies attendant upon the performance of the highest Office of the day, which, neither ritually nor musically, could compare in point of splendour with that at Chartres. The music was that as set in the Paroissien for a ' messe des doubles ordinaires ' — the ' Missa de Angelis ' so familiar to us at home. Between each Kyrie^ instead of executing an elaborate fantasia totally foreign to the solemnity of this portion of the Office, the organist at the west end very judiciously took up the Plain-Song strain and improvised upon it without losing sight of its severe character. As usual the congregation at Mass was distressingly scanty, though, to be sure, a large school of girls in dark-blue cloaks and poke-bonnets formed a solid block of humanity at the top of the nave on its north side. At the afternoon service, the canons in their stalls, the officiant, coped, and seated before a desk draped with tapestry in the centre of the choir, the cantors at the lecterns, and the Sunday at Bourges 115 children of the choir in bright scarlet cassocks, transparent sur- plices, zuchettos, and shoes, imparted not only a touch of colour to the scene but an air of picturesqueness, enhanced when the boys grouped themselves around the lectern to sing a motet in the interval between Vespers and Compline, under the baton of the maitre du chxur — evidently not like Charles King,' of whom it was said by the choristers of St. Paul's, ' Indulgence ne'er was sought in vain, He never smote with stinging cane,' but a regular martinet of a choir-master of the type alluded to by Thomas Ingoldsby : — ' With front severe, And brow austere, Now and then pinching a little boy's ear When he chaunts the responses too late or too soon. Or his Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La's not quite in tune.' The congregation this afternoon at Bourges was again but scanty, the most favoured portion being the aisles betwixt the choir grilles, up which a child was clambering all the time of Magnificat^ quite unchecked by his relative, who was enjoying an animated gossip with her next-door neighbour. One interesting feature I noticed during these afternoon services, and that was at Benediction, when the officiant, vested of course in a cope, was assisted by a deacon and sub -deacon in dalmatic and tunicle respectively. The day's services concluded, I paid a visit to the Maison Jacques Cceur, where a quiet and leisurely inspection of the numerous objects of antiquity that have been collected therein was enjoyed, and to the church of St. Pierre-aux- Corps — one generally overlooked, but deserving of notice if only on account of the slope of its floor from east to west. To the architectural student this church presents several features of considerable interest, one of them being the discrepancy between the two nave arcades, referable to a fire which did much damage to the city in 1487. The south arcade of St. Pierre-aux-Corps is an excellent ' Charles King, Mus.B., Almoner of St. Paul's, Master of the Boys 1707-48, and composer of much Church music still in use in our cathedrals. The number of services he wrote gained for him the sobriquet of the ' Serviceable.' I 2 1 1 6 Holidays among the Glories of France specimen of First Pointed work, with columns of the ' compound ' type — four slender shafts disposed around a core. The northern arches belong to the Third Age, and spring from half-shafts attached to a square pier, as in the little church of St. Ethelburga, Bishopsgate. The apse of St. Pierre, with its five acutely pointed arches, presents, owing to the curious ascent of the floor towards the east, an imposing appearance from the west end of the church. It has, like the south side of the nave, a clerestory of small lancets, and is vaulted in the most fascinating style of the thirteenth century, recalling, on a small scale, the work in Notre-Dame, Dijon. There are no transepts here, nor is there any visible separa- tion between nave and choir. A square tower with low stunted spire stands at the vvest end. The former is open on three sides, beautiful pointed arches of Early Gothic character admitting north and south to a species of narthex, while above that leading into the nave is another arch, affording a view of the interior of the tower, with its western Middle Pointed window gracefully traceried and of three hghts. At five o'clock on the ensuing Monday morning I was saying good-bye to Bourges Cathedral from the platform of the railway station, just as the sun was lighting up the cross on the apse, and then, as the train leaving the city traversed the dreary district of La Sologne, I settled myself to finish the night's rest as well as a knapsack and the seat of a third-class French railway-carriage permitted j waking, however, just in time to see that last rocket flung up by the expiring Pointed style of France — Orleans Cathedral — rising up white against a cloudless sky out of the vast plain. Presently it was lost, and we were crossing the somewhat less monotonous La Beauce, whose village churches, passed in quick succession, all seemed to present the same local characteristic, viz. the gabled tower and the square east end. Many of these buildings would, I opine, repay examination in case of detention or overmuch leisure. The features just noticed occur in all the four Etampes churches, whose towers rising above the houses in bold archi- tectural masses impart to this quiet old town an air of ecclesias- tical opulence which the visitor is able to enjoy immediately on leaving the station without having first to traverse a dusty boule- vard or ' Rue de la (Jare.' Etanipes 117 Among these churches, in which may be traced a hne of de- marcation between the Pointed of northern and central France, the best part of the morning was spent, page after page of a pott ETAMPES : SOUTH TKANSEPl' OF NOTKE-DAME octavo notebook being filled with memoranda, of which the fol- lowing are a few excerpts. I'he largest and most important of the Etampes churches is Notre- Dame, one of the most irregularly planned of my aciiuaintance. 1 1 8 Holidays among the Glories of France It embraces a choir with square end ' ; a double north aisle also rectangular, but with its wall and arcade of separation in- clining to the south; two south aisles, both apsidal, the outer wall slanting very markedly in a southerly direction ; double transepts, i.e. two in juxtaposition ; nave of two bays with very broad aisles, and a large narthex not at all in the plane of the nave, but sloping from north-east to south-west, and above which is the steeple. ' The square-ended choir is not so exclusively insular a feature as is popu- larly supposed. Allusion has already been made in these pages to the rect- angularly terminated churches of Dol, St. Julian, and Notre-Dame-la-Riche at Tours, and some mention will be found hereafter of choirs similarly planned at Creil and in its vicinity. The most grandly dimensioned square ended French church is the ci-devant Cathedral of Laon — so curious an example of how the infasion of a democratic element, from causes that space precludes from detailing here, caused a total departure in several particulars from the ecclesiastical traditions in architecture then everywhere prevailing. Although some would appear to be earlier than the Cathedral which so grandly domi- nates them, many of the country churches near Laon — that ofVau.\-sous Laon among their number — have square-ended choirs, and those who have made a study of the exquisitely beautiful village church architecture around Caen will have observed that the apse by no means predominates. Italy has one square- ended Pointed church, that of St. Andrew at VerceUi, the first Gothic church, as is well known, across the Alps, and built, moreover, under distinct English influence, though by a French architect. Some will remember either the engrav- ings of its interior in Gaily Knight and in Street's Brick and Marble of Noj'th Italy, or the description of it in Webb's Continental Ecclesiology. The square end is common in certain parts of Germany, particularly in Westphalia, where it occurs in the Cathedrals of Osnabriick and Paderborn, in the conventual churches of Essen, Herford, Loccum, St. John at Osnabriick, and Marienfeld, and in the parish churches of Biiren and St. Mary on the Hill at Herford — to quote but a few examples. In Germany the original aisleless apse re- produced itself down to the late days of national Pointed — aisles as well as choirs being thus terminated, and in such churches as St. Peter's and St. Mary in the Meadows at Soest, the five-aisled St. Victor at Xanten, the Petri Kirche at Gorlitz, and the Marien Kirche at Muhlhausen, with extremely beautiful effect, particularly where, as in the Meadow church at Soest, the elongated windows have retained their original glazing. In cruciform German churches one or more of these apses project from the eastern side of either transept. The German penchant for this particular form of eastern termina- tion, and the tardy adoption of the French arrangement with its procession path and corona of chapels, seem to have been dictated by a strict regard for the orientation of side altars. Cologne and Altenberg are perhaps the only two really successful German choirs planned on the French model, the few others presenting the same arrangement — Miinsler, Osnabriick, Magdeburg, Ilalberstadt, and the Marien Kirche at Liibeck- being far from haiipy. Etampes 1 1 9 This singular deviation of Notre-Dame at Etampes from the usual rectilinear form is due partly to the nature of the ground and partly to the character of the building, which is at once fortress and church. The structure in question forms by no means a solitary proof of the perils to which religion was exposed in mediajval times, and the necessity under which Churchmen lay of calling in military assistance for the defence not only of their own lives and property, but of many others also, who, at the ap- proach of danger, fled to the church or monastery for protection. Ste. Cecile at Albi is an example of those ecclesiastical for- tresses which are of frequent occurrence in the south of France. Danger appears to have been apprehended chiefly upon the eastern side of Notre-Dame, for here we find the windows placed at a great elevation from the ground, and above the chapels are casemated chambers for troops, with loopholes as in other fortifications, and it was probably with a view to greater security that the usual semicircular or polygonal termination to the main choir was abandoned in favour of the rectangular one, the pro- jecting apsidal ends of the flanking aisles serving as bastions for the defence of the high altar. The nave of two bays has a clerestory composed of two wide lancets and a circle with inverted cusps, like those in the apse of St. Etienne at Auxerre. The remainder of the church is unclerestoried, and from the transepts the effect of the lofty arcades, owing to the double aisles on either side of the choir, with their slender clustering pillars and delicately foliaged capitals, is exceedingly striking.' The church is mainly First Pointed, but retains portions of an earlier structure, notably the steeple, whose composition, as regards the spire-lights and pinnacles, is in effect not unlike those met with in Caen and its district. Generally speaking, the windows in the choir are tall lancets in triplets, the wall-space at the apex of the central and highest lancet and between the centre and side one being pierced with a small quatrefoiled circle. The fenestration of the great double south transept is effected in each division by one broad lancet surmounted by a large wheel window. Taken in conjunction with the richly sculptured south portal, which closely adjoins it, this transeptal facade of Notre-I3ame at Etampes succeeds in producing an architectural group of much dignity and interest. ' A charming drawing of this choir of Notre-Dame at Etampes, in its unrcstored condition, will be found in I'etit's An/iilcctiiral Sludjca.- I 20 Holidays among the Glories of France Altogetherthis is a most remarkable church, and deserves the closest attention, whether as regards plan or detail, from the student. St. Basile, the first of the Etampes churches encountered on emerging from the railway station, is a large cruciform structure with aisled nave and chancel, and chapels to both on the south. The exterior is almost entirely Flamboyant, though Romanesque work can be traced here and there. The west door, restored, in imitation of the original, in terra- cotta, is highly enriched Romanesque. The central tower, very low and massy, is good Transition, and has a roof of the hipped gabled form. The outer aisle of the nave being an afterthought, the transept terminates in a line with the inner one ; a screen, therefore, is thrown from the outer nave aisle to that of the choir, the space v,-ithin it serving as a porch. The general aspect of St. Basile internally is Flamboyant, and there is not a pier capital throughout the edifice, the arch mouldings dying off into the imposts. In the Renaissance period the authorities appear to have been sei;ced with a desire to Classicalise the whole, and by way of commencement turned the buttresses of the south aisle into C'orinthian pilasters, but they seem to have progressed thus far when, fortunately, their funds failed. An external inscription runs thus : 'Faxit Deus perficiar. 1559.' St. Ciilles, another Flamboyant church with earlier remains, is pleasing from its simple solidity. Here the tower is likewise central, and terminates in a cruciform saddleback of pleasing out- line and peculiar construction. The object of the architect seems to have been the adaption of a square tower, narrower than either the nave, chancel, or transepts. Its base is square, visible above the nave roof, but hidden by the greater elevation of those of the eastern and transeptal limbs. From the angles rise triangular slopes, as if for an octagon, and on these, as well as on the space left on each of the faces of the tower, stand equal gables — four cardmal and four diagonal. The points of the latter support the angles of a smaller square tower, whose faces fall behind the gables resting on the sides of the base. The nave has one aisle on the south, each window being surmounted by a gable, as in man)- of the Belgian and German churches. Etampes 1 2 1 There are two aisles on the north, their internal separation being effected by an arcade carried on short Tuscan pillars with rather lofty plinth^. In the chancel the vaulting shafts have that peculiar twisted moulding met with now and then in French Late Gothic work. Among the remains of the earlier church are some pier bases and caps and the western doorway, which is Romanesque, and has an arch of three orders boldly moulded with torus and hollow^, the two outer orders supported by shafts set in re-entering angles. The label has a kind of large head-nail, forming a rough hexagonal pyramid. A little distance to the south stands St. Martin's, superior to all the other churches of Etampes, as being purer and freer from Late Gothic alterations. Conceived in a very vigorous mingling of the Round-arched and Pointed styles, it may be cited as an excellent model of a large parish church, quite clear of any pretensions to the cathedral type, yet embracing such features requisite for the performance of solemn functions as a procession path and three chapels, an arrangement more common in the Romanesque and Transitional churches of central and southern France — the Auvergnat, for example — than in those of the north. The nave and choir are comprised under one line of roof ; the tower— an erection of the Renaissance closely following the old local models, and finished with a carefully moulded cruciform saddleback^leans considerably. It stands at the west end, but is detached a few feet from it. The First Pointed work of this church is unusually fine, and a charming feature is the coupling of the alternate pillars in the apse after the fashion of those at Sens and in the apse of Coutances. Altogether I was much delighted with Etampes, and at the appointed hour sat down in high good- humour to the dejeuner, seen so temptingly displayed through the open windows of the Hotel du Grand Courrier. It was not a little amusing after the habitues had discussed their meal to see Monsieur and Madame, with la petite between them, sit down with the whole establishment to the enjoyment of it. Involuntarily one recalled that finest chapter m ' Adam Bede,' wherein the early supper paity at the Hall Farm is drawn with a fidelity that has rarely been surpassed. With pleasant recollections of this richly churched old town I arrived, after a railway ride of about half an hour's duration, in the brilliant Lutctia. 122 Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER VIII SENS AND JOIGNV It was on an early August Sunday afternoon, exactly a year sub- sequent to that described in the chapter on Chartres, when, as the train from Paris steamed into the station of the little archi- episcopal city of Sens, I caught my first glimpse of its time- honoured cathedral. The morning had been very showery, but now the clouds had rolled away and were lying piled upon the horizon in silvery Alp-like masses. The two great bells — Savinienne and Potenlienne ' — striking upon the ear as I crossed the bridge spanning the Yonne, which had leaped and danced in the sunlight nearly all the way beside the train from Paris, I quickened my pace up the narrow, hilly Grande Rue, desirous of assisting at one of the postprandial Offices whose commencement the bells had, I opined, announced. But accommodation must first be secured and the dust of travel washed off at the excellent Hotel de I'Ecu immediately opposite the cathedral, and ere these matters could be satisfactorily accomplished. Vespers were more than half over. However, I was in time to hear the last Psalm — the Laudaie Pueri — with its Antiphon proper to the Festival of the Transfiguration, ' Adhuc eo loquente, ecce nubes lucida obumbravit eos,' and then, following ' When, towards the close of 1793, CathoHcism was abolished by the Terrorists, and when the abdication of its externals by the priests of a nation surrounded for so many ages by the pomp and power of its worship con- stituted one of the m^st extraordinary acts of the P'rench revolutionary spirit, when ecclesiastical vestments were trailed in the mire, asses ridden round cathedral aisles, service-books torn to shieds or hurled on bonfires, and the sacred vessels degraded to the most horrible uses, these two great liourdons of Sens escaped being cast into money or cannon. Founded in 1560 they were named after .Savinien and Potentien, two early Christian missionaries to the Senones, their respective keys being K flat and F sharp. Se7/s mtdjoigny 123 the Short Chapter, there rolled majestically through the columned aisles to a grand old Plain-Song melody the Office Hymn : — Quiciimque Christum quzerilis, Oculos in altum tollite : liUc licebit visere Signum perennis glorice. SICNS : WEST FRONT OF THE CATIIEIJHAL 124 Holidays among the Glories of France Pleasant it is on the morrow to wake up at Sens and see the grey west front of the cathedral with the ' Majesty ' at its summit, which seems to keep guard over the city, rising against a cobalt sky above the red-ti'ed roof of the hotel's porfe cochcre. I am soon out and paying a second enraptured visit to the cathedral, from which I return after a good hour's work with note- book and pencil, to breakfast in the umbrageous courtyard, tiie dog, cat, and parrot of the establishment being good enough to ' assist ' in the despatch thereof, evincing, meanwhile, a disposition to swear eternal friendship. About nine o'clock one of the bourdons — whether Savini- enne or Potentienne, I know not — sends her voice (bells, I believe, are ladies in France) over the city, and I re-enter the cathedral with pleasurable anticipations of hearing some good Plain Chant for an hour or so, seating myself in front of the choir screen. But its gates remain unlocked ; the huge Office- books rest unclasped on the lecterns, against which are propped up the bass viols in green greatcoats, and the altar candles are unlighted. Evidently Sens is one of those cathedrals from which, owing to pecuniary losses, the daily musical service has been banished, and this is confirmed when, on reaching the chapel of St. Savinien — which here takes the place of that usually assigned to the Blessed Virgin — I find the canons saying their Morning Offices within its gates and behind curtains snugly but only partly drawn. However, I console myself with the reflection that there is before me a long and uninterrupted day in and about this parent of our own Canterbury, so valuable and interesting as a specimen of French Gothic during its transition from the Round-arched to the Pointed style. Externally Sens Cathedral, like Auxerre, Meaux, Soissons, and Troyes, suffers from an air of incompleteness consequent upon its having but a solitary western square steeple, which here has been equipped with a south-western turret, combining boldness and grace, from the hand of an architect of the Early Renaissance. Bereft of its northern tower early in the ' forties ' of the . last century, the west front of Sens Cathedral, rich as is the almost classical purity of the sculptured effigies lining its triple portals, cannot be pronounced imposing. Neither is it harmonious, con- sequent chiefly upon the abrupt manner in which two large Sens andjoigny 125 complete Gothic windows have been inserted in the earlier masonry. Grandeur is, however, imparted by the adjoining Palais Synodal, where six Geometrical Decorated windows present an unusually splendid example of fenestration. SENS CATHEDRAL : THE NORTH TRANSEPT There is no central steeple here, nor do the roofs meet even in the simple fieche, the absence of which from so many of the great cruciform French churches, equipped only with one tower. 126 Holidays among the Glories of France imparts to them a great sameness of outline, confusing to those not versed in the smaller details of their physiognomies. Perhaps the grandest view of Sens Cathedral is to be gained from a small enclosed piece of ground on the north side, and entered from the narrow stony lane conducting to the glorious Flamboyant transept fagade by a picturesque Renaissance gate- way. From the shrillness and volubility with which a disagree- able-looking female addressed me from the window of an adjoining tenement, I opined I was a trespasser upon this favoured spot. However, mustering up the best French I could assume on so short a notice, I explained that I was there for the purposes of study, and not to gratify an idle curiosity, which I supposed somewhat appeased her. But though calmly continuing my ecclesiological researches, I was painfully conscious that, the torrent of words having ceased to flow, a hard blighting eye was surveying me from the casement, and that its owner was only too ready to pounce down upon me did I evince any disposition to appropriate a select few of the large loose stones left about by the masons. Immediately on entering Sens Cathedral by the western doors, its resemblance to the Corona of Canterbury cannot fail to strike the most unobservant, and this is chiefly proclaimed by the great circular columns, disposed, back to back, in pairs with Corinthianising capitals ; by the rings on some of the smaller shafts, and by the same system of vaulting. Yet there is a refinement of detail and an elegance of ensemble about Canter- bury which we somehow miss at Sens, although the earlier and more virginal work of the two. Until the restorations conducted under M. VioUet-le- Due's direction, five-and-thirty years ago, the nave aisles, like those of so many foreign churches, were fringed with Middle Pointed chapels. These, solely from the desire to bring back this part of the cathedral to its primitive state, were removed, new walls built, and pierced by large Romanesque windows, below which small triple arcades admit to a series of low cavernous-looking chapels, whose lancet windows are equipped by M. Didron with stained- glass of much richness and brilliancy of tincture. All this work is good of its kind and uninterestingly respectable, but the loss of those Middle Pointed chapels, whether regarded historically or picturesquely, is to be deplored. Against one of the piers on the north side is a fine but sadly Sens and Joigny 127 mutilated reredos, forming part of the tomb erected by an Arch- bishop of Sens — Tristan de Salazar — to his parents. Terribly maltreated during the Revolutionary fury, it was stripped of its statues ; but two, that of the B.V.M. and St. Stephen, were restored subsequently. To my disgust, I find all the part of this SENS cathedral: the lady-altar reredos within pencil-reach scribbled over with names, a pastime which one inseparably associates with the British Protestant pubUc ; but, it appears, I am mistaken. The glories of Sens Cathedral are undoubtedly the great rose windows in the transepts — whirlpools of gorgeous, though 128 Holidays among the Glories of France somewhat coarse, sixteenth-century stained-glass, executed by four artists of Troyes ; while, of their kind, very splendid are the side windows of these transepts, two of which, bearing the efifigies of archbishops and saints of local celebrity, are the work of the Sens artists, Hympe and Grassot, whose pupil was the celebrated Jean Cousin. The Flamboyant architect has almost transformed this portion of the cathedral, and it is a wonder that M. Viollet-le-Duc, with his love of uniformity, has not transmuted it into Late Romanesque. Great curiosities exist in the Decorated chapel opening out of the southern arm on its eastern side, viz. a fourteenth-century statue of the Blessed Virgin, and the Lady altar-piece, a specimen of Renaissance brass- work, so singularly free from the vulgarities and extravagances of the later school, that I am unable to resist giving an illustration of it. Tall iron gates admit from the transepts to the choir aisles, the southern one of which contains a staircase leading to the treasury through three graceful round-headed arches on slender shafts. Here I am shown the mitre, alb, girdle, maniple, stole, and chasuble of St. Thomas a Becket, who fled to Sens in 1 164 to escape the wrath of Henry II, and in one of the windows of the northern aisle is some priceless thirteenth-century stained- glass with subjects — in, of course, the medallion style — from the life and martyrdom of the archbishop. Like Canterbury, Sens Cathedral was originally planned with a single chapel at the east end, but during the Rococo period one was thrown out on either side of it, with windows in grisly imitation of Romanesque, but which from their breadth serve to give effect to some large circular medallions of ancient glass temporarily placed in them. The northern of these chapels, separated from the aisle by a splendid grille shown in the accompanying illustration, contains a monument by Coustou to the Dauphin, son of Louis XV and father of Louis XVI, and properly removed here during Viollet- le-Duc's restoration from the choir, where it occupied a far too conspicuous position. There are also fine kneeling effigies of the brothers Jacques and Jean Perron, Archbishops of Sens ; also the tomb of the chancellor Duprat, a plain marble sarcophagus surrounded by bas-reliefs representing events in his life— one, his entry into Paris as legate, the other into Sens as archbishop. This cathedral, therefore, may be cited as unusually rich in good sculjjture of the post-Gothic period. As I mentioned just now, Sc'7!s and foigny 129 the central chapel (1206) is dedicated to St. Sivinien, and a somewhat painful sculptured representation of his martyrdom forms the reredos, to the concealment of some of the lovely old thirteenth-century painted-glass in the windows, which, as well as those in the clerestory throughout the building, are of an early Geometrical character. The background to this subject is SENS CATHEDUAL : GRILLE IN NORTH CHOIR AISLE a drapery in stucco, having, when seen from a distance, exactly the appearance of a piece of sail-cloth temporarily suspended to facilitate repairs. In the choir the three windows lighting the apse, each of two trefoil-headed compartments with a small traceried circle, glow with valuable thirteenth-century glass. The central one contains, K 1 30 Holidays among the Glories of France within medallions, a number of small groups of the Passion of Our Lord, who is represented within the surmounting trefoil in the act of blessing. The left hand window is illustrative of events in the life of the Blessed Virgin, while the opposite one is devoted to the history of the cathedral's patron, St. Stephen. The six windows of the choir clerestory on either side are- simply en grisaille, but the circlets above the lights have small figures of our Lord and the Apostles, in tinctures of exceeding delicacy, yet brilliancy. Like those of most French cathedrals, the sanctuary fittings at Sens are in the First Empire style, with spindle-shanked crimson- velvet-covered stools for officiants and servers, and so on. The high altar is Classical, a baldacchino on the »?^*4jpp ■'^ il I^BB ^1 ^ l^'v ^ IJi^fl^H M -^^^^Hl m ^1 ■■■■J 1 ■ ST. GEK.M.\L\, .\U.\KKKli tendenc)-, the body of the church belonging to the latter part of the seventeenth century, and consisting of a nave and chancel under a continuous roof, aisled and clerestoried. Its regularity renders the interior of .St. Pierre at Auxerre so imposing. 'I'liero is ail arcade of round columns and arches carried ri!,'ht round the I ^2 Holidays a)iioiig (he Glories of I'^rance npse in a grand sweep, and designed probably in imitation of Transition work, since the jiier cajiitals Corinthianise. There is no triforium, a blank space, doubtless intended by its designer for pictorial enrichment, intervening between the arches and the clerestory, whose large three-light windows have coarse tracery in imitation of Flamboyant. A groined roof covers the whole church, so excellent in its workmanship that it is difficult to believe that it belongs to the seventeenth century, and there is a good deal of painted glass in the choir clerestory, rich, but with all the faults characteristic of its class and epoch. My ecclesiological researches in a measure concluded, a walk along the tree-shaded boulevard by the river brings me back to the cathetlral, where I sit until the Angelus, booming over the city from the great tower, apprises me of the hour of noon. Crossing the market, I find a change in its aspect. Business is practically over, and the ' Dames de la Halle ' have, to use Sir Walter Scott's favourite expression, 'broken the neck of the day's work.' Luncheon is in progress, the demolition of various savoury viands occupying the undivided attention of such of the company as remain, and effectually precluding any further display ot eloquence. The sun is now glaring down upon Auxerre through a cloud- less blue sky, so I am glad to have got through my morning's work between those pleasantest hours of the day in a continental town, i.e. six and twelve o'clock. A siesta succeeds and then comes tea — looking, by the way, when poured out, something like an infusion of brown paper, as I have forgotten to tell them to make it a I'Anglaise, but refreshing nevertheless. A delightful saunter about the city in the cool of the evening is next enjoyed — along the boulevards, by the river, and about the quiet streets in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, whose deep-toned bell presently announces the .Ive Maria. A Sister of Charity throws aside the jalousies of a window in a house near the south transept after the heat of the day, and a few devotees are wending their way towards St. Etienne, to await in some quiet chapel their turn for the Ministry of Keconciliation preparatory to the next day's Mass. Referring to the ' Table des Offices pour la Semaine ' I see that the Stations of the Cross are to be sung in the cathedral this evening at half-past seven. As the time approaches, I once more repair thither. With the last rays of the setting sun steeping the eastern walls of the transepts in richest colours from the ir. !■:•]■ I I';n.sk, ,\ u .\ k u r k ; chdik t.ookini; w i.m 154 Holidays among the Glories of France painted windows, the interior of Auxerre Cathedral looks most impressive. As I enter by the great northern portal a small procession, consisting of crucifer and taper-bearers, clerks and officiant, issues from the sacristy in the choir aisle, crosses the transept, and is joined on its way to the First Station at the east end of the north nave aisle by the congregation, consisting entirely of women, among whom are several Sisters of Charity and girls in their charge. It is very solemn to see the great proces- sional crucifi-x borne down the dusky aisle of Auxerre between the two candles. Still more so is the first verse of the Stabat Alater dolorosa^ which presently breaks upon the ear, sung unaccom- panied to a familiar modern French melody — the third one to which this world-renowned Sequence is set in our ' Hymns Ancient and Modern.' A short exhortation follows each verse ; then conies a low murmuring from the thronging women, anon a pause for silent prayer, and a move towards the next Station while \erse number two is sung — Cujus aniniam gementcm, Coiitristatani et dolenteni, JY-rtransivit gladius, and so on to the end. During the singing of the last verse, the high altar is lighted up for 'Benediction;' the congregation take their seats under the crux, the little procession enters the choir through the eighteenth-century crucifix-surmounted gate, the officiant assumes a white cope, the glorious old hymns O Sahitaris Hostia and Tantiim ergo are sung to the accompaniment of a trombone, the successor of the ' serpent,' ' the great bell of the cathedral lolls, incense rises in clouds before the old painted-glass in the apse which the ' shadows of departing day' are rendering less and less distinct, the Host is upraised before the kneeling congrega- tion bent in silent adoration, and this shortest but most beautiful of Roman Catholic Offices ends. Lingeringly we all disperse, and the vast cathedral is left once more silent and deserted. ' The musical instrument called the serpenl is no\C all buL obsolete in ihe l-'iencll cathedrals. It was invented liy a canon of .\uxerre, one l-^dme ( .uiUaume, in 1590, The ' .Serpent d'Eglise ' is, however, still a functionary in Galliean churches, and I remember when at .\miens a iew years ago buying the Seiiuune J\c//\^ieiisc, a little ' nxtnlhl)- ' corresponding to our parish magazine, in which was recorded the dc.tlli cjT the ' .-.erpentist ' ol the cathedral al an ad\anecd age. Pontigny ami AiLxcrre 155 Another Saturday has come round,' and gloriously it breaks o\er Auxerre. Only a few more hours remain to be spent in this enchanting old city, so I make the most of them, paying another visit to St. Germain's, with its fascinatingly awful crypt ; to St. Eusebius, where I meet a priest coming out, accompanied by a gardener trundling a wheelbarrow, presumably for flowers ; thence to St. I^ierre, and so back to an early dejeuner a la fonrchette prior to departure. To decide whether Sunday shall be spent at A'ezelay, with its extraordinary Romanesque and Early Pointed abbey, the pride of Burgundy, illustrations of which in the shop windows at Auxerre are distractingly tempting, or at 'I'royes, with its five-aisled cathedral and galaxy of churches, is a matter of great difficulty, but the latter gains the day. And very glad I was that it did, for on paying a visit a year subsequently to Vezelay I found but the merest apology for an inn, and the ritual arrangements of the vast abbatial church by no means commensurate with its architectural magnificence, which circumstances, operating to- gether, would hardly have conduced to the spending of a very profitable Sunday from an ecclesiological point of view. P2ffects are packed, the omnibus is at the door. Madame and the whole establishment are there to witness its departure and to say ' Bon voyage.' 'I'he driver cracks his whip, and the vehicle is driven at a furious pace down the steep tortuous streets, im- perilling the life of a tame jackdaw, and across the bridge to the station. ' En voiture pour La l^oche, Sens, et Paris ! ' is the cry. The train glides out of the station, and Auxerre and its churches fade like a beautiful vision, to be conjured up during the foggy days of a London winter. In due course we arrive at La Roche Junction, where, a shot delay occurring before a train can be got on to St. Florentin, it is pleasant to sit by the canal just outside the station and watch the great blue dragon-flies skimming over the water. Once more I have entrained and soon St. Florentin comes into view, my Alsatian driver of the preceding Wednesday being there with his vehicle, and greeting me on emerging from the station with the politest of bows. There is leisure, until the departure of the train (from a station in another part of St. P'lorentin) for Troyes, to visit its grandly situated church. It is, however, a late and coarse I'lamboyant edifice— one of those specimens of Gothic which, though fallen from its high estate, was struggling against that returning Classicism 156 Holidays among the Ci lories of France which for three centuries was so completely to eclipse it— and whose most picturesque external feature is the long flight of steps leading up to the portal of the north transept from the hilly street. A procession with banners and crosses passing up or down this ascent must have an uncommonly picturesque effect. Viewed outside, this church at St. I'lorentin api)ears to consist of a loftv aspidal choir and transepts only, hut on entering, a low unfinished nave of two unclerestoried bays is presented to the visitor. Pecuniary considerations or the religious wars doubtless deter- mined the promoters to discontinue their work beyond this point, for a vault, of permanent character, springs from just above the arcades. A gallery, in Italian ('orinthian, carried on three round arches between pilasters, supports one of those imposing-looking organs so frequent in France, and masks the bare, hastily finished west end, whose only relief is a round window, traceried in toler- able imitation of Early French. But the fenestration of either transept is verv meagre. The glory of this truncated church at .St. Florentin resides, however, in its fittings, conspicuous among them being the rood- loft and the Early Renaissance screens, which not only enclose the choir, but the chapels surrounding it, and which are perhaps onl) excelled in beauty and extent by those in the glorious First Pointed Cathedral of Laon. Besides these interesting l/is/ru?n'>ita there is some good stall work, an imposing lectern — the strap-like treatment of whose iron work has been laid under contribution by two of the most accomplished architects of the English Gothic revi-.al ; a charming little semicircular projection from the eastern side of the jiibe containing the steps conducting to the loft, and a tall reredos of the Corinthian order. All these are very chaste, and agree remarkably well with the late character of the building, but the appropriateness of an altar shaped like an F^gyptian sarcophagus it is difficult to see. 'I'he candlesticks and flower-vases are rococo : indeed, it is strange that so many great French churches should retain their high altars of the Louis XV and Early Empire periods, while those in the side chapels are frequently most sumptuous and correct specimens of Revived Pointed work, with exquisitely jewelled tabernacles, predelke faced with subjects from Scripture or saintly figures ; the altars themselves, unprovided with frontals, being seen to rest on small pillars, under which rontig'uy and Aitxerrc ^57 reliquaries, some of tliem elaborate sperimens of or/i'vnrie, are deposited. Side curtains — \erv iiicturesijue and devotion-aitliiig adjuncts — are rarely met with in the French churches, and these, together with rich needlework of any descriptio)!, are desiderata in the m.ajority of Ciallican church sanctuaries, where, as Pugin ST. FLORENTIN ; ROOD-I.OFT said, 'Catholic antiquity and modern trash are surprisingly contrasted,' ' It is heat and mid-day,' and the streets of St. Florentin are deserted when I pass out into them from the church, intent on taking home some souvenirs of so richly furnished an interior in the shape of photographs. Luckily these are forthcoming, though 158 Holidays among the Glories of France not without some difficulty, and with one of them I am able to embellish this chapter. Returning to the hotel for my knapsack I find a little omnibus waiting to convey me to the St. Florentin ( Est) station, whence a line had, at the time of my visit, been just opened to Troyes, testified to by the gravelly platform and air of stickiness pervading everything. As this vehicle, whose services I am glad to avail myself of, for it is very dusty and hot, ap[)roaches the station, it overtakes two priests tramping along the shadeless road, each armed with his Breviary and an umbrella of Gamp-like aspect, and raising clouds of dust at every step. In the booking-office the clerk is enjoying a siesta, and their reverences, to attract his attention, knock loudly at the as yet un- opened pigeon-hole with franc-pieces. However, after the lapse of some minutes we are all furnished with the necessary permits for the voyage, and, according to the ridiculous custom of the country, which I am glad to see is in some places becoming relaxed, are penned up in the salle cTattente. The train for Tro)es comes puffing in ; the priests and some half-dozen market people make a frantic rush for the carriages as soon as the glass doors are thrown open, a great business is made of examining our tickets, and St. Florentin disappears from view. With the exception of a few country people, who get in at one station and out at another, staring during their sojourn in the carriage at my English touring suit in open-eyed amazement, liut who give me a pleasant ' Merci, monsieur ! Bon jour et bon voyage ! ' as I assist them in or out with their baskets, the train picks up but few passengers. The line is a most uninteresting one, presenting nothing but a succession of small villages with churches of a nondescript character, but serving, in some degree, to break the monotony of the journey from St. Florentin to Troyes, into which the train runs with laudable punctuality at two o'clock. Lying as it does in a level country, with undulations indeed, but not such as detract from that general aspect or character so well expressed by the term Champagne, the appearance of the old capital of that province is somewhat disappointing on a first approach, for although stocked with churches there is hardly a steeple of dimensions sufficiently imposing to denote the wealth of ecclesiastical art contained within it. It is hot, very hot in Champagne to-da)', notwithstanding its Pontigny and Aiixerrc i 59 invigoratingly refreshing nomenclature, and right glad am I, after securing quarters at the Hotel des Courriers, in proximity to 'the most enchanting spectacle which the genius of man has be- queathed to successive ages ' — the church of St. Urbain — to escape from the heat and glare into its cool recesses, and subse- quently into those of the cathedral, whose mighty \Yestern valves, thrown back to their utmost width, re\'eal stained-glass windows in which the positi\e tinctures flash from white grounds with jewel- like brilliancy. i6o Holidays among (he ir lories of France CHAPTER X A SUNDAY AT TROVES To wake up at six o'clock on Sunday morning in one of the large airy bedrooms of the Hotel des Courriers and to see glorious Old Sol tinging the peaks of some antique gables opposite is truly delightful. But this is nothing compared with the subsequent pleasure of inhaling the sweet air of early morning as it is wafted through streets of old timbered houses from the vast tract of envi- roning country, or while threading the mazes of that most delightful of lounges, a French flower-market. Thus, interspersed with an occasional dive into a church or two, where the white-chasubled priests move softly to and fro before the altar in the stillness of the early morning Mass, the time glides most delightfully away. The Troyes churches cluster almost as thickly as those in Cologne. If not of the highest order architecturally, being chiefly in a very bold Flamboyant style peculiar to this district of Champagne, they have contrived to retain a good deal of their seven- teenth-century furniture, and the picturesqueness imparted to many of them by their high open-backed benches is refreshing after the Parisian smartness which is the besetting sin of too many great French churches. Not a few are rich in Late stained-glass, stone and wood carving, of what may be called ' I'ecole Troyenne.' In succession I visit St. Jean, remarkable not only for its lofty clerestoried choir of pointed windows filled with Renaissance tracery — a choir rising clear above the houses which, like the snails at Mrs. Pipchin's, cling with the tenacity of cupping-glasses to places they are not expected to ornament — but for its altar- piece. This is embellished with the painting by Mignard, a nati\e artist, of Our Saviour's Baptism, usually kept veiled, but to-day, being Dies Dominica, disclosed for the delectation and elevation of the faithful. St. Nizier, St. Remi, the possessor of the only spire in Troyes, St. Pantaleon, and La Madeleine, before whose uni(|ue early sixteenth-century rooddoft — ' a curtain of lace cut in marble' — A Sunday at Troyes i6i I spend some time lost in admiration, all in some point or other challenge the attention. Unsupported by pillars, the author of this marvellous _/'«^/ rests beneath it, 'sans craindre d'etre ecrase.' The transepts and short nave of the Madeleine are very early First Pointed, the apsidal choir Flamboyant, but neither is a very good exemplification of its style. At length I stand before St. Urbain's, its gracefully contoured Middle Pointed chevet profiled against a sky of purest cobalt. Eagerly I pass through the portals, and the impression of the .ifB^.!.H. ^i ^m^Mmim TROVES: ROOD-LOFT IN THE MAnF.I.ElNF. early morning sun streaming through the storied panes of the lantern-like apse, throwing the choicest hues upon the surrounding stonework, is one which can never be effaced from the tablets of memory. Begun in 1262 by Pope Urban IV, son of a shoemaker of Troyes, on the site of his father's workshop, this graceful church for more than 600 years remained but a fragment,^ consisting only of a choir, transepts, and the lower part of the nave with its ' At the time of my visit to Troyes the erection of tlie nave was being rapidi}' proceeded with, nnd must ere now be completed. 1 62 Holidays among the Glories of France portals, 'thanks to some contumacious nuns who had sufficient power and influence, even in those days, to thwart the designs of the Pope himself.' It is in its details that the beauty of St. Urbain resides, its chief defect being a certain exaggerated temerity of construction. Indeed, as M. Viollet-le-Duc observes, 'c'est cer- tainement la derniere limite a laquelle la construction de pierre puisse atteindre, et comme composition architectonique, c'est un chef d'teuvre.' ' Le plan de I'eglise de St. Urbain est champenois,' says the same authority, but does not its tall aisleless apse recall, to those conversant with the German Complete Gothic style, the ' Hallen-Kirchen ' met with in such cities as Miinster, Soest, Halberstadt, and Erfurt, due, I opine, to the proximity of Champagne to Teutonic soil ? Several of the Chalons and Toul churches exhibit similar Germanisms, and at Dijon the apses, both of St. Benigne and Notre-Dame, are without aisles. His- torically considered, St. Urbain is most valuable, being one of the few large late thirteenth-century churches built in France which fill up the gap left between the earlier phase of the Middle Pointed style and the Flamboyant, into which French architecture so quickly . . degenerated. Towards nine o'clock I repair to the majestic cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul to assist at the Morning Offices. With its great western facade I am somewhat disappointed, having formed , an exaggerated idea of its Flamboyant voluptuousness from an engraving in Arnaud's ' Voyage dans le Departement de I'Aube,' ' and from Bourasse's glowing description in his ' Cathedrales de : France,' for, like too many productions of its age — the sixteenth i century — it wears a painfully incomplete, inharmonious aspect, , detail of the most gorgeous character contrasting disagreeably ' with wall-spaces absolutely bald, and the north-west tower is ; tame indeed.^ But the interior of Troyes Cathedral — although its early ' thirteenth-century choir, rebuilt some forty years ago under : ' An engraving of the western facade of Troyes Cathedral, after a drawing ; by Silvestre, in the Mirror of May 1S24, shows it with a pair of towers, this s magnificent building's interior being very cursorily dismissed in the accom- - panying letterpress as 'neat and venerable in appearance.' Less excusable is the meagreness of Doran's notes on this city of churches s in the Gentlenia7f s Magazine twenty years later, the writer merely alluding to 5 their neglected condition without even mentioning the five-aisled cathedral, , St. Urbain, or the rood-loft in the Madeleine. A Sunday at Troyes 163 M, YioUet-le-Duc, lacks the dignity and expansion of certain other great examples— is as picturesque as any. 'J'his quality is due mainly to the double aisles on either side of the nave and I>art of the choir, and to its wealth of mediasval painted-glass, which not only fills the windows of the apse where the TROVES CATIIKDRAL : WINDOWS IX THE NAVE Geometrical tracery is so thin that it looks a mere framework for the vitreous decoration, but the Early and Late Middle Pointed ones of the nave clerestory and aisles, in the latter of which the fleur-de-lis forms an interesting feature in the tracery, as may be seen from the accompanying illustration. M 164 Holidays among the Glories of France Troyes has round its procession path five shallow hexagonally apsidal chapels with lancet windows, and is one of the few great French churches planned with double aisles to both nave and choir. In the latter, however, these double aisles are co-extensive only with the first three bays, after which the internal one is alone prolonged round the apse. The nave and its double aisles have magnificent groups of clustered shafts, with those capitals minutely chiselled into natural foliage characteristic of the Later Decorated period, the arcades, in several points, challenging comparison with that on the .south side of the nave at Worcester. While the matutinal office of Tierce is being chanted, senza organo, in the choir, I stroll about these glorious aisles of Troyes, and dv.'ell upon the magnificent old glass which enriches them. ' I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze With forms of Saints and Holy Men who died, Here martyred and hereafter glorified : And the great Rose upon its leaves displays Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays.' One peculiarity I notice throughout this magnificent cathedral, and that is the glazed triforium stage — one of frequent occurrence in foreign buildings of this style, St. Ouen at Rouen, Tours, Strasburg, Nevers, and Metz affording instances. At Troyes some of the vitreous decoration in the triforium has been removed for repair and its place supplied temporarily by red brick, with an effect far from unpleasing. During the progress of the Office above alluded to people begin to arrive for ' La Grande Messe de dix heures.' Ladies are, as usual in French churches, in the ascendant. ' Monsieur est Catholique, mais il ne pratique pas.' What a contrast to Germany with the naves of Cologne, Mi,inster, Cleve, Xanten, Soest, or Paderborn, crowded, as I have seen them, to suffoca- tion, and chiefly with men, at the mid-day Sing Amt. As I take my place in a chair, one of an empty collection very much at my service, a bell tinkles. The six tall candles on the high altar are lighted, the organ in the choir gives the intonation, and to that Plain-Song melody of which one never seems to tire, the Asperges me, Doniine, is chanted, as the officiant upon whom the duty devolves bears the holy water down the nave, attended by a little flaxen-haired acolyte in crimson cassock and lace-edged cotta upon which the sweeps of jewelled glass occasionally throw some brilliant hues. Again the bell tinkles. The player on the TROYES : INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL, LOOKING EAST 1 66 Holidays among the Glories of France great organ at the west end flourishes in the key of E minor. A crucifix, flanked by a pair of candles, gleams in the dusky southern choir aisle, and in honour of St. Loup — a saint of much local celebrity — a procession passes round the pourtoiir of the choir, chanting to a memory-haunting (jallican melody one of the sublimest hymns in the range of mediaeval psalmody — Iste Confessor Domini, colentes (^uem pie laudant populi per orbem, Hac die Icetus meruit beatas Scandere sedes, a hymn for the Feasts of Confessors, whose irregularity of metre has precluded its rendering into truly graceful English to suit the proper Plain-Song melody. The compilers of the ' Hymnal Noted ' — to whom we cannot owe a sufficient debt of gratitude — attempted its translation in the early days of the great ecclesio- logical revival (1848-60), but their work has the brilliance yet stiffness of a gem, while the verses of the Latin poet resemble the soft dewy freshness of a flower. Between each verse the player of the great organ at the west end of the cathedral takes up the strain, and improvises upon it in a manner thoroughly French. Sometimes the tones of the instrument shake the pavement beneath the feet ; sometimes they seem full of passionate pleading ; anon, they trip measurefuUy along, or flash out in sudden brilliance, like a fountain springing upward and tossing the sunlight from its myriad drops. The Introit proper for the day concluded, the organ breaks out again into a delightful interlude by way of relief to its severe Plain Song, and to that of the Kyrie, suggesting the contrast between Corinthian and Doric, or between Flamboyant and Lancet. This morning at Troyes the music is what is known among ourselves as the ' Missa de Angelis,' wherein occurs one of the most beautiful pieces of Plain-Song writing I know, viz. the Amen at the end of the Credo. All adjourn to the nave for the sermon, which must have had a spiritualising effect, for a rich vein of copper lines the alms-bag when it is suavely handed to me by a surpliced canon. Coppers, too, are rained down from hands Men gantees when all is over into the tin mugs of beggars who, continental fashion, infest the principal approaches to this cathedral, to call down the morning smile of pity. The afternoon is spent in attending the Chapter Offices, which begin as soon as the Alsatians have concluded their service in a TKOVKS CATHEDRAL : TK ANSKI'T AT. ROSl-: i^Tlic para/'cts ahoiv the crossed keys and the jlcur-dc-Hs in alienate conipaylincnls) 1 68 Holidays among the Glories of France chapel opening out of the north transept. This time I take a chair in the poicrtuur of the choir, and dwell upon the glorious painted effigies of saints in the windows of the clerestory. At Vespers Iste Confessor is again sung as Office Hymn just before the Magtiificai. Then comes a delightful stroll through the ' Champagne ' country environing the city, the distant line of hills, as twilight falls, putting on a lovely violet hue. Inspection of sundry old village churches, which, with their countrified fittings, are a perfect revelation to the ecclesiologist, creates an agreeable diversion, and as darkness falls Troyes is regained, while the curfew rings from the isolated belfry of one of those large plain Flamboyant edifices common in this part of Champagne, and whose interior, viewed at this hour, wears an appearance truly awful and impressive. Returning to the cathedral on Monday morning, after another protracted ramble about the city, I find the canons in the choir reciting the Offices of the Breviary in monotone. Mass is said by one of them in lace alb and rich crimson chasuble. Sext follows. During its progress the verger is busied with preparations for a funeral. A black frontal is placed upon the high altar, and a cope of the same colour is hung in readiness on a stand near the sacristy door. At the conclusion of Sext, I request one of the cantors, who is to sing the music incidental to the obsequies, to show me the music of the Office Hymn sung yesterday. With much politeness he repairs to the vestry, situated in the south aisle of the nave, and returns with a Paroissien. Hurriedly pointing out the place, he is obliged to take his station in the little procession, which I see is just emerging from the south choir aisle. It consists of the crucifer and taper-bearers, the cantors and the officiating priest. They all leave the cathedral by the great portal of the north transept, and wend their way along the streets to the house of the deceased. I follow them. Very picturesque is this little procession, with the sun flashing on the silver crucifix and the white surplices. Returning with the mourners and friends, all on foot, some lugubrious chanting begins, and is continued till the west door of the cathedral is reached. During the removal of the remains from the hearse the officiant walks up the nave, and assuming the black cope meets the funeral train at the entrance to the choir. The pre- liminary Office over, the priest retires, returning shortly in a chasuble of black with silver orphreys, and accompanied by the ^1 Suitday at Troyes 169 deacon and sub-deacon. The Mass begins ; no organ is used, but a violoncello gives richness to the Plain Chant about which there is a pleasing and soothing monotony, agreeably diversified by the Sequence Dies Irce, which, knowing it by heart, I am able to follow note by note. It is not a little diverting to watch TKOYES ; ST. JEAN the friends, the male members of whom — accommodated with stalls in the choir, but like the young MacStingers, ' knowing little about the ceremony and caring less ' — slip out to a con- tiguous cafe. As Troyes Cathedral is one of the 'Glories of Trance,' so are 170 Holidays among the Glories of France the great transeptal roses its more peculiar 'Glories.' Dating from the first quarter of the fourteenth century, they show us this particular form of fenestration in the meridian of its lustre ; indeed, the Complete (lothic style has produced no more graceful con- ceptions than the traceries of these windows. Each rose is set in a square, the upper horizontal line of which is supported by a multangular pillaret, prettily capped by triangular canopies crocketed, and mounting up into a pinnacle — a charming external feature, but a somewhat obstructive one viewed from within. Seated in the nave, I note the deterioration in its style as the work advances westward, apparent chiefly in the fifth pier separating the double aisles, and in the sixth, on either side the nave. In the choir, the columns supporting the very much stilted butobtu.sely pointed arches of the apse, are cylinders, having a very slim pillar in front and on the side facing the procession path. The remaining choir piers — which, by the way, have modern Early Pointed stone screens fixed between them — are composed of a cluster of shafts, while those separating the internal choir aisle from the outer one are noble octagonal masses. So varied an assemblage of columns, viewed from the transepts, is, I need hardly say, exceedingly striking. 171 CHAPTER XI CHALONS-SUR-MARNE By midday the last walk has been taken round the columned aisles of Troyes Cathedral, and I have closed the western door of that ' dim and mighty minster of old time ' with a regretful sigh, comforted, however, with the reflection that glories equalling those I am now quitting await me at Chalons — reached after a journey across a Champagne country whose monotony is relieved by occasional dips into some of those delightful Thackerayesque 'Roundabout Papers,' Murray's 'capital' hand-book, or a volume of Albert Smith, who always reads well abroad. There is a grand turn out at Chalons-sur-Marne, where several omnibuses from the hotels are drawn up in the station yard. I mount the box of that belonging to the strangely nomenclatured Hotel de la Haute Mere de Dieu, which vehicle, after dawdling about the station precincts for a considerable period, in the hope of catching a priest or two — numbers of whom are arriving by branch trains for the prize-giving at one of the Lycee's in the city — starts for town, much to my satisfaction and that of the solitary ' inside,' who had been informed that it was ' going directly.' Rattling over the bridge and past the cathedral of St. Etienne — far finer, by the way, than books or common report had led me to expect — I catch a glimpse of the valuable leaden spires of Notre- Dame as the vehicle sharply turns the corner by St. Alpinus, where a curtain waving in the western door has quite an Italian air ; and so dismount at the excellent hostel above named, where Monsieur and Madame, as in all well-regulated establishments, are waiting to receive me, as though I had written to announce my arrival a week beforehand. Ushered to a pleasant airy bed- room commanding a view of the cathedral, and looking into an acacia- shaded courtyard, I lose no time in hastening towards such a combination of attractions, and, as a preliminary, take a refresh- 1/2 Holidays among the Glories of France ing ' dish of tea.' Then, with the agreeable sensation that one need not begin work till the morrow, I visit the churches with which Chalons is so richly stored, each in its turn. Although inferior ecclesiologically to the church of Notre- Dame, the cathedral of St. Etienne — a very favourite French CHALONS : .ST. .^LPINUS dedication— impres,ses me deeply by its simple solemn grandeur. Standing with the whole of its northern side thrown open to the main street, with a prettily laid out flower-garden in front, the noble array of Cieometrical Decorated windows in aisle and, clerestory is seen to great advantage. No doubt the exterior (-Ml rHAI,ONS : NORTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL 174 Holidays among the Glories of France suffers much from want of a proper western facade, the present one being an abrupt Italian work of the seventeenth century, erected after a fire which did much damage, necessitating repairs and additions in the taste of the age. The oldest portions are the towers, which, Teutonic fashion, stand to the east of the transepts. There is much in the disposition of the plan of Chiilons Cathedral that brings Westminster to mind — the grandly exposed north side of which I have already spoken ; the entering by the north transept door, and finding the poorly-stalled chorus cantorum arranged in the eastern part of the nave, and on the left the short apsidal choir with its encircling chapels. After five-aisled Troyes the nave of Chalons looks narrow, but this impression wears off after a visit or two, and the eye soon dwells contentedly on the grand unbroken and lofty arcade of Clerman-looking round columns, with their foliaged capitals, and upon the superb series of windows in the aisles, which, mirabile dictii, do not open here into chapels of a later age. From the cathedral I go to Notre-Dame, without doubt the noblest specimen of Early Pointed France can show, wonderfully little damaged by time, showing few or no additions in subsequent styles, and singularly fortunate in having been restored under the care of a true ecclesiologist, M. le Cure Champenois, about forty years ago. Like that of the cathedral, the choir — the shortest in F'rance, I believe - is flanked just east of the transepts by steeples, and there is another pair surmounted by leaden spires at the west end. In their incomplete state these eastern towers have a grand and massive effect, taken in conjunction with the boldly sweeping apse and the circumambient chapels.' Excellent taste characterises all the fittings of this noble church, and the modern stained-glass by Lusson deserves the highest praise. The other Chalons churches have their especial points of interest. St. Alpinus, with its long Early Pointed nave and low central tower pyramidically capped, looks well over the tops of the houses in the large place. St. Loup, Middle Pointed, has an elongated and Teutonic-looking choir with lofty windows, all glowing with rich modern glass. St. Jean, with its narrow Romanesque nave, its transepts with an eastern aisle to each, ' The fa9ade of the south transept, with the tower rising just to the east, strongly recalls the south-east one at our own glorious Canterljuiy. did lons-siir- Manic 1/5 aTording lovely perspective views, and its deep square-ended chancel in Early Pointed, approached by flights of steps, leaves a most profound impression. On the following day I get all my church-hunting over by WEST FRONT OF STE. MARUC DE I.'fiPINE noon, and rest, as I have a pilgrimage to make in the evening to the celebrated Ste. Marie de I'Epine,' situated about five miles ' Commenced towards the middle of the fourteenth century, this is one of the most graceful churches on a moderate scale that France can show in a mingling of the Geometrical and Flowing Decorated periods. One of our most accomplished lady writers of travel has compared the light open spires to handfuls of wheat bound together. 176 Holidays among the Glories of France to the east of Chalons, and built in honour of an image of the Virgin and Child which was disclosed in a luminous vision to two shepherds of the village of Ste. Marie, which then occupied the site. From a cafe in front of Notre- Dame, whose western front is bathed in the rich afternoon sunlight, I start for Epine, and, INTERIOR OF .STK. MARIF. DK L EPINE, NEAR CHALONS being in good form, enjoy the five-mile walk exceedingly, the road lying high with a vast extent of level country on either hand as far as eye can see. It is about half-past six when I perceive the graceful spires of Ste. Marie facing me at the end of the road, which appears straight, but another half-hour's walking is required CHALONS : IN'TKRIOK OF TIIK CATHKDliAl, 178 Holidays among the Glories of France to bring me to the object of attraction, a gentle undulation or two intervening. While making the circuit of the exterior the bell begins to toll, and knowing from experience that this is the signal for closing the church, I hasten round to the west entrance, just inside which the aistudienne and a Sceur de la Charite are engaged in this calisthenic exercise. And here I meet with a specimen of true French politeness, for instead of showing signs of impatience and annoyance by jangling keys, slamming doors, and flouncing about, the Sister and the — what shall I call her ? — the ' vergeress ' betake themselves to seats and, while awaiting my leisure, engage in private devotion. But rules must be obeyed, and twenty minutes having sped by in admiration of this lovely creation of the fourteenth century, which, built of white stone streaked here and there with brown, looks as though formed out of alabaster, the elderly female advances quietly up the south aisle, kneels for a few minutes before the quaint image of the Blessed Virgin arid Child, en- shrined amid flowers and tapers, beneath the exquisitely beautiful open stone juhc, and presently whispers, ' Sir, it is time to close the church.' I, of course, rise to go, and during the purcha.se of a few souvenirs, apologi.se to the good Sister for detaining her so long beyond the ordinary hour of closing. With the customary courtesies we part, I to walk back to Chalons, towards which I am but half-way when some ominous-looking black clouds put in an appearance. But no rain comes. 'I wish it would,' remarks a carter who gives me a ' (Jood-night ' as he jogs on his way to the hamlet I have just quitted. Still, I am not sorry when I regain the cit)', with its paved streets, gas-lamps, and policemen. It is pleasant, a year later, when eji route for Dijon and Autun, to find that trains permit one for a few hours to renew acquaintance with the architectural glories of Chalons. I revisit the cathedral, spending a considerable time in its solemn nave, so Anglican from absence of side chapels, so Teutonic with its tall round columns, so pleasing altogether from its simplicity. Over a confessional in the northern choir aisle I read, ' Deutscher und franzosischer Beicht- Vater,' while a printed notice near the north transept entrance sets forth the information that an ' Instruction ' in German would be given on Saturdays in St. Joseph's Chapel, near the college. Significant, this. l''rom the cathedral I stroll on to Notre-Dame, where I find a Clidlons-siir-Marne 179 priest catechising a score or so of small children seated on chairs at the west end of the nave. One of their number, a little boy expelled from the class, doubtless for bad behaviour, is kneeling all by himself on the stones in the central passage. The instant I set foot in the church forty small eyes turn inquisitively upon CHALONS : NorUE-DAMK, Wl^.ST F:?oNr me, following me whithersoever I go. ]')Ut the excitement culminates when, in the course of inspection, I pass round to where all the little people are gathered about their pastor. ' Enfants ! attention, s'il vous plait,' cries the priest, slapping his book on the chair-ledge in front of him, ' et ne regardez pas ce monsieurda ! ' But without much effect, for I still continue to be .N 2 I So Holidays among the Glories of France ' the observed of ;ill observers ' until I deem it prudent to conceal myself in the dusky recesses of one of the circumambient apsidal cha[)els. A year later, on entering a (;erman Protestant church at Dortmund under much the same circumstances, I met with a CHAI.ONS : NAVK Ol' NOTRE-DAMF, totally different reception. In fact I was motioned to the door by the irate ' pastor,' or whatever he styled himself. Few French churches have passed under a more quiet and conservative restoration than this noble Transitional one of Notre-Dame at Chalons-sur-Marne, owing to the jealous care of the aforementioned cure-, M. Champenois, whose acquaintance Chdlons-sur-Marne iSi Mr. Street made while on a tour in this part of France about the year 1857. ' Here,' writes that eminent architect, ' I made the acquaintance of M. Champenois, a charming little enthusiast who is busy restoring the whole church. He has cleaned and restored the interior completely, showing all the stone in the groining, and CHALONS : EAST END OF NOTRE-DAJIE it looks so well. I told him my name, and he was quite up to all about the Lille competition, the more by token that Glutton and Burges's design was to a great extent (as I saw directly and as he told me) a copy of his church.' This refers to the competition, open to the architects of 1 82 Holidays among the Glories of France Europe, for the erection of the church of Notre-Dame de la Treille at Lille. The design furnished by Messrs. Glutton and Eurges was placed first ; that of Mr. Street second— a fact quite sufificient to prove the infinite superioiit)' of our architects (travelled and cultured men) over those of the Continent at that period (1855--57). It is almost needless to say that this competi- tion resulted in nothing but waste of time and the ultimate selec- tion of a French architect. Mr. Street's design, which lies before me as I write— a most masterly conception — bore the motto ' Ouam. dilecta tabernacula Tua, Dominc virtutum.' It was an unmistakable French church, and rigidly observant of the strictest interpretation of the conditions of the competition. Notre-Dame at Chalons-sur-Marne belongs to that grand group of churches which shed a lustre upon the last half of the twelfth century, truly an Augustan age in the annals of French ecclesiology- an age which piroduced Mantes and Laon, Chartres and Soissons, Saint Leu and Noyon, and at home the glorious choir of Canterbury, the transepts of Ripon, and the Round of the Temple Church— an age in which the ruder Romanesque was about to lo.se itself in the grace of the Early Pointed. Its quadruple division into arcades, lofty triforium of two pointed arches springing from a slender shaft with an unpierced tympanum, a smaller triforium of lancet arcades, and a clerestory of tripled lancets of equal height, imparts a grander appear- ance to the inside of No''e-Dame at Chalons than is at first suggested by its somewha' heavy and German exterior. Of far greater interest than the cfthedral, which has suffered much from incendiary cau.ses and injudicious repairs consequent upon them, Notre-Dame may be take a as a typal French church of the earliest Pointed period, a.nd in many features bears a great resemblance to St. Remi at Rheims. In plan and design the ap.ses of the two churches are similar, and though that of Notre- Dame is on a smaller scale, the triple tier of windows, large single- light ones in the chapels, and tripled lancets of uniform height in triforium stage and clerestory ; the large plain semicircular flying buttresses, looking like the quadrants of a circle ; and the neatly planned choir and circumambient aisle roofs, are features common to both buildings. Its undisturbed plan and the presence of but few late additions or insertions are all elements conducing to place Notre-Dame at Chalf)ns very high among French churi;hes of the second class. Perhaps its most singular Chdlons-snr-Marne 1 83 external features are its western steeples flanking a typal Early French Gothic front with three broad lancets and a rose above, like Chartres. Of the spires which surmount the towers, that on the south is a remarkably curious but graceful specimen of lead-work, very lofty, having four tall pinnacles growing out of it at its base, and a cluster of eight spire-lights — one to each face — about midway up. Very precious, too, is this south-west leaden spire of Notre-Dame at Chalons as affording evidence of the extraordinary extent to which decoration was carried in the Middle Ages. The northern spire is a copy, and it has been proposed to raise similar ones on the pair of Romanesque towers flanking the one-bayed eastern limb, but from the shortness of the church they would have too much the effect of reducing all to the dimensions of mere turrets, a result by no means desirable, at any rate if one may judge from a drawing of the church, as 'proposed to be restored,' which appeared about the year 185T. A large Flamboyant porch protects the noble but sadly mutilated south portal — a very elaborate specimen of Roman- escjue work, from which there is a descent of several sttjis into the church, necessitated by its being built upon ground sloping gradually from south to north. During his visit to Notre-Dame at Chalons, Mr. Street, in the course of conversation with its devoted cure, touched upon the choral arrangements. ' Con- cerning which,' wrote the future architect of St. John's, Torquay, St. Mary Magdalene, Paddington, and St. John the Divine, Kennington, ' he is heterodox. How curious to find a French priest, actively engaged in church restoration, arguing in favour of singing in a western gallery, and of admitting the " faithful " into the choir, and I, an Anglo-Catholic, protesting against both ! Yet so it was. However, we parted excellent frie.ids.' 1 84 Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER XII CHAL'MUNT AND LANCKliS I LixcEKED SO loiig in Notre- Dame that there was no time to revisit the other churches with which the city of Chilons is richly stored. I was especiaUy sorry not to have had another peep at St. Jean, with its long, square-ended English-looking choir, but I knew that if I was to sleep at Langres the same evening, breaking the long journey at Chaumont for an hour, I must ([uit such a combination of attractions without further dela)', for time and trains, French ones especially, are proverbially unaccommodating. So after some refreshment in the buffet, the railway porters now and again putting their heads into it (the buffet, not the refreshment) announcing the departure of trains for all sorts of delightful places — Ixheims ////crrt/Zi? — I was once more rushing through Champagne, with its apparently interminable phins, streaked here and there with chalky roads stretching away to bournes unknown. Glimpses were caught of the Marne every now and then athwart the trees, and when the train ran into Joinville, whose beautiful First I'ointed spire has been scraped and patched into smugness and smartness more tragic than utter ruin, I recalled the passage in one of Diderot's letters to Mdlle. VoUand : — ' Joinville, dont la Marne arrose Ic pied, fait un fort bel effet. C'est une bonne compagnie ciue cette riviere ; vous la perdez ; vous la retrouverez, pour la perdre encore ; et toujours elle vous plait ; vous marchez entre elle et les plus beaux coteaux.' Chaumont has a delightful church, forming, as in hundreds of other French towns, almost the only object of interest. On leaving the railway station you walk through the regulation ' Place,' with its cafes, etc., and along an 'Avenue de la Gare ' to a species of public garden formed on the edge of a plateau. Eelow, on a gentle slope, the town, with its straggling streets dominated by the parish church, its small twin slate-covered spires ChatDHont and Langres 185 flanking an Early Pointed west front, lay basking in the afternoon sun. A somewhat abrupt descent to the right from this public garden leads into the hilly streets of the little town, and for a few minutes you lose sight of the spires ; but they are close by, for presently, after some tortuous windings, you come upon the church's southern portal, at whose graceful appearance, strongly recalling pirts of St. Urbain at Troyes, it is quite impossible to refrain from rapturously exclaiming. Indeed, at first sight I took it for a most delicate piece of Middle Pointed wood-carving. Its entrance is in three divisions. The central arch, which is widest, has eight cusps, and the fact of each cusp being, so to speak, subcusped, imparts more than ordinary richness to the compo- .sition. The side arches are narrower, but all are surmounted by triangles in lieu of the ordinary-shaped arches. The inner door, too, is exceedingly beautiful. Its arch, springing from four shafts, encloses in its tympanum a carving of the Baptism, with scenes from the life of 'the Cireat Forerunner of the Morn' in a frieze below. Some graceful ringed shafts support the arch of the western door, whose tympanum is enriched with a conventional carving in wood of the ' Majesty ' within a vesica, and surrounded by the Evangelistic symbols. The large four-light window of this front is bricked up, a .somewhat common method of procedure in France, probably on account of the organ which almost invariably occupies the western gallery. Internally, Chaumont Church presents an Early Pointed nave, extremely rich in detail, transepts and a Flamboyant choir of far inferior interest. The piers, slender round ones, coupled, but divided by the vaulting shafts, present very delicately chiselled capitals. There is no triforium, a blank space intervening between the tops of the arches and the single lancet-lighted clerestory. The great width of the aisle.s, from which Flamboyant chapels open out, is a remarkable feature. In the otherwise uninteresting choir, of the poorest, latest, and thinnest Gothic, you see one of those attempts to excite attention by novelty which so often led to the corruption of taste, for when the last point of beauty had been attained, the next resource was the wonderful. I refer to the disproportioned corbels employed here in lieu of bosses, uncomfortable-looking things, hanging down and mvesting you with an idea that they ought to drop. Instances of these pendant corbels occur in many Late Flam- boyant churches of Normandy and Brittany. The eastern chapels i86 Holidays among the Glories of France of St. Pierre at Caen, interesting specimens of tlie early Renais- sance, present examples of these ornaments. The pulpit, by Bouchardon pere, displays exquisitely carved foliage, the confronting banc d'lvtivre being from the same hand, with a canopy supported by four Composite columns. A Holy Sepulchre in one of the northern aisle chapels, with eleven coloured figures, is of Italian workmanship, and belongs to the middle of the fifteenth century, while the north transept presents a charming spiral staircase, an embellishment in which architects of the earlier and better Flamboyant epoch so excelled. Besides St. Jean, Chaumont possesses another church — one of those buildings in the Rococo style which Jesuit influence sowed broadcast all over France during the seventeenth century. Rich in detail and picturesque as a whole, an inspection of two or three such structures is quite sufficient. I did not therefore regret the want of time which prevented my seeking the key of this one at Chaumont, which, as it belongs now to a lycee, is not accessible to the general public. Once again I was in the train and speeding on towards Langres, not sorry to come in sight of that airily situated cathedral city about five o'clock. Another short railway journey, this time by the Chemin de Fer de Cremaillere (the only one in France, I believe), remained to be tried, so in company with the inevitable priest, a soldier, and an old lady, I took a seat in one of the cars, open at the sides but covered on top like the Rheims tramways, and was soon whisked up the steep hill upon which Langres stands. A poodle, shaved in the most approved fashion, was of the party, comporting himself in a gentlemanly manner. Putting his forepaws on to the ledge where in the ordinary course of things the window would be, he took a survey of the prospect, including a small circular erection surmounted by a statue of the Virgin, raised to commemorate the non-occupation of the city by the Prussians during the war of 1870. Standing almost at the summit of the hill it forms a conspicuous object for miles round. A few minutes suflSced to land us at the top of the hill, where is perched a miniature railway station. Here a little omnibus was waiting. The priest, unfurling his lettuce-like umbrella, puts it up, and trudges off ; the old lady and the poodle get into the omnibus ; the door is banged to ; the poodle jumps on the seat and looks out at the window ; I mount the box, and the vehicle is off, tearing round the cathedral and rattling along the ' Grande Rue ' of Ch ait 1)1 Old and Laiisres 187 the quiet little city. The driver cracks his whip ; Madame la Proprietaire emerges frnm the portal of the Hotel de FEurope ; I descend ; polite conventionalities are exchanged ; the onmibus drives off to deposit the old lady and the poodle at their destination, wherever it may be, and I am glad to wash off the dust and cinders of a long day's railway travel in a delightfully large and air)' room, half salon, half chainl/re a coiuher, whence, after a rest of half an hour or so, I emerge on a visit of inspection to the curiosities of Langres, whose situation next to that of Laon I^ANGRF.S : THE CATHEDRAL FHOM THE SOUTH-EAST is, perhaps, one of the most delightful in France. For a long time I remain leaning over the parapet of the ramparts, surveying a magnificent expanse of sun-flooded champagne country until the Angelus from the cathedral tower breaks upon the ear, warning me that it is six o'clock and the hour of prayer. Entering the cathedral I find its .Southern interior wearing a most picturesque look, with the now declining sun throw- ing its remaining strength through a large unstained window behind the organ upon the great silver Calvary at the back of the high altar, and upon the neat white caps of some thirty old 1 88 Holidays among the Glories of France bourgeoises, scattered here and there in the quaint straight backed and, in some cases, closed pews which line the broad, Classic- looking nave on either side. They are awaiting the commence- ment of the simple evening prayers, which here, as elsewhere^ being recited in the vernacular — are largely attended by the humble classes. I remember attending one of these prieres dii soir in the little old fishermen's church at the seaport town of St. Valery-en-Caux on the Normandy coast. Dimly lighted here and there with a few candles, which flickered on the rough weather-beaten faces of the old fisherfolk as their lips moved in response to the priest, the scene in the rude old building was one for a painter. The bell has ceased to toll along the roof, a couple of cantors instal themselves in the choir behind the high altar, a priest ascends the richly carved nave pulpit, and anon a low murmur- ing arises from the old bourgeoises. They are reciting the Office of the Rosary. Prayers and responses follow ; then comes Benediction. Incense rises in a column before the great silver Christ behind the altar ; Tanium ergo is sung by the cantors and heartily joined in by the old people ; the Host is borne out through the gate at the east end of the choir to the Lady- altar ; I pace the solemn procession path with the hymn just sung ringing in my ears and haunting me as only unaccompanied Plain- Song music can ; and the old white-capped, neatly shawled dames leave the building one by one for mcnages where doubtless savoury messes have been meanwhile simmering for the evening meal. It was at Langres that I made my first acquaintance not only with the Southern type of French Romanesque, but with that peculiar Burgundian variety which, with its application of Clas.sical detail, affords one of the most striking examples of the long per- petuated influence of Roman architecture, which throughout the archdiocese or rather province of Lyons is more or less observable in twelfth and thirteenth century buildings. Dedicated to St. Mammes, Langres Cathedral, although deficient in the vastness and aspiring grandeur of her northern sisters, is pleasing from its simple solemnity, its chief differ- ences, arising doubtless from influence of climate, being observ- able in the .simple barrel-vaulted roof, in the smallness of the windows, and in its generally speluncar aspect. The nave, of great width, is separated from its aisles by pointed arches springing from fluted pilasters, whose capitals Chaunwnt and Langres 189 wholly Corinthianise, while those of Langres' parent, Autun— a secular church built in rivalry of the 'religious ' — display both the (irecian acanthus and the Christian sculptured group. The im- mensely long tunnel-vaulted nave of that pride of Burgundy, the cidevant abbey church of Cluny — whose august early twelfth- century symmetry was damaged in Flamboyant days by the substitution of an enlarged apse for one of the same shape as that of the original semicircular chapel opening out of the large south transept — had, if we are to credit a couple of engravings in Hawkins's ' History of the Origin and Establishment of Gothic Architecture' (1813), a lofty arcade of arches, likewise pointed, on half columns, with pure Corinthian caps and lofty plinths, the same order appearing in that imposing local feature, the five-bayed narthex. Here the attached shafts took the form of square pilasters, thus giving to the piers generally an aspect somewhat similar to those in St. Paul's. Such structures as Cluny, Langres, and Autun mark one of the most extraordinary and, at the same time, most important phases in the history of Pointed Architecture, attentive study of their several peculiarities having put to flight the idea that they are but base imitations of Pointed forms belonging to the decline of the Gothic style, and to establish beyond a doubt that the architects south of the Loire clung to these old Classical forms to the last, abandoning them with manifest reluctance. In Northern Germany a tenacity to the old style, somewhat analogous, may be observed in such churches as Neuss ; the Cologne basilicas of S. Maria in Capitolio, St. Cunibert, and St. Martin ; Andernach, Bonn, Sinzig, Gelnhausen, Coblenz, Limburg, and a host of others — structures in which, rising as they were during the first quarter of the thirteenth century, when the round arch had disappeared almost everywhere else, we seem to perceive a venera- tion of Roman memorials. And not only this, but, to quote from delightful old J. Louis Petit, a desire 'to preserve and perpetuate them by establishing, according to the principles of their construc- tion, a kindred and lasting style of their own.' But provokingly enough, just when the Germans seemed about to bring this noble style of the Rhenish provinces to its height and to superadd to its attractions, they suddenly abandoned it to embrace the Com- plete Gothic, which in England and P>ance had reached perfection through gradual ages of transition— a style which in Germany seems never to have been properly understood, and therefore practised with little success. 1 90 Holidays among the Glories of France But to return to Langres Cathedral, the ribs of whose simple barrel-vaulted roof are supported by Corinthian pilasters springing from those on the nave side of the great piers, and marking off the triforium stage of round-headed arcades into triplets, between each of which, again, is a small pilaster with acanthus-leafed capital. A single round-headed window serves for each division of the clerestory, the aisles being similarly fenestrated. Westward the nave terminates in an organ gallery supported on two tall Corinthian pillars. A work of the Renaissance (1555), it harmonises admirably with the style of the cathedral, and in its outline recalls the division between the nave and chancel in Hawksmoor's massive Christ Church, Spitalfields. Beneath this screen is formed a spacious vestibule or narthex, which, together with the whole of the western faijade — flanked by .'■mall towers recalling St. Sulpice — is in the miserably Italianised Grecian style of 1761-68. The north nave aisle has several points of interest. At its west end a very beautiful door of latest and richest Roman- esque, but again with the introduction of Classic detail as evinced by Corinthian pilasters, opens into the above-mentioned vestibule. P'rom this doorway the view clown the aisle is one of great beauty and impressiveness ; equally fine are the views across the nave. In the north wall of the same aisle a grilled archway opens into a large chapel of very ornate Palladian character, having a richly camerated roof, and a most elaborate coeval tesselated pavement. Except for the font, this chapel is devoid of furniture ; the foot- pace for the altar, however, is to be seen on the east side. Next to this baptistery door is the shrine of St. Regne, whose image stands niched between two Corinthian pillars. On either side is an elongated panel with sculpture from the life of Christ, the whole forming quite a little gem of the Renaissance. Passing from the aisle into the north transept the noble simplicity of this cathedral at Langres makes itself felt more and more. Here the detail is richer, a very highly elaborated g^iiipure being carried round the arches opening into both nave and choir aisles, as well as beneath the triforium stage, which, similar in character to that of the nave, is repeated on the north and south walls of each transept beneath a large round window with six plate-traceried foliations. The effigy of Monseigneur Guerrin, Bishop of Langres (1852-77), kneeling upon a black marble sarcophagus, assists in imparting solemnity to this transept. The basilican arrangement prevails here, the .sanctuary being formed beneath the great crux, Chainnont and Langres 191 devoid, however, as in most Southern French examples, of a central tower. The high altar — very simple and Classical — stands under the arch opening into the eastern limb, where are placed the accompaniment organ and choir-stalls. Behind the high altar is a lofty crucihx in wood and silver, a copy of the celebrated one L.\NCEES : INTEKIOK OF TIIK CATHEDRAL attributed to the sixteenth-century artist Gentil in the neighbour- ing church of St. Martin. Its attendant figures are in silver, and the whole work, from its size, has a very imposing appearance from the west end of the cathedral. Tall iron grilles and gates screen off the transepts and choir aisles from the sanctuary; against those on the north the ei)iscopal throne is reared. 192 Holidays among the Glories of Francs The eastern limb is short, consisting only of one bay besides the apse. This bay, of similar character to those in the nave (only, like those in the transepts, more richly detailed), dates, as does the greater part of the cathedral, from the first half of the thirteenth century. It is, in fact, a copy, as I mentioned above, on a .somewhat broader scale, of the cathedral at Autun, which was commenced towards the close of the eleventh century and consecrated in 1132, nearly a century before the erection of the nave and transepts at Langres, whose oldest part is its apse. This, dating from the second half of the twelfth century, opens into the procession path by nine massive arches on monolithic columns of pink marble with Corinthian capitals. The same graceful guif'uj-e is carried round each arch, where in the later Northern Gothic a dripstone would be looked for. A blank wall-space supervenes ; then we have a triforium of small arcades in pairs, with a Corinthian pilaster between each pair, and a clerestory of simple round- headed windows filled with modern stained-glass, the subjects being single figures very archaically treated. The apse roof, a very simple one, unribbed, exclaims for decoration on a dignified scale, as, for instance, a 'Majesty,' which, in white on a gold ground, would terminate this noble church most impressively. I had almost forgotten the very beautiful window which Early Middle Pointed art, for the purpose of admitting more light, has inserted above the first bay of the eastern limb on either side. Of the three lights composing these windows the central one runs up into the head of the arch, somewhat after the fashion of the noble west window of All Saints, Margaret Street ; the side lights are lower, and are surmounted by inverted trefoils. Exce'.lent modern .stained-glas.s, representing full-length figures of saints and bishops, with blue backgrounds balanced by silvery-grey work in the canopies, fills these windows. lixcept the baptistery and the very poor Middle Pointed chapels radiating from the procession path, these windows appeared to be the only complete Gothic work visible in the cathedral, which has pre.served its original character much more completely than its parent at Autun. Two beautiful doors in the south choir aisle of Langres, one in Late Pointed and square-headed, the other rich Romanesque, challenged my attention from their curious juxtaposition ; but perhaps the feature that struck me most here — leaving out of the question the employment of C'orinthian pilasters and other Classic details in a thirteenth-centur)- Imilding— was the simple sexfoiled Chaninont and Laugres 193 and plate-traceried round window lighting the principal face of either transept. Admirable examples for imitation, these roses quite fascinated me. A stroll along the western ramparts of the city and a dive up a few quaint streets bring me to a cavernous-looking but pic- turesque church — St. Martin. Here a raucous-voiced priest is going through the Stations of the Cross, attended by three little choristers in girded albs, one of them acting as crucifer. They make their responses in a somewhat vague and uncertain fashion, by no means coming up to time with the verses of the Stabat Mater. Evidently my presence tends somewhat pour les distrain, for the priest, doubtless regarding me as the originator of this nonchalance, turns about and for a short space looks rather irate ; so I deem it prudent to beat a hasty retreat, and leave ecclesio- logical gleanings from this happy hunting-ground to be gathered up at a more favourable opportunity. I have spent a Saturday of unclouded sunshine in this quiet old cathedral city. Out by six I have, while the day is young, com- pletely lionised it. I have concluded my notes on St. Mammes and St. Martin ; I have made the circuit of its ramparts, getting views of an immense tract of sunlit country down below from every point ; have mingled in the busy throng of the market ; have strolled, book in hand, up and down its ideal Promenade de la Blanche Fontaine, a truly fine avenue of trees recaUing the Broad Walk at Oxford ; have 'assisted' at the morning Chapter Offices, and now, towards eleven o'clock, it being too hot for further outdoor exercise, I seek the hotel and the shade of its salon. The few sounds that penetrate here to break the summer stillness are pleasant sounds — horticultural ones from the garden, where bees are humming ; culinary ones from the kitchen, where Monsieur le Coq and his subordinates are actively engaged in the preparation of dejeuner. I look about me for writing materials, discern presently a skewer-like pen and a frivolous-looking little inkpot shaped like an apple ; paper I luckily have with me ; so with these implements I do my best towards putting together the framework of the Introductory Chapter to this volume, my enthu- siasm for the work being heightened in no small degree by the impressive old cathedral, from the study of which I have just returned. 194 Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER XIII DIJON After hearing part of the Morning Offices in the cathedral at Langres on Sunday, I caught a forenoon train for Dijon, little or nothing of architectural interest on a large scale challenging attention during the somewhat monotonous ride thither. The day, which hitherto had been one of unclouded sunshine, became overcast as, shortly after two, Dijon came in sight ; still, I was much struck with my first view of the capital of Burgundy, presenting as it does two distinct and very fine architectural groups, albeit the locally celebrated central spire of the cathedral — for which I anxiously looked — was not in evidence, it having been taken down for purposes of repair. Of these two groups the western one comprises the cathedral with its pair of octagonal western towers ; a church (St. Philibert's), now desecrated, with a tall, octagonal tower and spire like that of old Truro Cathedral ; and St. Jean, a large aisleless cruciform building, with a couple of square towers flanking a short eastern limb. The eastern group embraces a tall spire, which I supposed belonged to Notre-Dame, though I was quite unacquainted with its outline ; the imposing Renaissance facade of St. Michel ; a Classical domed church ; and sundry square towers belonging to the ducal palace. The whole formed an ensemble of great variety, and towards its component members I hastened as soon as I had set foot outside the railway station, anxious to get a clear hour among them before three o'clock Vespers at St. Benigne's Cathedral. To me Notre-Dame, of all the other churches of Dijon, was of paramount interest. A storm was evidently brewing ; clouds of dust obscured the boulevards, and rain began to ' spit ' ominously. So I jumped into a tramcar, and was soon deposited, after much bumping through the older streets, in the Place d'Armes, behind which the object of my journey rises. Preconceived Dijon 195 notions of Notre-Dame had been derived from the sketch of it in I'etit's ' Church Architecture, with Illustrations,' and also from a very good woodcut in the ' Saturday Magazine ' of February i, 1834, in both of which the central tower is represented as being in two stages — the lower one lofty, with circular turrets at each angle ; the upper one short, arcaded, and crowned by a low pyramidal capping, from which a spirelet rises. But ' nous avons chang6 tout cela ' ; the ' obliterator of historic records ' has been here and eliminated the character which this steeple of Notre-Dame pos- sessed, for he has taken away the upper stage altogether, replaced it by a tall four-sided spire, and has prolonged the circular corner turrets into gawky-looking things, capping them with pinnacles. Follies enough and to spare have been committed in our own cathedrals and churches under the name of ' restoration ' since the Gothic Revival, but in France the mischief has been ten times more fiendish. No doubt the substantial repairs carried out in her churches from one end of France to the other during the reign of Napoleon III enabled the fabrics to resist the destroying influences of time, and without them many of her fanes might ere this have been in ruins ; but the reckless manner in which such works were conducted has deprived them of much poetry, to say nothing of obliterating a great deal of the history once so plainly legible in their structures. The destruction of the Middle Pointed nave chapels at Sens and their replacement by modern Transition work, good of its kind, but totally uninter- esting, is an instance of destructiveness almost unparalleled. ' Delay the ruthless work awhile — O spare, Thou stern, unpitying demon of repair, This precious rehc of an early age ! More fatal is thy touch than the fell rage Of warring elements. * * * * It were a pious work, I hear you say, To prop the falling ruin, and to stay The work of desolation. It may be That ye say right : but O ! work tenderly ; Beware lest one worn feature ye efface ; Seek not to add one touch of modern grace ; Handle with reverence each crumbling stone ; Respect the very lichens o'er it grown ; And bid each ancient monument to stand, Supported e'en as with a filial hand. ' 1 96 Holidays among the Glories of France To the architectural and ecclesiastical antiquary every stage in the history of a church has its value, and possesses an interest of its own, so that the obliteration of the work of any one period is like tearing a leaf out of the visible history of the structure. Of course in many instances no little judgment is requisite to discern where the historical interest ceases. Certainly it does not apply to the ill-judged excrescences, mutilations, and alter- ations of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, yet many of the works of the earher years of the former century, especially its furniture, command our admiration and respect. Sir G. G. Scott attempted to lay down a rule that all archi- tectural work is to be respected which is antecedent to the extinction of Pointed architecture in the sixteenth century ; and this he urged, if not taken exclusively, may be in the main right. It must, however, be admitted that some works anterior to that great change may be questionable as to their claims for preservation, and certainly some works of later date possess such claims. I entered this noblest of Burgundian First Pointed interiors — Notre-Dame at Dijon — by a small door opening from the Place des Dues, and the impression it made will not readily be effaced from the tablets of memory. Although it belongs to a great cluster of churches — the outcome of that burst of enthusiasm for building which occurred during the latter half of the twelfth century — Notre-Dame at Dijon presents many and very marked peculiarities. These are especially observable in (i) the elon- gated boldly carved capitals — of the papyrus rather than the acanthus kind — which crown all the circular pillars of the nave ; (2) the unfenestrated wall behind the simple tripled arcades forming the triforium stage, as in the choir at Auxerre ; (3) the employment throughout the building of large single lancets ; (4) the absence of choir aisle and procession path, and (5) the presence of an apsidal chapel on the eastern side of either tran- sept. There is, however, a good deal of detail work, reminding one of Rouen Cathedral, the cluster of shafts forming the responds to the nave arcade and the disposition of the great central tower piers being almost identical. Above the great arches of the crux at Dijon the tower is open, forming a magnificent lantern. Some of the shafts from which its groining ribs spring are only 7 inches in diameter to 20 feet in length, others are only 5^ inches in Dijo7i 197 diameter, although 15 feet long. Frequently monolithic, these shafts are all entirely detached from the wall. In the nave, the ribs of its sexpartite vaulting spring from slender shafts which rest upon the abaci of the massive columnar piers, not being continued down them in the unpleasant but more truthful manner observable at Seez and Soissons. Each transept at Notre-Dame, Dijon, has a grand fenestration, consisting of a huge circular window, untraceried and unfoliated, surmounting a quintuplet of lancets, all filled with coeval painted-glass in the mosaic style. Within the circle the manner in which the subjects are placed in roundels formed of lead-work — tracery being, as I said above, absent — is very remarkable. The choir, short and aisleless, terminates in a groined apse, recalling in many of its features St. Peter's Church, Vauxhall, London, and of a singularly eland character. The lowest stage of its wall is relieved by trefoiled arcades, then come tall single lancets. Surmounting these is a triforium lighted by unfoliated circles which peer through small arcades. In the clerestory are more tall lancets, where, as well as in the lower windows, is much good modern glass. Externally the feature, par excellence, of this church is its western fagade, which, instead of taking the customary gabled form, is rectangular. Although the idea for it may have been derived from Southern sources — Pisa or Lucca — this west front of Notre-Dame has a distinctly Burgundian character, its salient features being the triple arches opening into a deep porch from the street, and the two tiers of continuous arcades on slender detached shafts above. The whole composition, rising very much above the apex of the nave roof, takes the form of an elongated tower, to the extreme right of which a tourelle is perched con- taining the celebrated ' Jaquemart ' — a clock brought in 1328 from Courtrai, by Philippe le Hardi. A railing surmounts this tourelle, which is octagonal, and supports an open fleche of ornamental ironwork containing a bell. Within the railing stand three figures, a man, a woman, and a child, the two former dressed in peasant costume, but the child destitute of any garment. Jaquemart and Jaquelte are armed with large ham- mers and strike the hours, while baby tinkles the quarters with his tiny one. As I came out of the church after a second enraptured visit about six o'clock, quite a crowd — including a very portly looking priest who was evidently 'lionising ' Dijon with 1 98 Holidays a mono- the Glories of France a small parly of ladies — had assembled in front of the fa<;ade to watch these ligures go through their performance. A little to the east of Notre-Dame stands St. Michel, with a western fa(;ade equally interesting, though of an entirely different period. It belongs to the Renaissance, and while in its outline and arrangement, i.e. with three portals, central compartment, and flanking towers, it recalls the fai^ades of the great mediaeval cathedrals, its details are Classic, though applied without much constructional propriety, and with but little ornamental effect. The work of Hugues Sambin — a pupil of Michel Angelo— its greater part dates from the middle of the sixteenth century, but the octagonal domed turrets surmounting it are purely Classical ; they are, in fact, a century later, and rather disturb the harmony which reigns below them. In the triple portals the detail is wonderfully well imitated from Romanesque work, particularly in the small figures which form the mouldings of their deep recesses, while the double inner entrance, with its figures niched between the doors, and the sculpture in its tympanum, is so clever an architectural forgery that it needs a keen and practised eye to detect it. A purist will doubtless overlook this western fa9ade of St. Michel at Dijon as an utter barbarism, yet its otherwise 'unprofitable magnificence' has its peculiar use, as showing to what extent it is possible to compensate for deficiency of purity in the minor parts by careful adjustment of their arrangement and composition. Let me take a home illustration — Wren's steeple of St. Michael's, Cornhill. It is quite a study, teaching us how details, clumsily designed and unsightly in themselves, are, by the mere force of composition and by a thorough knowledge of the rules which govern proportion, made to assume an effect of singular felicity. At a short distance this tower will bear com- parison with that of Magdalen (,'ollegc, (.Kford. In France the architecture of the Renaissance grew directly from the Cothic, but the change look place very much earlier than it did in England. ;Vlniost c\cr\ large I'rench town offers a specimen of this class of church, wherein the Cothic and Classic element are so intermingled that it is diflicult to discern where one begins and the other leaves off. Perhaps the most imposing, as it is the earliest and most complete specimen, is St. Eustache, Paris, a structure in which we do not perceive any attempt on the part of its designer to copy Roman temples or to rival their greatnes.s, but rather to adapt the Classical styles to C.othic forms, IS. y^ 200 Holidays among the Glories of France whereby the effect taken in the mass is exceedingly grandiose. St. Etienne du Mont, also in Pari.s, is another building of the same epoch, but, unlike St. Eustache, it is not a homogeneous whole of a composite style, but a building which puts forward one element in one position and one in another, the whole general effect being Pointed. St. Maclou at Pontoise, St. Pierre at Auxerre, and St. Jean-Baptiste at Joigny, may also be taken as types of the Early Renaissance before it passed into what may be called the Jesuit style of Maderno, Borromini, and others. I refer to such churches as SS. Paul and Louis, the church of the Sorbonne, and that of the Val de Grace, all in Paris ; St. Charles Borromeo at Antwerp, St. Nicholas at Prague, and many others. After this, the architecture of France settled down into the frigid Classicism of the Louis XIV-XVI period, when frightful ravages were made upon the mediseval fittings of her cathedrals and churches — a bathos from which it did not emerge until the era of Napoleon and the restored Bourbons. Then were inaugurated, to remove the excrescences of bad taste, as well as to repair the devastations of the Great Revolution, works ^^'hich, although carried out with the best intentions, were seriously marred by the ignorance and incapacity of their authors. A case in point is the abbey church of St. Denis, near Paris, whose restoration, begun under Napoleon I, and resumed under Charles X and Louis-Philippe, revealed a sad series of blunders, incompetencies, and instances of bad taste, comparable with those perpetrated in our own cathedrals of Durham, Lichfield, and Salisbury, through the stupid Georgian ignorance of James Wyatt. For instance, at St. Denis the tympanum of the western portal contained a ' Majesty,' our Blessed Lord being accompanied by St. Mary and the Apostles. Revolutionary fury had decapitated and mutilated these sacred figures. The head of our Lord was replaced by one imitated from Jupiter Olympus. Above His head, on a cross, was inscribed ' INRI,' letters never found upon a Romanesque tympanum, while in each hand was placed a scroll with a text of scripture written on it, and the chapter and verse goodnaturedly added ; while, as the fit comble of all, the body of St. Mary Avas equipped with a male head, bearded and moustachioed, thus making of her a thirteenth Apostle ! This was too much, and so the hirsute appendages were knocked off, and the head given as far as possible a feminine expres.sion. Later on, however, during the reign of Louis-Napoleon, when Dijon 20 1 half the French cathedrals were placed under restoration, much of the well-intentioned but absurd work of the previous dynasties, perpetrated at St. Denis, was undone by M. VioUet-le-Duc ; to him and to M. Didron we are indebted for the revival and purification of mediseval art in France, about the time that our ' Cambridge Camden,' afterwards the ' Ecclesiological Society,' began its never to be sufficiently thanked labours. The architectural movement in England had quite a different origin, and went further than it did abroad. With us there has been no period since the Reformation in which constructions, either partially in the spirit of Gothic architecture or reproducing some of its details, have not been erected. Love for Old Pointed art has never become extinct in England ; even the absurdities of Strawberry Hill attest this fact, while a glance through the volumes of the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' — almost the only periodical in which the arts were duly represented, registering as it did all the metropolitan improvements, describing the new churches, and chronicling all the archseological discoveries — is sufficient to show that, while its contributions betray an ignorance of technicalities, they are spiritedly penned, and did much towards keeping alive the feeble flame of Gothic architecture in England. Warton, Bishop Milner, and John Carter, all men of the eighteenth centurj', likewise deserve our gratitude for what they wrote or did in the cause of medieval art. Much of its progress, too, must be traced to the writings of Sir Walter Scott, who will earn from posterity a higher praise than has ever been the lot of any mere literary man, from the purity of his writings, and the lessons which his readers could not fail to draw from his truthful and attractive portrayals of mediaeval customs and manners. That the ecclesiological movement of sixty years ago was the spontaneous growth of the English Church is a fact which few will take the trouble to deny. It is an acknowledged thing that, when all ecclesiastical principles seemed lost in the last century, if Eng- lish churches were bad, Romanist chapels were worse. In which Church did a better taste first arise ? Unhesitatingly it must be referred to the almost simultaneous formation of the Cambridge Camden and Oxford Architectural Societies in the year 1838. To be sure, Pugin had written much, and had designed several churches of imposing dimensions for the communion which he had joined, and by whose members he was at first frowned down, but his principles were far more eagerly embraced by the Church 202 Holidays among ike Glo7^ies of France which he had forsaken, and which after a slumber of nearly two centuries was awaking to take her rightful place, and to assume that responsibility, both spiritual and temporal, which she had too long permitted to remain in abeyance. Neither grave ecclesiastics nor practical architects were among the first and most important of these societies. Set on foot by two undergraduates of Trinity College, Cambridge,' truths were grasped and those truths were manipulated. At first it seemed as if a desperate battle were to be ^vaged against overwhelm- ing odds, but ten years passed, allies were aggregated, architects excogitated, committees patronised, and individuals at their private cost built churches more near to the ancient models in grace and adornment than could have been seen for three centuries. England, in fact, was moved from one end to another almost as one man. The great English ecclesiological movement had no counter- part on the other side of the Channel. There the modern revival of mediseval taste was effected under Government auspices, fostered, as I mentioned just now, by the care of men like Didron, Lassus, and Viollet-le-Duc. There, too, the vast works of cathedral and church restoration, extending over the country at the same time, was a Napoleonic idea, having its origin in the necessity for creating large public enterprises to keep the strong and intelligent class of labourers quiet by employment. ^ ' John Mason Neale, the eminent liturgiologist, ecclesiologist, and poet, who died in 1866, and Benjamin Webb, who in 1862 became vicar of St. Andrew's, Wells Street, a mediocre Perpendicular structure of 1847, but which under his regime became enriched v/ith insO-umeiUa horn the designs of almost every architect of eminence that the Gothic Revival has produced. I am of course not unmindful of the many noble churches raised in England by the Roman Catholics during the half century just past from the designs of Pugin, Scoles, Hadfield and Weightman, Wardell, Goldie, Buckler, Han- som, Bentley, and others. The new and goodly Reformation in which during that period the Church of Rome has gone hand in hand with the Church of England has, to use the words of an accomplished architectural critic, ' caused no rivalry but that of devotion, has involved no loss but of what was worthless, has pursued no policy but that of truth, and has effected no change but one from meanness to beauty, and from heartlessness to love.' ^ It would of course be unpardonable to omit mention of such princely works as the Aloyen Age Monumental et Areheologique of Chapuy, the same author's CathSdrales Francaises^ and Viollet-le- Due's exhaustive Dicticnnaire Raisonne. The work on the P'rench Cathedrals by the first named is doubly valuable and interesting now, both text and plates enabling us to gather some idea of the con- dition of these noble edifices before the hand of the restorer was laid upon them. Dijon 203 With many admirable examples to the contrary, the seminary education of France cannot be said to have so developed the spirit of historical inquiry as to make the priests of that country what it has made our Anglo-Catholic clergy— good ecclesiologists. Among those exceptions we must not be oblivious of the cathedral bodies of Amiens, Bonrges, and Tours — persons whose zeal for the honour of the Sanctuary was combined with ecclesiological learning — who have monographed their splendid stalls and painted windows. But, taking it all round, we do not perceive among the French nation the same interest in works of antiquity and ecclesiology that we do at home, chiefly from the fact that in France the Government is the custodian of her sacred buildings, thereby precluding that feeling of privilege in being constantly invited to aid in their reparation and embellishment. The modern town churches met with in France — chiefly from their exaggerated size, the smooth stone used in their construction, and the purity of the atmosphere — do not possess the poetry of design, nor can they ever present that air of antiquity which the churches built under the Gothic revival in England so frequently assume. Indeed, externally a modern French church can rarely be viewed with unalloyed pleasure ; but the interiors of such structures as the church of the Sacre Cceur at Moulins, that of La Deliverande near Caen, and those of Ste. Clothilde at Paris, St. Martin at Tours, St. Nicolas at Nantes, and Ste. Marie at Havre, are undeniably imposing from their size, and the minster-like character imparted to them by their consistent stone vaulting. As a rule, the modern French village church is a very sorry affair, being built in most cases in a raw-looking Romanesque style, having a slate spire, and disfiguring rather than adorning the fair landscape in which it should be set like a gem. But it is time to return from this rambling train of thought, into which I was primarily led through contemplation of the extraordinary Renaissance fagade of St. Michel at Dijon. The interior of this church, to which the front with its deeply recessed porches forms so grand an approach, is gloomy and disappointing, though town-like and spacious. The nave has tall arcades with shafts towards the aisles only, and is destitute of triforium or clerestory ; while the aisleless choir, with its tall Flamboyantly traceried windows, either follows the traditional Burgundian plan, as evidenced in Notrc-Dame and St. Benigne, or may be traced to 204 ' Holidays among the Glories of France that German influence which is so conspicuous in the ecclesiastical buildings of this eastern part of France. iVIy way back to Vespers at St. Benigne led me past a very extraordinary church, St. Jean. Desecrated until 1872, when it was reconsecrated after undergoing restoration and embellishment, this church forms an important factor in the architectural group viewed from the railway, and in many respects may be looked upon as a model for a large town church, consisting as it does of a very wide nave without aisles, transepts, and a truncated eastern limb flanked by square towers. An impression of great religiousness is created upon entering St. Jean by the disposition of its windows, all of which are placed high up in their respective walls, leaving a great space, which has presented an advantageous field for polychromatic display below. It struck me that Mr. Bodley must have had St. Jean at Dijon in his mind when designing that noble town church of St. Salvador at Dundee. The tracery in the windows at St. Jean is early Flamboyant, and good. Two windows of three lights apiece, with a rose similarly traceried above, serve for the west front, and the principal face of each transept is s'imilarly fenestrated, but the windows lighting the nave are simple lancets. Below these are very low plain arches opening into separate chapels. A grand waggon roof covers nave, transepts, and short chancel — this last, by the way, was reduced to its present dimensions in 18 10 — and the roof at the crux meets in a great wooden corbel or pendant. There is no east window, but the wall-space above the high altar is frescoed with scenes from the lives of the two St. Johns and a representa- tion of the Eternal Father. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux (1681- 1704), a native of Dijon, was baptized in this church, which until its restoration to sacred purposes formed the March6 du IVtidi. The adjacent St. Philibert, used as a hay store, is a line example of Burgundian twelfth-century work, having that locaUsm, the western narthex. The Romanesque doorway on its south side is a good specimen of the style, and the lofty octagonal tower and crocketed spire play a very important part in the general views of Dijon. The bell of St. Benigne had ceased to toll, and the canons were singing None in choir, when, shortly after three, I passed under the western porch and pushed open the door, from which a short flight of steps conducts to the nave of this Middle Pointed cathedral. The dimensions of St, Benigne are not vast ; indeed, as a DIJON ■. WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL 2o6 Holidays among the Gloi^ies of France whole, it is quite eclipsed by Notre-Dame. Originally conventual, it became, on the re-establishment of the hierarchy in France early in the last century, the Bishop's seat, the former cathedral having succumbed to revolutionary fury. Cruciform in plan, it is distinctly Burgundian in its details. These are especially graceful in the transepts and short one-bayed apsidal eastern limb, in whose windows, by the way, we strongly desiderate painted-glass. There is no procession path, but its side arches open to apsidal chapels east of either transept. Of these the southern one is most gorgeously decorated with colour and stained-glass, and contains a good modern Gothic altar. By the way, the use of Benediction created — now some fifty years ago — a revolution in the instrumenta altaris. Almost universally in France, over the altars placed in restored chapels of cathedrals and churches, stands a closed tabernacle surmounted by an open baldachin, canopying over the monstrance, which again soars up into pinnacles and turrets, affecting to combine the movable monstrance and ciborium, the Spanish metallic custodia, the German Sakramenthaus, and the Italian baldachin. Geometrical tracery prevails in all the windows of the choir and transepts of St. Benigne. Those in the lowest stage of the apse are of two lights apiece ; the upper ones of three. Each transept has a noble window similarly traceried, and placed very high up in its wall. From clusters of reed-like shafts, all most exquisitely foliaged, spring the arches of the crux, not open, as at Notre-Dame, where it forms a lantern, but sufficiently light and elegant. I was much disappointed with the nave. It is later and very inferior in its workmanship, while the absence of cusps to the lights and of foliations to the circles composing the tracery of its clerestory windows imparts an impoverished air to this part of the church, which is, however, enriched not only by the statues bracketed upon its pillars after the Belgian manner, but by the gallery and case of the western organ, which makes a very im- posing show. At the time of my visit one external feature of St. Benigne, its tall needle-like spire of local celebrity, known to me by engravings, had disappeared, together with the whole of the nave roof, for purposes of ' restoration.' I learn, however, that this interesting and picturesque old spire has been replaced entirely on the old lines, and that no fanciful modern erection has Dijon 207 supplanted it, as was the case at Notre-Dame. A pair of octagonal towers with tiled pyramidal cappings flank the western facade. One of these low spires has had its old sober, time- coloured tiles replaced by new ones. Their flaunting green and red patterns are most offensive, and this, I suspect, is what has taken place with regard to the roofs of the cathedral generally. When I saw St. Benigne the contrast between the roof of the tower which had been renewed and the one still retaining its old tiling was too striking to be overlooked. There is a very fine western narthex. The arch opening into it from the street has a single row of arcades above it similar to that at Notre-Dame, but very much later in style. A lean-to roof connects it with the west front, whose window, now bricked up, exhibits a curious sort of debased plate tracery devoid, like the clerestory, of foliation. What strikes the visitor to the French cathedrals and churches most painfully is the scanty attendance at, and the uncongre- gational character of, their services — a contrast to those of Germany. A year or two since, when making the tour of Westphalia for the purpose of investigating its ecclesiology, I spent a Sunday in that province's capital— the most Catholic city of Northern Germany — Miinster, and it is no exaggeration to say that, except from one o'clock to two, the hour of Mittagsessen, the cathedral and churches were never empty from six in the morning to the same hour in the evening. In a city like Munster it is impossible for the ecclesiologist to remain long in a state of passivity, so at half-past six o'clock I was up and in the Dom, whose spacious area was crowded for a succession of Low Masses, which were being said at every altar in the building by priests in green chasubles ; and thronged as the great church was, more standing than could be accommodated with seats, the silence was so pro- found that a beetle might have been heard to sneeze. And every moment the great transeptal doors opened to admit fresh comers. Returning to the Dom after breakfast, and witnessing the start . of a very pretty procession from the church of St. Mary over the Water, I found ingress impossible — a service consisting merely of preaching and some simple hymns, but evidently highly popular, then proceeding — and when the doors were thrown open for the egress of the vast congregation, I thought the stream would never end At the Chapter Offices the attendance was not so large, but at midday the great church was again filled to overflowing for 2o8 Holidays among the Glories of France the Sing Ami, when an enormous concourse joined in singing hymns at different periods of the Mass to the accompaniment of the organ, but without the aid of a choir ; indeed, the whole scene was most impressive, affecting even to tears. Similar services took place in the parish churches at different times, and several of these I attended wherever ingress was pos- sible. At St. Lambert's — the largest and most imposing of the Mijnster churches — persons were standing outside the doors en queue and there joining in the hymn-singing, while every- where the attendance of men was most remarkable. At five o'clock another immense congregation gathered in the Dom, when a last and most moving service, that of Benediction, took place. Again there was no choir, but the magnificent organ led the voices of the people in the responses and hymns incidental to that short but beautiful Office. Haunted by Notre-Dame and the western facade of St. Michel, I paid each another visit before quitting Dijon ; peeped through a chink in the door of the desecrated St. Etienne — a church of the tenth century, rebuilt in the eighteenth in admirable imitation of Romanesque ; sat for a brief space in the cathedral, where a cough or the shutting of a door alone broke the silence ; retraced my steps to the railway station, reclaimed my knapsack from the gavfon of the buffet, and, knowing what French trains are on a Sunday night, wisely secured a seat in the corner of a third-class compartment. The journey from Dijon to Autun passed through various phases via Beaune, whose church and ideal Hotel Dieu I deeply regretted my inability to visit, and through the vineyards district, along which the summer twilight began to steal, long after the last rich crimson glow of sunset had left the towers and square spires of its thickly set village churches. As far as Chagny, where carriages are changed for Autun, the journey was pleasant enough, and my travelling companions chiefly country fathers and mothers with their olive branches, all hugging some fairing or other, were sufficiently amusing. Then an occasional lurid glare betokened that we were passing through a busy coaling district, imparting quite a Dantean aspect to this phase of the journey, which between Epinac — where some mili- tary manoeuvres had taken place — and Autun was rendered unpleasantly lively by the hilariousness of the military, who had figured therein. Indeed, I had just registered a mental vow Dijon 209 never to travel in France on Sunday night again, when I was reheved to hear an historic name vociferated along a dimly lighted platform : ' Autun ! Autun ! tout le monde descend ! ' Emerging from the exit I expected to find the omnibus besieged, but to my agreeable surprise the crowd had melted away some- how and somewhere, so the vehicle being quite untenanted, my request as to whether I might take the box-seat was met with a polite ' Oui ! oui ! Monsieur ! oui ! oui ! si vous voulez ! ' from Monsieur le Cocher, who seemed quite glad to see me. As we drive through Autun its streets are as silent as the grave. The barking of watch-dogs behind the partes cocMres alone breaks the stillness ; lights here and there in the upper windows of houses betoken that their inmates are seeking what Mrs. Blimber called ' the regions of the drowsy god ' ; and the sweet smells wafted down from the thyme-clad hills under which the city nestles, mingling with that arising from the freshly watered earth — for rain has been falling heavily here, as at Dijon — greet the olfactory nerves in a manner doubly welcome after the confinement of the railway carriage. A few people are sitting before the cafes in the great market square as, just upon the stroke of ten, the omnibus rumbles over its stones, presently depositing me at the bureau of the Hotel des Negociants. This is a typical French house, with a most affable proprietress, ' une vraie dame,' as a more than ordinarily communicative ' com- mercial ' remarked to me on the following morning while par- taking of an early bowl of milk and bread in the privacy of Madame's sanctum, the salle a manger being in the hands, or to speak strictly, under the feet, of the frotteiirs, and therefore not available on this occasion. 2IO Holidays among the Glories of France CHAPTER XIV AUTUN Evidently an atmospheric depression is passing over the Autunois district of Burgundy, for when — shortly after seven on Monday morning — I throw back the jalousies of the bed- room window at the Hotel des Negociants, the sky is gloomy and overcast. Arriving after dark on the previous evening, I had been unable to distinguish the environments of the inn ; now I perceive that it lies somewhat removed from the market square, being approached therefrom by a porte cochcre ; while from the fact of several droves of sheep passing beneath my window, I assume not only that it is market morning, but that the road is a public one, forming, as I found later in the day while on a tour of inspection, a short cut from the market square to the upper part of the old city. The immense market square in front of the hotel is a moving mass of sheep, who invade even the steps of a gaunt-looking church, which frowns with Classical severity upon the crocketed Gothic spire of the cathedral as though in reproof of its lightness. The oxen, noble-looking creatures with great mild eyes, are yoked together in a line, below a species of raised causeway common to the markets of this part of France ; while underneath an avenue of trees, on the same side of the square as the hotel, are ranged stalls, upon which is heaped the omnium gatherum of domestic articles usually seen in such places. Above all this, rising with a background of gently undulating hills, is seen the iron-grey spire of Autun Cathedral, towards which, having exhausted the most amusing features of the market-place, I make my way with the following lines running in my head : — ' Roquettc dans son temps, Talleyrand dans le nutre, Furent les eveqiies d'Autun. Tartufe est le portrait de Fun : Ah ! si Moliere eut connu I'autre ! ' A lit 2111 211 The streets, steep and cobbled, fearful places to ascend in tight boots on a hot day, are as melancholy as the Bailey at Durham. Should any of my readers have the misfortune to visit Autun chaussuredxkmi, an easy cut from the market square to the principal street will be found via an avenue of shops — a forlorn- looking place, giving one the idea, to take a home illustration, of the Lowther Arcade when it shall have fallen on evil days. Like the celebrated portico at Cambridge, how such a place got into Autun it is difficult to conceive. Not a quarter of the shops seemed to be tenanted. Up the winding streets you go until presently you emerge upon a roughly paved, and, if I remember rightly, grass- grown square, whose south side is occupied by this small, but very interesting cathedral, its crocketed spire and Flamboyantly fenestrated aisles giving, at a first glance, the idea of a Late building, little preparing you for the simple, solemn Transitional character of its interior. Like many churches in this part of France, the cathedral of Autun is dedicated to St. Lazare, first Bishop of Marseilles. Until early in the twelfth century, when it underwent extensive structural changes, it had for its patron St. Nazaire — an abbot of Lerins, near Cannes, in the fifth century, and said to have been a disciple of St. Honoratus, afterwards Bishop of Aries. It is almost needless to say that the legend of Lazarus having been first Bishop of Marseilles has nothing but the grossest credulity for its support. The cult, however, grew, and has had its influence on the Gallican Church. Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, the legend runs, came to Marseilles, driven from the Holy Land by the persecution of the Jews. Martha was buried at Tarascon, Mary at Marseilles and Vezelay, and Lazarus at Autun. Thus it came about that, upon the rebuilding of the old basilican cathedral in the twelfth century, it was thought that the bones of Lazarus must be somewhere in its precincts, whereupon it was re-dedicated, no longer to St. Nazaire, but to Lazarus who was raised from the dead. And here are the three effigies of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, affixed to the central pillar of the great western portal which, after the Burgundian fashion, is covered by a deeply projecting porch with three open arches, and altogether looking very Southern. Above the narrower arch on either side rises a tall severe-looking tower and square stone spirelet. The great portal is situated very imposingly at the summit of a flight of steps 212 Holidays among the Glories of France formed within this speluncar porch/ which, by the way, must not be confused with the great narthexes or porches des catuhuvienes found at Vezelay and Tournus, and whilom at Cluny. An upper storey imparts to the west portal at Autun more than ordinary grandeur and dignity, though unluckily the proximity of houses to the west end of the cathedral does not allow a realFy satisfactory view of the whole composition to be taken. In style this western portal of Autun is richest Romanesque. Some of its features, notably the three slender shafts from which the great arch springs, betray a very strong Byzantine feeling, like all southern French Romanesque ; while in the fluted pilasters on which the lintel rests it is impossible to overlook the influence which, as we shall see more distinctly when we get inside the church, the architecture of existing Roman remains has had over this noble piece of twelfth-century workmanship. Grand but wild is the composition in the tympanum. As was customary, this space is filled with a representation of the Last Judgment, into which are introduced several devils of colossal proportions and of appalling aspect, who are seizing and tormenting the figures of the condemned. An equally exaggerated figure of St. Michael weighs a soul and protects it against the combined efforts of two of these demons, who endeavour to press close to the side of the bearer of the scales. These are to the left hand of our Saviour, Who is seated in an aureole with both arms extended. The head is gone, but the cruciform nimbus remains. To His right are the blessed. A row of small figures, in attitudes corresponding with the two divisions above, form a species of frieze in the lintel, and deserve study for the varied expressions which the sculptor, whoever he was, has thrown into them. During some miserable alterations which were inflicted upon the cathedral towards the close of the last century under the influence of the Marechal de Richelieu, a friend of Voltaire, this rich sculpture was daubed over with plaster — a proceeding so far fortunate, since the plaster has all been scraped off, and the whole work, with the exception of the head of our Saviour, has come down to us in a marvellously complete and well-preserved manner. The lofty flight of steps inside the great porch is rendered necessary by the slope from east to west of the ground on which the cathedral is built, a natural cause which, while it contributes in no small degree to its great picturesqueness, assists in imparting ' A more general view of this porch is given on p. 7. Autun 213 to the mass an air of greater size, for in dimensions the cathedral of Autun is one of the smallest in France. Windows of very good Flamboyant character (1460-70) light the aisles ; heavy flying buttresses give importance to the untouched clerestory ; a fine but sculptureless Romanesque portal admits to the north transept, AUTUN CATHKDEAL ; WESTERN DOORWAY and a low Late Gothic tower, with one large pinnacle at its north- west angle, and smaller ones rising from its enriched parapet, crowns the intersection. This is surmounted by a. tall crocketed spire, recalling Norwich, though the steeple in the mass is more suggestive of Lichfield. At Autun the spire rises from the middle of the ' squat ' tower without broaches or clustering pinnacles a 2 14 Holidays among the Glo7'ies of Finance its base, but the impoverished appearance of a spire in this position is in some degree redeemed here by the cusped and arcuated pediments, of which there is one on each side at its base. There is a short eastern limb of two bays ; but, conformably to the Burgundian method, no circumambient aisle or radiating chapels. I suspect, however, that neither the three-sided apse to the choir nor that terminating either aisle is original work, but an architectural forgery of the Flamboyant epoch, and this sus- picion is confirmed when on passing into the interior I observe that modern Late Pointed glass of a very thin and jejune character has been inserted in the windows of each apsidal termination. The similarity which the interior of Autun Cathedral bears to that of Langres — a later copy on a grander and broader scale — is too striking to be overlooked. The nave (ir. II 30) is perhaps more eland than that at Langres, and retains all its original features ; but the aisles have been greatly disturbed by the chapels thrown out from them during the Flamboyant epoch. Here are Pointed arches springing from fluted pilasters, and here is the same type of triforium stage, viz. three narrow round-headed arcades between Corinthian pilasters, the simple clerestory of one round-headed window to each bay, and the barrel-vaulted roof spanned at the interval of each bay by a broad unmoulded rib. Although some of the details of the interior of Autun Cathedral — notably the capitals of the nave pilasters — do not present so thoroughly Classical an appearance as those at Langres, it must be accepted, since the magnificent pile of Cluny Abbey fell a victim to private cupidit)', as an excellent specimen of that peculiar type of Burgundian Gothic so often found in the Lyonnais district. Concerning this quaint admixture of the Classic element with the Transition of the twelfth century, I may just recall the attention of my readers to the fact that the remains of an earlier period have, at Autun as elsewhere in the Lyonnais, exercised no inconsiderable influence on the growing Pointed .style. ' Some antiquaries,' remarked one of our most eminent architectural critics, 'have not hesitated to consider it a bad imitation of Gothic forms belonging to the fifteenth or six- teenth centuries. In fact, its fluted columns or pilasters, their Corinthian capitals, and the whole arrangement, are so eminently Classical as almost to justify the doubt in those who are not familiar_with the history of the southern styles of France.' There cannot^ however, be a shadow of doubt that the peculiarities Autun 215 we observe in Autun Cathedral are traceable to the two noble Roman gateways still remaining in the lower part of the city near the railway station. I visited these remains in the evening, and the resemblance which the triforium range bears to the range of small arches alternating with pilasters in the upper part of ,th^ AUTUN CATHEDRAL : FROM THE SOUTH-WEST Porte d'Arroux — one of these gateways— is too striking for the theory to be doubted for a moment. In short, wherever these reUcs occur, as at Langres, Lyons, Aries, Nimes, and Orange, there will be found in the churches in or contiguous to them some attempt at imitation, even in works belonging to a period in 2 1 6 Holidays among llie Glories of France which the rules of the prevailing styles appear to have been definitely settled. The separation between the two great architectural divisions of France may be effected by a line drawn across its map in an oblique direction from the mouth of the Loire to Lausanne. In the provinces to the north of that line we find the churches of an earlier age replaced either entirely or in greater part by others, the outcome of that great age of architectural enthusiasm comprised between the last twenty years of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth centuries. Southwards, church architecture after reaching a certain point stood still, never except in a few instances being carried to such perfection as in the north. ■- Pointed arches, domical vaults over large spaces, and an excellent school of sculpture had, it is true, made their appearance in Aquitaine and Burgundy half a century before Normandy, Picardy, and Champagne received them, yet the people of those provinces had attained to much greater elevation in their buildings and more expansion in their ground plans, so that all things considered the two schools were tolerably well balanced. With the glories of Amiens, Paris, Rheims, Rouen, and Troyes fresh in his mind, the ordinary visitor will doubtless experience a slight feeling of disappointment on encountering the gloomy grandeur of Autun and Toulouse, Lssoire and Le Puy, Tournus and Chalons-sur-Saone. No enormous sweeps of jewelled glass in lofty clerestory or transeptal rose are here, nor spacious procession paths with chapels radiating from them to impart such an air of mystery and indefinite length to the building viewed from its western extremity, but rather such features and details as are appropriate to a country whose climate for a consider- able portion of the year obliges its inhabitants to seek speluncar shade. At Autun, despite the absence of thirteenth-century grace, vastness, and luminosity, there is something truly awful in the Early Pointed sternness of its nave, choir, and crossing, upon the two former of which the Flamboyant epoch has engrafted a series ' Among the churches to the south of lliis boundary line evincing in their construction a Northern char;uler, the cathedrals of Bordeaux, Nevers, bourges, Clermont Ferrand, Limoges, portions of Lyons, Narbonne, St. Flour and Mende, and the churches of La Chaise-Dieu and St. Maximin, Ste. Cecile al Albi and that of tlie Jacobins at Toulouse, deserve mention. AUTUN CATHEDRAL : A CAPITAL IN THE NAVE 2 1 8 Holidays among the Glories of F'rance of chapels — }^ood examples of that boldness and lightness some- times found in combination in this latest phase of Gothic. Of course, to accommodate these accretions the original plan of Aulun Cathedral has been much disturbed, but above the cusped and ogee-canopied arches opening into the southern range of chapels, portions of the original Romanesque work — the upper [jart of the windows— still remain. One chapel in this aisle has a doorway of singular beauty. Cunningly wrought and brilliantly coloured, its tympanum is charged with a group of the Blessed Virgin attended by angels. Another doorway exhibiting choice Late Gothic workmanship admits to the sacristies from the south transept. This portal has its ogee canopy richly finialed, crocketed and flanked by pinnacled buttresses, the actual door being obtuse-headed, with the super- imposed space between it and the canopy reHeved by an elongated rose, Flamboyantly traceried, and of great beauty. Ingres' picture of The Martyrdom of St. Symphorien at Autun for 1-efiising to join a Procession in honour of Cybele appropriately lends an additional solemnity to that portion of the cathedral graced by the doorway of which I have sketched the salient features. Classicism is not carried at Autun to the same extent as at Langre.s, where the pier capitals wholly Corinthianise. Here they are carved more conformably to Gothic models, each in itself forming a study. Not a few are strikingly curious, and it is interesting to find subjects from fabled as well as scriptural story. Two near the western entrance illustrate ' Androcles and the Lion ' and the ' Wolf and the Stcrk.' Of the sacred subjects, that of the ' Pelican in her Piety,' upon a capital in the eastern limb, is perhaps the most striking. Indeed, the study of this cathedral may contribute to mature theories of the highest interest in the pjrinciples of Christian art, for during the time that it was in progress the cathedral school of Autun was being presided over by Honorius, by whom a Liturgical Summa, in which are found the boldest ideas of Christian mysticism applied to the construc- tion of basilicas, was com[iosed. The whole sculpture, then, of Autun Cathedral - the portal, nave, and aisles — has for its end to trace the pictorial history of the Church's life amid the agitations of earth. Its cumbersome fittings deprive the nave of Autun Cathedral of that spaciousness which forms so [ilcasing a feature at Langres. Aniiin 219 A wide Late Gothic arch, foliated and subfoUated, spans the church at its west end and supports the organ. Nave and aisles are closely chaired, as at Tours. The two easternmost bays contain the chorus cantorum, the stalls being backed by screens copied from the arcades in the triforium and filled with glass ; AUTUN : NOKTH SIDE OF CATHEDRAL a poor sham Gothic pulpit replaces that from which Talleyrand must have preached ; the central tower does not form a lantern ; the presbytery, arranged beneath it, extends into the two-bayed eastern limb ; and the high altar with its surrounding furniture bespeaks too plainly the depraved taste of the First Empire. The northern choir aisle constitutes the Lady-chapel, where, on the first morning of my visit, a memorial Mass was being 2 20 Holidays among the Glories of France said. The celebrant was attended by deacon and sub-deacon, all in vestments of black with silver orphreys. At the conclusion of the Mass a picturesque scene was presented by one of the officiants standing at the foot of the catafalque, processional crucifix in hand, during the aspersing and censing by the celebrant, who assumed a black cope for the function. About nine o'clock Terce, Mass, and Sext were said by the canons in a Flamboyant chapel opening out of the south choir aisle, the reduced pecuniary resources of the chapter militating against the choral rendering of these Offices. A long country walk had been planned, but the unsettled state of the weather forbade its being carried into execution. How- ever, there was plenty to be seen and to cause diversion in and about the Hotel des Negociants, whose kind proprietress was all anxiety as to what I would do ' pour passer le temps.' The hotel was at my disposal, and I was to do exactly as though I were chez mot. ' Would I sit in the bureau or in the petit salon,'' or 'Would I walk in the garden?' In the first-named retreat — luncheon having concluded — the market folks were constantly in and out, paying their reckonings, exchanging a variety of compli- ments with Madame, and I fear somewhat seriously interfering with the artistic pursuits of one of the olive branches who was portraying houses and animals in a primitive and Anglo-Saxon fashion upon paper. Then there was the petit salon alluded to by Madame — an elegant apartment with a piano in it, upon which, if musically inclined, you might play tunes ; where mats artfully spread here and there upon the frottkd floor tripped up unwary visitors ; where china dogs and cats ' set ' to one another on the aforesaid piano ; where, in short, everything was on the most genteel scale imaginable. But the garden, a very charming one, a square plot of ground entered from the courtyard of the hotel, was the best place after all. Here vegetables and fruit grew in homely propinquity with ' Large dropping poppies and queen lioUyhocks, With butterflies for crowns — tree peonies And pinl:kir-^ :rpjr_ which, with its trumpet-blowing cheriibnn and seriritizi sur:". : ur.tiri.; the triple towers to 'Great' and "Choir." is ~: i;_:: :ira;lz of making a deal of noise upon occisiorts^ The absence of medi.'eval i'cstru.mf^z^, esre^;.tllv ;f :he rood, precludes :he interior of Souvigny Abbey. like ;eo —any French churchesv frora being truly picKriiL Althocgh :t -is one of the largess ecclesiasticil buildings in the province c£ Sens. >rQvering as i: c:cs a r-jnstderable expanse of grwiad. it b by no mean? c-^iossai. Indeed. I was disappointed 'sith ie chevet. having: firmed a somewhat extra-.-agant nocion rt ;; tn.-m 1 noc vcrv titiitil drawing in ' L'Ancien Bocirbocnaisv" Yet the aniiirect ot tie M:d>ile Poiarec adctttccs and alreranccs has managed cy vano^as exrc'iients, sacn as tne mt:ss;cn ~c taT Ol" rATIIi:i IKAL occur in the first two chapels, opening out of the northern aisle. In that dedicated to St. Catherine, forming the eastern aisle of the transept, the window lighting its northern end has three unfoliated compartments, with, in the head, a large trefoil, and some modern glass of excellent character representing scenes in the life of its titular saint. T 2 74 Holidays ainoitg' the Glories of France The next chapel opens into the aisle by two bays correspond- ing to those of the choir, and has a pair of lovely Early Middle Pointed windows, the three trefoils with which each is traceried being without containing circles. None of the other projections contain anything very remark- able until the last but one in the south aisle is reached, its wall being pierced with an ogee-headed and crocketed doorway con- ducting to the sacristies. The baptismal chapel, in rich good Flamboyant with large pendant bosses, is formed in the eastern aisle of the south transept. It was about six o'clock when I first entered this smallest but most charming of northern French cathedrals, and so fascinated was I with its interior that ere I had closed the door of the south transept upon such a galaxy of beauty, the simple, solemn First Pointed western facade — one of the earliest of its class, I believe, with an exquisite central portal flanked by standing effigies, having in its tympanum a sculptured Coronation of the Virgin, and several rows of busts by way of mouldings to its arch — was glowing like old gold in the gorgeous sunset. Viewing the steeple which rises at the south side of this facade at Senlis, it is impossible to extol too highly the con- summate skill with which the eye is conducted from the square to the octagonal portion of the tower, and thence to the slope of the spire. This is effected principally by concealing with open tourelles (somewhat after the style of Laon, Naumburg, and Bamberg) the oblique sides of the octagon, the canopies of the said tourelles leaning against its sides. Then the beautiful pyra- midal character of the steeple is further strengthened by a tall squinch, of which one with its gablet is placed against each side of the spire. Such an arrangement, of course, appears to decrease the true dimensions of the spire, but is only another factor in endowing it with an air of grace perhaps unsurpassed by any con- temporary erection of the kind. Seen in profile under certain conditions of light and atmosphere from the boulevards on the north side of the city, this solitary spire of Senlis, pierced at judicious intervals as to its scaled surface, and crocketed as to its ribs, is reminiscent of Strasburg. Of Senlis' desecrated churches, the most beautiful, that of St. Frambourg, is now a carriage depository. The details of its western doorway are truly exquisite specimens of floral sculpture — nothing more vigorous or beautiful can be imagined. The Sc///is 275 plan of this church — a First Pointed one, without aisles and having very large lancet windows most gracefully shafted— is simply a parallelogram terminating in an apse, whose semi- circular sweep with its red-tiled roofing helped, on the following morning, to compose a picture truly enchanting, standing out as it did against a sky of purest blue. A cool ramble about the quaint streets of Senlis, and a pro- longed saunter upon its old fortifications, from which at one point the spire of Notre-Dame and that of another gracefully contoured, hipped-gabled steeple belonging to St. Vincent's could be taken into one view silhouetted against the calm evening sky, completed a very pleasant reconnoitre. 276 Hobdays among the Glories of France CHAPTER XX NOYON For a considerable time after leaving Senlis, the spire of Notre- Dame remained visible across a treeless plain. Then it was lost, the train stopping at a succession of villages, some of them with high-sounding names, and churches — not a few of which would, to those with a superabundance of leisure, prove highly interesting and instructive — having crocketed spires of the Creil type together with lofty chancels like those met with in the vicinage of that convenient centre for an ecclesiological pilgrimage. At Crepy-en-Valois, which had a temptingly architectural look, carriages had to be changed, and shortly after the train passed, among others, the village of Jaux, whose small three- gabled church of red brick, with an Early Pointed spire and Flamboyant traceried windows, had a very captivating appear- ance. I regretted afterwards that I did not break the journey at Crepy, for at Compiegne, where I allowed myself a couple of hours, I was disappointed in the two churches of St. Jacques and St. Antoine. The former, a large Early Pointed structure, has had its interior almost completely masked in a remorselessly Rococo fashion ; the latter, a commonplace Flamboyant edifice, enshrines a black marble font, similar in motif to those in Winchester Cathedral, St. Michael's, Southampton, and East Meon, but wanting the angle shafts. Another short railway ride, during the progress of which I noted several churches with saddleback towers on either side of the line, and presently the two noble western steeples of Noyon came in sight. An omnibus met the train and rattled me over the stony streets of the little city, depositing me in good time for dinner at the doors of the Hotel du Nord, which combines the advantages of an e.xcellent cuisine and an uninterrupted view of the choir and Noyon 77 transepts of one of Northern France's most delightful Early Pointed churches. The summer during which I visited Noyon was one of unusual brilliancy and splendour, but a very heavy thunderstorm which broke over the city while I sat at dinner — when the western steeples stood out like two great white cliffs against a sky of inky NOYON : WEST FRONT OF THE CATHF,DRAL blackness, thereby producing a very fine effect— was by no means unwelcome, for it lowered the temperature without breaking up the fine weather, besides rendering a postprandial saunter round the city, upon its cessation, highly agreeable. Although not so diversified as those of Senlis, the streets of Noyon are very old-world and enchanting. There is a fine 278 Holidays among the Glories of France market-place dominated by the steeples of Notre-Dame ; shady boulevards screen the old part of the city from the modern one that has grown up around the railway station ; and the streets, although ordinarily wearing an appearance of drowsiness, show no symptoms of decay. Everything in Noyon has a substantial, prosperous look, and through the parte cochere of many an eighteenth-century house, with its louvred and red-tiled roofs, whereon strut colonies of pigeons, glimpses may be caught of really well-kept gardens bright with vivid masses of scarlet geranium. One thing only Noyon lacks, and that is a grandly performed daily Office in its cjuondam cathedral ot Notre-Dame,' one of the most beautiful and complete monuments of the Transitional period in France or elsewhere. Viewed from the east its most striking feature is the apsidal termination to either transept, which, together with the employ- ment of projected steeples at the angles formed by the eastern and transeptal limbs, may be attributed either to the long con- nection of Noyon with the see of Tournay or its proximity to the German border. When Nevillon de Cerisy, Bishop of Soissons, began to re- build his cathedral in T175 ^^'t^h the existing graceful apsidal south transept, he no doubt intended its plan to take the trefoil- headed shape, but his designs— with the change of style which the thirteenth century brought with it — were abandoned, the choir being made of much loftier dimensions and the opposite transept receiving the customary rectangular termination. The rude and simple church of Querqueville, near Cherbourg, is an interesting example of a French church with apsidal tran- septs as well as chancel Tournay Cathedral, until the erection of its imposing but not satisfactory fourteenth-century choir, must have presented a per- fect specimen of that transverse triapsal German plan which undoubtedly had the Romanesque of Northern Italy for its proto- type. This apsidal transept seems to have been much admired during the epoch when the German national style held sway in the Rhenish Provinces, occurring as it does in the noble church of St. Quirinus at Neuss ; in Gross St. Martin, the Holy Apostles' and S. Maria in Capitolio at Cologne ; and in the Minster at ' The see of Noyon wa.s suppressed in 1801, and, with that of Senlis, placed under the jurisdiction of the Biihop of Beauvais. N'oyo)i 279 Bonn. Remote from the Rhine the transverse triapsal plan is not frequently met with, but it reproduced itself during Complete Gothic days in the graceful church of St. Elizabeth at Marburg. Plettenburg in Westphalia has a church of this form, and in the same province the northern transept of I'aderborn Cathedral— a poor work of the fourteenth century — is pentagonally apsidal. It is not unreasonable to suppose that this church was, in its earlier form, transverse triapsal, and that during the great structural NOVON : EAST END OF THE CATHEDRAL alterations which it underwent in the Complete Gothic period some lingering love for tradition may have prompted the architect to give this pentagonal termination to its northern arm. The illustrations given of this most charming transverse triapsal cathedral of Noyon preclude me from entering into a detailed description, but in the view of it from the east I would draw attention to the position of the doorway, which, as in some Rhenish churches, occurs in the eastern side of either transept ; ^ to the curious fenestration of the clerestory in the ' S. Maria in Capitolio at Cologne exemplifies this. We meet with it also at Mayence and in the eastern pair of towers at Bamberg. 2 So Holidays amono the Glories of France same portion of the building ; and to the double tiers of windows necessitated by the extraordinarily grandiose triforium, and of which I shall speak presently when describing the interior of this most fascinating church, whose austere western facade fitly prepares the mind for the chastened grandeur of the interior. Few great French churches of the Early Gothic period can show an exterior so little disturbed by the accretions of later ages. Viewing the western steeples the divergency in the detail of the gracefully elongated belfry stages will be noticed, also the noble range of Geometrically traceried windows lighting the Salle de Chapitre to the north, whilst the exquisite carving in foliage above and below the now shaftless and figureless jambs of the triple western doorways, sheltered by the simple porch extending the length of the fayade, deserves the closest attention from the student of thirteenth-century detail. Entering Noyon Cathedral from the west — though perhaps the most impressive coup d'cvil oi its interior is to be had from the threshold of either of the transeptal portals — you are not over- whelmed as at Amiens, Beauvais, Bourges, or Chartres, but you instinctively feel yourself to be in the presence of a most charming and reposeful church — one that grows upon the mind and imparts renewed pleasure at successive visits. Immediately you set foot in the nave a striking feature pre- sents itself in the tall Pointed arch which opens on either hand into the space formed beneath the towers, and which, together with that spanning the church transversely, constitutes, as at Peterborough, a species of gigantic internal narthex or space distinct from the nave proper. This has ten bays of Pointed arches broken up into couples of five by the vaulting shafts, each pair springing from a cylindrical shaft, with almost classi- cally foliaged capitals, similar to but not so refined as those at Senlis. A series of Pointed arcades opens above the pier arches into the tribunes — spacious vaulted galleries, lighted in this instance by Romanesque windows in pairs, peculiar to several great churches of this part of Europe, corresponding to the grandly developed Anglo-Norman triforia of Norwich, Ely, and Peter- borough, and affording accommodation for the spectators of pro- cessions and of those miracle plays which in medieval times were so frequently enacted in the naves of churches. Surmounting these is a low arcade of semicircular arches Noyon 281 unpierced, and, above all, a tall clerestory of very simple round- headed windows in pairs, similar to those lighting the tribunes. Such a quadruple division in height constitutes another feature borrowed, doubtless, from Noyon's prototype, Tournay. Here it is productive of a very grand effect, and perhaps nowhere in France is the struggle that was going on at the period of the ^;v,J|)%^MHH| ^1 \ Ki^^^R^ ^fef -%.*" • *./mK1B^^Bmi1eB{ ;/^|^M m^i^^^^^ Ik ^ ' ' '^MBMr^'^Ki j^Wl Wfl^w eSW { * 7-i mf'A i m « ! in ytX|vx