Chapter IV: Interpretations (1)

1. It is the admitted privilege of a custode who loves his cathedral to depreciate, in its comparison, all the other cathedrals of his country that resemble, and all the edifices on the globe that differ from it. But I love too many cathedrals--though I have never had the happiness of becoming the custode of even one--to permit myself the easy and faithful exercise of the privilege in question; and I must vindicate my candour, and my judgment, in the outset, by confessing that the cathedral of AMIENS has nothing to boast of in the way of towers,--that its central flèche is merely the pretty caprice of a village carpenter,--that the total structure is in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative splendour to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure-sculpture to Bourges. It has nothing like the artful pointing and moulding of the arcades of Salisbury--nothing of the might of Durham;--no Dædalian inlaying like Florence, no glow of mythic fantasy like Verona. And yet, in all, and more than these, ways, outshone or overpowered, the cathedral of Amiens deserves the name given it by M. Viollet le Duc--

"The Parthenon of Gothic Architecture."[40]

2. Of Gothic, mind you; Gothic clear of Roman tradition, and of Arabian taint; Gothic pure, authoritative, unsurpassable, and unaccusable;--its proper principles of structure being once understood and admitted.

[Footnote 40: Of French Architecture, accurately, in the place quoted, "Dictionary of Architecture," vol. i. p. 71; but in the article "Cathédrale," it is called (vol. ii. p. 330) "l'église _ogivale_ par excellence."]

No well-educated traveller is now without some consciousness of the meaning of what is commonly and rightly called "purity of style," in the modes of art which have been practised by civilized nations; and few are unaware of the distinctive aims and character of Gothic. The purpose of a good Gothic builder was to raise, with the native stone of the place he had to build in, an edifice as high and as spacious as he could, with calculable and visible security, in no protracted and wearisome time, and with no monstrous or oppressive compulsion of human labour.

He did not wish to exhaust in the pride of a single city the energies of a generation, or the resources of a kingdom; he built for Amiens with the strength and the exchequer of Amiens; with chalk from the cliffs of the Somme,[41] and under the orders of two successive bishops, one of whom directed the foundations of the edifice, and the other gave thanks in it for its completion. His object, as a designer, in common with all the sacred builders of his time in the North, was to admit as much light into the building as was consistent with the comfort of it; to make its structure intelligibly admirable, but not curious or confusing; and to enrich and enforce the understood structure with ornament sufficient for its beauty, yet yielding to no wanton enthusiasm in expenditure, nor insolent in giddy or selfish ostentation of skill; and finally, to make the external sculpture of its walls and gates at once an alphabet and epitome of the religion, by the knowledge and inspiration of which an acceptable worship might be rendered, within those gates, to the Lord whose Fear was in His Holy Temple, and whose seat was in Heaven.

[Footnote 41: It was a universal principle with the French builders of the great ages to use the stones of their quarries as they lay in the bed; if the beds were thick, the stones were used of their full thickness--if thin, of their necessary thinness, adjusting them with beautiful care to directions of thrust and weight. The natural blocks were never sawn, only squared into fitting, the whole native strength and crystallization of the stone being thus kept unflawed--"_ne dédoublant jamais_ une pierre. Cette méthode est excellente, elle conserve à la pierre toute sa force naturelle,--tous ses moyens de résistance." See M. Viollet le Duc, Article "Construction" (Matériaux), vol. iv. p. 129. He adds the very notable fact that, _to this day, in seventy departments of France, the use of the stone-saw is unknown_.]

3. It is not easy for the citizen of the modern aggregate of bad building, and ill-living held in check by constables, which we call a town,--of which the widest streets are devoted by consent to the encouragement of vice, and the narrow ones to the concealment of misery,--not easy, I say, for the citizen of any such mean city to understand the feeling of a burgher of the Christian ages to his cathedral. For him, the quite simply and frankly-believed text, "Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them," was expanded into the wider promise to many honest and industrious persons gathered in His name--"They shall be my people and I will be their God";--deepened in his reading of it, by some lovely local and simply affectionate faith that Christ, as he was a Jew among Jews, and a Galilean among Galileans, was also, in His nearness to any--even the poorest--group of disciples, as one of their nation; and that their own "Beau Christ d'Amiens" was as true a compatriot to them as if He had been born of a Picard maiden.

4. It is to be remembered, however--and this is a theological point on which depended much of the structural development of the northern basilicas--that the part of the building in which the Divine presence was believed to be constant, as in the Jewish Holy of Holies, was only the enclosed choir; in front of which the aisles and transepts might become the King's Hall of Justice, as in the presence-chamber of Christ; and whose high altar was guarded always from the surrounding eastern aisles by a screen of the most finished workmanship; while from those surrounding aisles branched off a series of radiating chapels or cells, each dedicated to some separate saint. This conception of the company of Christ with His saints, (the eastern chapel of all being the Virgin's,) was at the root of the entire disposition of the apse with its supporting and dividing buttresses and piers; and the architectural form can never be well delighted in, unless in some sympathy with the spiritual imagination out of which it rose. We talk foolishly and feebly of symbols and types: in old Christian architecture, every part is _literal_: the cathedral _is_ for its builders the House of God;--it is surrounded, like an earthly king's, with minor lodgings for the servants; and the glorious carvings of the exterior walls and interior wood of the choir, which an English rector would almost instinctively think of as done for the glorification of the canons, was indeed the Amienois carpenter's way of making his Master-carpenter comfortable,[42]--nor less of showing his own native and insuperable virtue of carpenter, before God and man.

[Footnote 42: The philosophic reader is quite welcome to 'detect' and 'expose' as many carnal motives as he pleases, besides the good ones,--competition with neighbour Beauvais--comfort to sleepy heads--solace to fat sides, and the like. He will find at last that no quantity of competition or comfort-seeking will do anything the like of this carving now;--still less his own philosophy, whatever its species: and that it was indeed the little mustard seed of faith in the heart, with a very notable quantity of honesty besides in the habit and disposition, that made all the rest grow together for good.]

5. Whatever you wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen, at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your existence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one quarter of an hour, not out of breath--for the contemplation of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles and porches, lancet windows and roses, you can see elsewhere as well as here--but such carpenter's work, you cannot. It is late,--fully developed flamboyant just past the fifteenth century--and has some Flemish stolidity mixed with the playing French fire of it; but wood-carving was the Picard's joy from his youth up, and, so far as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world.

Sweet and young-grained wood it is: oak, _trained_ and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing pinnacle--it shoots and wreathes itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book.[43]

[Footnote 43: Arnold Boulin, master-joiner (menuisier) at Amiens, solicited the enterprise, and obtained it in the first months of the year 1508. A contract was drawn and an agreement made with him for the construction of one hundred and twenty stalls with historical subjects, high backings, crownings, and pyramidal canopies. It was agreed that the principal executor should have seven sous of Tournay (a little less than the sou of France) a day, for himself and his apprentice, (threepence a day the two--say a shilling a week the master, and sixpence a week the man,) and for the superintendence of the whole work, twelve crowns a year, at the rate of twenty-four sous the crown; (_i.e._, twelve shillings a year). The salary of the simple workman was only to be three sous a day. For the sculptures and histories of the seats, the bargain was made separately with Antoine Avernier, image-cutter, residing at Amiens, at the rate of thirty-two sous (sixteen pence) the piece. Most of the wood came from Clermont en Beauvoisis, near Amiens; the finest, for the bas-reliefs, from Holland, by St. Valery and Abbeville. The Chapter appointed four of its own members to superintend the work: Jean Dumas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglaché, to whom my authors (canons both) attribute the choice of subjects, the placing of them, and the initiation of the workmen 'au sens véritable et plus élevé de la Bible ou des legendes, et portant quelque fois le simple savoir-faire de l'ouvrier jusqu'à la hauteur du génie du théologien.'

Without pretending to apportion the credit of savoir-faire and theology in the business, we have only to observe that the whole company, master, apprentices, workmen, image-cutter, and four canons, got well into traces, and set to work on the 3rd of July, 1508, in the great hall of the évêché, which was to be the workshop and studio during the whole time of the business. In the following year, another menuisier, Alexander Huet, was associated with the body, to carry on the stalls on the right hand of the choir, while Arnold Boulin went on with those on the left. Arnold, leaving his new associate in command for a time, went to Beauvais and St. Riquier, to see the woodwork there; and in July of 1511 both the masters went to Rouen together, 'pour étudier les chaires de la cathédrale.' The year before, also, two Franciscans, monks of Abbeville, 'expert and renowned in working in wood,' had been called by the Amiens chapter to give their opinion on things in progress, and had each twenty sous for his opinion, and travelling expenses.

In 1516, another and an important name appears on the accounts,--that of Jean Trupin, 'a simple workman at the wages of three sous a day,' but doubtless a good and spirited carver, whose true portrait it is without doubt, and by his own hand, that forms the elbow-rest, of the 85th stall (right hand, nearest apse), beneath which is cut his name JHAN TRUPIN, and again under the 92nd stall, with the added wish, 'Jan Trupin, God take care of thee' (_Dieu te pourvoie_).

The entire work was ended on St. John's Day, 1522, without (so far as we hear) any manner of interruption by dissension, death, dishonesty, or incapacity, among its fellow-workmen, master or servant. And the accounts being audited by four members of the Chapter, it was found that the total expense was 9488 livres, 11 sous, and 3 obols (décimes), or 474 napoleons, 11 sous, 3 décimes of modern French money, or roughly four hundred sterling English pounds.

For which sum, you perceive, a company of probably six or eight good workmen, old and young, had been kept merry and busy for fourteen years; and this that you see--left for substantial result and gift to you.

I have not examined the carvings so as to assign, with any decision, the several masters' work; but in general the flower and leaf design in the traceries will be by the two head menuisiers, and their apprentices; the elaborate Scripture histories by Avernier, with variously completing incidental grotesque by Trupin; and the joining and fitting by the common workmen. No nails are used,--all is morticed, and so beautifully that the joints have not moved to this day, and are still almost imperceptible. The four terminal pyramids 'you might take for giant pines forgotten for six centuries on the soil where the church was built; they might be looked on at first as a wild luxury of sculpture and hollow traceries--but examined in analysis they are marvels of order and system in construction, uniting all the lightness, strength, and grace of the most renowned spires in the last epoch of the Middle ages.'

The above particulars are all extracted--or simply translated, out of the excellent description of the "Stalles et les Clôtures du Choeur" of the Cathedral of Amiens, by MM. les Chanoines Jourdain et Duval (Amiens, Vv. Alfred Caron, 1867). The accompanying lithographic outlines are exceedingly good, and the reader will find the entire series of subjects indicated with precision and brevity, both for the woodwork and the external veil of the choir, of which I have no room to speak in this traveller's summary.]

6. I have never been able to make up my mind which was really the best way of approaching the cathedral for the first time. If you have plenty of leisure, and the day is fine, and you are not afraid of an hour's walk, the really right thing to do is to walk down the main street of the old town, and across the river, and quite out to the chalk hill[44] out of which the citadel is half quarried--half walled;--and walk to the top of that, and look down into the citadel's dry 'ditch,'--or, more truly, dry valley of death, which is about as deep as a glen in Derbyshire, (or, more precisely, the upper part of the 'Happy Valley' at Oxford, above Lower Hincksey,) and thence across to the cathedral and ascending slopes of the city; so, you will understand the real height and relation of tower and town:--then, returning, find your way to the Mount Zion of it by any narrow cross streets and chance bridges you can--the more winding and dirty the streets, the better; and whether you come first on west front or apse, you will think them worth all the trouble you have had to reach them.

[Footnote 44: The strongest and finally to be defended part of the earliest city was on this height.]

7. But if the day be dismal, as it may sometimes be, even in France, of late years,--or if you cannot or will not walk, which may also chance, for all our athletics and lawn-tennis,--or if you must really go to Paris this afternoon, and only mean to see all you can in an hour or two,--then, supposing that, notwithstanding these weaknesses, you are still a nice sort of person, for whom it is of some consequence which way you come at a pretty thing, or begin to look at it--I _think_ the best way is to walk from the Hotel de France or the Place de Perigord, up the Street of Three Pebbles, towards the railway station--stopping a little as you go, so as to get into a cheerful temper, and buying some bonbons or tarts for the children in one of the charming patissiers' shops on the left. Just past them, ask for the theatre; and just past that, you will find, also on the left, three open arches, through which you can turn, passing the Palais de Justice, and go straight up to the south transept, which has really something about it to please everybody. It is simple and severe at the bottom, and daintily traceried and pinnacled at the top, and yet seems all of a piece--though it isn't--and everybody _must_ like the taper and transparent fretwork of the flèche above, which seems to bend to the west wind,--though it doesn't--at least, the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And, coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness, and her gay soubrette's smile; and she has no business there, neither, for this is St. Honoré's porch, not hers; and grim and grey St. Honoré used to stand there to receive you,--he is banished now to the north porch, where nobody ever goes in. This was done long ago, in the fourteenth-century days, when the people first began to find Christianity too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright-glancing, soubrette Madonnas everywhere--letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burned for a witch. And thenceforward, things went their merry way, straight on, 'ça allait, ça ira,' to the merriest days of the guillotine.

But they could still carve, in the fourteenth century, and the Madonna and her hawthorn-blossom lintel are worth your looking at,--much more the field above, of sculpture as delicate and more calm, which tells St. Honoré's own story, little talked of now in his Parisian faubourg.

8. I will not keep you just now to tell St. Honoré's story--(only too glad to leave you a little curious about it, if it were possible)[45]--for certainly you will be impatient to go into the church; and cannot enter it to better advantage than by this door. For all cathedrals of any mark have nearly the same effect when you enter at the west door; but I know no other which shows so much of its nobleness from the south interior transept; the opposite rose being of exquisite fineness in tracery, and lovely in lustre; and the shafts of the transept aisles forming wonderful groups with those of the choir and nave; also, the apse shows its height better, as it opens to you when you advance from the transept into the mid-nave, than when it is seen at once from the west end of the nave; where it is just possible for an irreverent person rather to think the nave narrow, than the apse high. Therefore, if you let me guide you, go in at this south transept door, (and put a sou into every beggar's box who asks it there,--it is none of your business whether they should be there or not, nor whether they deserve to have the sou,--be sure only that you yourself deserve to have it to give; and give it prettily, and not as if it burnt your fingers). Then, being once inside, take what first sensation and general glimpse of it pleases you--promising the custode to come back to _see_ it properly; (only then mind you keep the promise;) and in this first quarter of an hour, seeing only what fancy bid you--but at least, as I said, the apse from mid-nave, and all the traverses of the building, from its centre. Then you will know, when you go outside again, what the architect was working for, and what his buttresses and traceries mean. For the outside of a French cathedral, except for its sculpture, is always to be thought of as the wrong side of the stuff, in which you find how the threads go that produce the inside or right-side pattern. And if you have no wonder in you for that choir and its encompassing circlet of light, when you look up into it from the cross-centre, you need not travel farther in search of cathedrals, for the waiting-room of any station is a better place for you;--but, if it amaze you and delight you at first, then, the more you know of it, the more it will amaze. For it is not possible for imagination and mathematics together, to do anything nobler or stronger than that procession of window, with material of glass and stone--nor anything which shall look loftier, with so temperate and prudent measure of actual loftiness.

[Footnote 45: See, however, pages 32 and 130 (§§ 36, 112-114) of the octavo edition of 'The Two Paths.']

9. From the pavement to the keystone of its vault is but 132 French feet--about 150 English. Think only--you who have been in Switzerland,--the Staubbach falls _nine_ hundred! Nay, Dover cliff under the castle, just at the end of the Marine Parade, is twice as high; and the little cockneys parading to military polka on the asphalt below, think themselves about as tall as it, I suppose,--nay, what with their little lodgings and stodgings and podgings about it, they have managed to make it look no bigger than a moderate-sized limekiln. Yet it is twice the height of Amiens' apse!--and it takes good building, with only such bits of chalk as one can quarry beside Somme, to make your work stand half that height, for six hundred years.

10. It takes good building, I say, and you may even aver the best--that ever was, or is again likely for many a day to be, on the unquaking and fruitful earth, where one could calculate on a pillar's standing fast, once well set up; and where aisles of aspen, and orchards of apple, and clusters of vine, gave type of what might be most beautifully made sacred in the constancy of sculptured stone. From the unhewn block set on end in the Druid's Bethel, to _this_ Lord's House and blue-vitrailed gate of Heaven, you have the entire course and consummation of the Northern Religious Builder's passion and art.

11. But, note further--and earnestly,--this apse of Amiens is not only the best, but the very _first_ thing done _perfectly_ in its manner, by Northern Christendom. In pages 323 and 327 of the sixth volume of M. Viollet le Duc, you will find the exact history of the development of these traceries through which the eastern light shines on you as you stand, from the less perfect and tentative forms of Rheims: and so momentary was the culmination of the exact rightness, that here, from nave to transept--built only ten years later,--there is a little change, not towards decline, but to a not quite necessary precision. Where decline begins, one cannot, among the lovely fantasies that succeeded, exactly say--but exactly, and indisputably, we know that this apse of Amiens is the first virgin perfect work,--Parthenon also in that sense,--of Gothic Architecture.

12. Who built it, shall we ask? God, and Man,--is the first and most true answer. The stars in their courses built it, and the Nations. Greek Athena labours here--and Roman Father Jove, and Guardian Mars. The Gaul labours here, and the Frank: knightly Norman,--mighty Ostrogoth,--and wasted anchorite of Idumea.

The actual Man who built it scarcely cared to tell you he did so; nor do the historians brag of him. Any quantity of heraldries of knaves and fainéants you may find in what they call their 'history': but this is probably the first time you ever read the name of Robert of Luzarches. I say he 'scarcely cared'--we are not sure that he cared at all. He signed his name nowhere, that I can hear of. You may perhaps find some recent initials cut by English remarkable visitors desirous of immortality, here and there about the edifice, but Robert the builder--or at least the Master of building, cut _his_ on no stone of it. Only when, after his death, the headstone had been brought forth with shouting, Grace unto it, this following legend was written, recording all who had part or lot in the labour, within the middle of the labyrinth then inlaid in the pavement of the nave. You must read it trippingly on the tongue: it was rhymed gaily for you by pure French gaiety, not the least like that of the Théâtre de Folies.

"En l'an de Grace mil deux cent
Et vingt, fu l'oeuvre de cheens
Premièrement encomenchie.
A donc y ert de cheste evesquie
Evrart, évêque bénis;
Et, Roy de France, Loys
Qui fut fils Phelippe le Sage.
Qui maistre y ert de l'oeuvre
Maistre Robert estoit només
Et de Luzarches surnomés.
Maistre Thomas fu après lui
De Cormont. Et après, son filz
Maistre Regnault, qui mestre
Fist a chest point chi cheste lectre
Que l'incarnation valoit
Treize cent, moins douze, en faloit."

13. I have written the numerals in letters, else the metre would not have come clear: they were really in figures thus, "II C. et XX," "XIII C. moins XII". I quote the inscription from M. l'Abbé Rozé's admirable little book, "Visite à la Cathédrale d'Amiens,"--Sup. Lib. de Mgr l'Evêque d'Amiens, 1877,--which every grateful traveller should buy, for I am only going to steal a little bit of it here and there. I only wish there had been a translation of the legend to steal, too; for there are one or two points, both of idea and chronology, in it, that I should have liked the Abbé's opinion of.

The main purport of the rhyme, however, we perceive to be, line for line, as follows:--

"In the year of Grace, Twelve Hundred
And twenty, the work, then falling to ruin,
Was first begun again.
Then was, of this Bishopric
Everard the blessed Bishop.
And, King of France, Louis,
Who was son to Philip the Wise.
He who was Master of the Work
Was called Master Robert,
And called, beyond that, of Luzarches.
Master Thomas was after him,
Of Cormont. And after him, his son,
Master Reginald, who to be put
Made--at this point--this reading.
When the Incarnation was of account
Thirteen hundred, less twelve, which it failed of."

In which legend, while you stand where once it was written (it was removed--to make the old pavement more polite--in the year, I sorrowfully observe, of my own earliest tour on the Continent, 1825, when I had not yet turned my attention to Ecclesiastical Architecture), these points are noticeable--if you have still a little patience.

14. 'The work'--_i.e._, the Work of Amiens in especial, her cathedral, was 'déchéant,' falling to ruin, for the--I cannot at once say--fourth, fifth, or what time,--in the year 1220. For it was a wonderfully difficult matter for little Amiens to get this piece of business fairly done, so hard did the Devil pull against her. She built her first Bishop's church (scarcely more than St. Firmin's tomb-chapel) about the year 350, just outside the railway station on the road to Paris;[46] then, after being nearly herself destroyed, chapel and all, by the Frank invasion, having recovered, and converted her Franks, she built another and a properly called cathedral, where this one stands now, under Bishop St. Save (St. Sauve, or Salve). But even this proper cathedral was only of wood, and the Normans burnt it in 881. Rebuilt, it stood for 200 years; but was in great part destroyed by lightning in 1019. Rebuilt again, it and the town were more or less burnt together by lightning, in 1107,--my authority says calmly, "un incendie provoqué par la même cause détruisit _la ville_, et une partie de la cathédrale." The 'partie' being rebuilt once more, the whole was again reduced to ashes, "réduite en cendre par le feu de ciel en 1218, ainsi que tous les titres, les martyrologies, les calendriers, et les Archives de l'Evêché et du Chapitre."

[Footnote 46: At St. Acheul. See the first chapter of this book, and the "Description Historique de la Cathédrale d'Amiens," by A. P. M. Gilbert. 8vo, Amiens, 1833, pp. 5-7.]

15. It was the fifth cathedral, I count, then, that lay in 'ashes,' according to Mons. Gilbert--in ruin certainly--déchéant;--and ruin of a very discouraging completeness it would have been, to less lively townspeople--in 1218. But it was rather of a stimulating completeness to Bishop Everard and his people--the ground well cleared for them, as it were: and lightning (feu de l'enfer, not du ciel, recognized for a diabolic plague, as in Egypt), was to be defied to the pit. They only took two years, you see, to pull themselves together; and to work they went, in 1220, they, and their bishop, and their king, and their Robert of Luzarches. And this, that roofs you, was what their hands found to do with their might.

16. Their king was 'à-donc,' 'at that time,' Louis VIII., who is especially further called the son of Philip of August, or Philip the Wise, because his father was not dead in 1220; but must have resigned the practical kingdom to his son, as his own father had done to him; the old and wise king retiring to his chamber, and thence silently guiding his son's hands, very gloriously, yet for three years.

But, farther--and this is the point on which chiefly I would have desired the Abbé's judgment--Louis VIII. died of fever at Montpensier in 1226. And the entire conduct of the main labour of the cathedral, and the chief glory of its service, as we shall hear presently, was _Saint_ Louis's; for a time of forty-four years. And the inscription was put "à ce point ci" by the last architect, six years after St. Louis's death. How is it that the great and holy king is not named?

17. I must not, in this traveller's brief, lose time in conjectural answers to the questions which every step here will raise from the ravaged shrine. But this is a very solemn one; and must be kept in our hearts, till we may perhaps get clue to it. One thing only we are sure of,--that at least the _due_ honour--alike by the sons of Kings and sons of Craftsmen--is given always to their fathers; and that apparently the chief honour of all is given here to Philip the Wise. From whose house, not of parliament but of peace, came, in the years when this temple was first in building, an edict indeed of peace-making: "That it should be criminal for any man to take vengeance for an insult or injury till forty days after the commission of the offence--and then only with the approbation of the Bishop of the Diocese." Which was perhaps a wiser effort to end the Feudal system in its Saxon sense,[47] than any of our recent projects for ending it in the Norman one.

[Footnote 47: Feud, Saxon faedh, low Latin Faida (Scottish 'fae,' English 'foe,' derivative), Johnson. Remember also that the root of Feud, in its Norman sense of land-allotment, is _foi_, not _fee_, which Johnson, old Tory as he was, did not observe--neither in general does the modern Antifeudalist.]

18. "A ce point ci." The point, namely, of the labyrinth inlaid in the cathedral floor; a recognized emblem of many things to the people, who knew that the ground they stood on was holy, as the roof over their head. Chiefly, to them, it was an emblem of noble human life--strait-gated, narrow-walled, with infinite darknesses and the "inextricabilis error" on either hand--and in the depth of it, the brutal nature to be conquered.

19. This meaning, from the proudest heroic, and purest legislative, days of Greece, the symbol had borne for all men skilled in her traditions: to the schools of craftsmen the sign meant further their craft's noblesse, and pure descent from the divinely-terrestrial skill of Dædalus, the labyrinth-builder, and the first sculptor of imagery _pathetic_[48] with human life and death.

[Footnote 48:

"Tu quoque, magnam
Partem opere in tanto, sineret dolor, Icare, haberes,
Bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro,--
Bis patriæ cecidere manus."

There is, advisedly, no pathos allowed in primary sculpture. Its heroes conquer without exultation, and die without sorrow.]

20. Quite the most beautiful sign of the power of true Christian-Catholic faith is this continual acknowledgment by it of the brotherhood--nay, more, the fatherhood, of the elder nations who had not seen Christ; but had been filled with the Spirit of God; and obeyed, according to their knowledge, His unwritten law. The pure charity and humility of this temper are seen in all Christian art, according to its strength and purity of race; but best, to the full, seen and interpreted by the three great Christian-Heathen poets, Dante, Douglas of Dunkeld,[49] and George Chapman. The prayer with which the last ends his life's work is, so far as I know, the perfectest and deepest expression of Natural Religion given us in literature; and if you can, pray it here--standing on the spot where the builder once wrote the history of the Parthenon of Christianity.

[Footnote 49: See 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter LXI., p. 22.]

21. "I pray thee, Lord, the Father, and the Guide of our reason, that we may remember the nobleness with which Thou hast adorned us; and that Thou wouldst be always on our right hand and on our left,[50] in the motion of our own Wills: that so we may be purged from the contagion of the Body and the Affections of the Brute, and overcome them and rule; and use, as it becomes men to use them, for instruments. And then, that Thou wouldst be in Fellowship with us for the careful correction of our reason, and for its conjunction by the light of truth with the things that truly are.

[Footnote 50: Thus, the command to the children of Israel "that they go forward" is to their own wills. They obeying, the sea retreats, _but not before_ they dare to advance into it. _Then_, the waters are a wall unto them, on their right hand and their left.]

"And in the third place, I pray to Thee the Saviour, that Thou wouldst utterly cleanse away the closing gloom from the eyes of our souls, that we may know well who is to be held for God, and who for mortal. Amen."[51]

[Footnote 51: The original is written in Latin only. "Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater et Dux rationis nostræ, ut nostræ Nobilitatis recordemur, quâ tu nos ornasti: et ut tu nobis presto sis, ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et a Corporis contagio, Brutorumque affectuum repurgemur, eosque superemus, atque regamus; et, sicut decet, pro instruments iis utamur. Deinde, ut nobis adjuncto sis; ad accuratam rationis nostræ correctionem, et conjunctionem cum iis qui verè sunt, per lucem veritatis. Et tertium, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum caliginem prorsus abstergas; ut norimus bene, qui Deus, aut Mortalis habendus. Amen."]

22. And having prayed this prayer, or at least, read it with honest wishing, (which if you cannot, there is no hope of your at present taking pleasure in any human work of large faculty, whether poetry, painting, or sculpture,) we may walk a little farther westwards down the nave, where, in the middle of it, but only a few yards from its end, two flat stones (the custode will show you them), one a little farther back than the other, are laid over the graves of the two great bishops, all whose strength of life was given, with the builder's, to raise this temple. Their actual graves have not been disturbed; but the tombs raised over them, once and again removed, are now set on your right and left hand as you look back to the apse, under the third arch between the nave and aisles.

23. Both are of bronze, cast at one flow--and with insuperable, in some respects inimitable, skill in the caster's art.

"Chefs-d'oeuvre de fonte,--le tout fondu d'un seul jet, et admirablement."[52] There are only two other such tombs left in France, those of the children of St. Louis. All others of their kind--and they were many in every great cathedral of France--were first torn from the graves they covered, to destroy the memory of France's dead; and then melted down into sous and centimes, to buy gunpowder and absinthe with for her living,--by the Progressive Mind of Civilization in her first blaze of enthusiasm and new light, from 1789 to 1800.

[Footnote 52: Viollet le Duc, vol. viii., p. 256. He adds: "L'une d'elles est comme art" (meaning general art of sculpture), "un monument du premier ordre;" but this is only partially true--also I find a note in M. Gilbert's account of them, p. 126: "Les deux doigts qui manquent, à la main droite de l'évêque Gaudefroi paraissent être un défaut survenu à la fonte." See further, on these monuments, and those of St. Louis' children, Viollet le Duc, vol, ix., pp. 61, 62.]

The children's tombs, one on each side of the altar of St. Denis, are much smaller than these, though wrought more beautifully. These beside you are the _only two Bronze tombs of her Men of the great ages_, left in France!

24. And they are the tombs of the pastors of her people, who built for her the first perfect temple to her God. The Bishop Everard's is on your right, and has engraved round the border of it this inscription:[53]--

"Who fed the people, who laid the foundations of this Structure, to whose care the City was given, Here, in ever-breathing balm of fame, rests Everard. A man compassionate to the afflicted, the widow's protector, the orphan's Guardian. Whom he could, he recreated with gifts. To words of men, If gentle, a lamb; if violent, a lion; if proud, biting steel."

[Footnote 53: I steal again from the Abbé Rozé the two inscriptions,--with his introductory notice of the evilly-inspired interference with them.

"La tombe d'Evrard de Fouilloy, (died 1222,) coulée en bronze en plein-relief, était supportée dès le principe, par des monstres engagés dans une maçonnerie remplissant le dessous du monument, pour indiquer que cet évêque avait posé les fondements de la Cathédrale. Un _architecte malheureusement inspiré_ a osé arracher la maçonnerie, pour qu'on ne vit plus la main du prélat fondateur, à la base de l'édifice.

"On lit, sur la bordure, l'inscription suivante en beaux caractères du XIII^e siècle:

"'Qui populum pavit, qui fundam[=e]ta locavit
Hui[=u]s structure, cuius fuit urbs data cure
Hic redolens nardus, famâ requiescit Ewardus,
Vir pius ahflictis, vidvis tutela, relictis
Custos, quos poterat recreabat munere; vbis,
Mitib agnus erat, tumidis leo, lima supbis.'

"Geoffrey d'Eu (died 1237) est représenté comme son prédécesseur en habits épiscopaux, mais le dessous du bronze supporté par des chimères est évidé, ce prélat ayant élevé l'édifice jusqu'aux voûtes. Voici la légende gravée sur la bordure:

"'Ecce premunt humile Gaufridi membra cubile.
Seu minus aut simile nobis parat omnibus ille;
Quem laurus gemina decoraverat, in medicinâ
Lege q[=u] divina, decuerunt cornua bina;
Clare vir Augensis, quo sedes Ambianensis
Crevit in imensis; in coelis auctus, Amen, sis.'

Tout est à étudier dans ces deux monuments; tout y est d'un haut intérêt, quant au dessin, à la sculpture, à l'agencement des ornements et des draperies."

In saying above that Geoffroy of Eu returned thanks in the Cathedral for its completion, I meant only that he had brought at least the choir into condition for service: "Jusqu'aux voûtes" may or may not mean that the vaulting was closed.]

English, at its best, in Elizabethan days, is a nobler language than ever Latin was; but its virtue is in colour and tone, not in what may be called metallic or crystalline condensation. And it is impossible to translate the last line of this inscription in as few English words. Note in it first that the Bishop's friends and enemies are spoken of as in word, not act; because the swelling, or mocking, or flattering, words of men are indeed what the meek of the earth must know how to bear and to welcome;--their deeds, it is for kings and knights to deal with: not but that the Bishops often took deeds in hand also; and in actual battle they were permitted to strike with the mace, but not with sword or lance--_i.e._, not to "shed blood"! For it was supposed that a man might always recover from a mace-blow; (which, however, would much depend on the bishop's mind who gave it). The battle of Bouvines, quite one of the most important in mediæval history, was won against the English, and against odds besides of Germans, under their Emperor Otho, by two French bishops (Senlis and Bayeux)--who both generalled the French King's line, and led its charges. Our Earl of Salisbury surrendered to the Bishop of Bayeux in person.

25. Note farther, that quite one of the deadliest and most diabolic powers of evil words, or, rightly so called, blasphemy, has been developed in modern days in the effect of sometimes quite innocently meant and enjoyed 'slang.' There are two kinds of slang, in the essence of it: one 'Thieves' Latin'--the special language of rascals, used for concealment; the other, one might perhaps best call Louts' Latin!--the lowering or insulting words invented by vile persons to bring good things, in their own estimates, to their own level, or beneath it. The really worst power of this kind of blasphemy is in its often making it impossible to use plain words without a degrading or ludicrous attached sense:--thus I could not end my translation of this epitaph, as the old Latinist could, with the exactly accurate image "to the proud, a file"--because of the abuse of the word in lower English, retaining, however, quite shrewdly, the thirteenth-century idea. But the _exact_ force of the symbol here is in its allusion to jewellers' work, filing down facets. A proud man is often also a precious one: and may be made brighter in surface, and the purity of his inner self shown, by good _filing_.

26. Take it all in all, the perfect duty of a Bishop is expressed in these six Latin lines,--au mieux mieux--beginning with his pastoral office--_Feed_ my sheep--qui _pavit_ populum. And be assured, good reader, these ages never could have told you what a Bishop's, or any other man's, duty was, unless they had each man in his place both done it well--and seen it well done. The Bishop Geoffroy's tomb is on your left, and its inscription is:

"Behold, the limbs of Godfrey press their lowly bed,
Whether He is preparing for us all one less than, or like it.
Whom the twin laurels adorned, in medicine
And in divine law, the dual crests became him.
Bright-shining man of Eu, by whom the throne of Amiens
Rose into immensity, be _thou_ increased in Heaven."

Amen.

And now at last--this reverence done and thanks paid--we will turn from these tombs, and go out at one of the western doors--and so see gradually rising above us the immensity of the three porches, and of the thoughts engraved in them.

27. What disgrace or change has come upon them, I will not tell you to-day--except only the 'immeasurable' loss of the great old foundation-steps, open, sweeping broad from side to side for all who came; unwalled, undivided, sunned all along by the westering day, lighted only by the moon and the stars at night; falling steep and many down the hillside--ceasing one by one, at last wide and few towards the level--and worn by pilgrim feet, for six hundred years. So I once saw them, and twice,--such things can now be never seen more.

Nor even of the west front itself, above, is much of the old masonry left: but in the porches nearly all,--except the actual outside facing, with its rose moulding, of which only a few flowers have been spared here and there.[54] But the sculpture has been carefully and honourably kept and restored to its place--pedestals or niches restored here and there with clay; or some which you see white and crude, re-carved entirely; nevertheless the impression you may receive from the whole is still what the builder meant; and I will tell you the order of its theology without further notices of its decay.

[Footnote 54: The horizontal lowest part of the moulding between the northern and central porch is old. Compare its roses with the new ones running round the arches above--and you will know what 'Restoration' means.]

28. You will find it always well, in looking at any cathedral, to make your quarters of the compass sure, in the beginning; and to remember that, as you enter it, you are looking and advancing eastward; and that if it has three entrance porches, that on your left in entering is the northern, that on your right the southern. I shall endeavour in all my future writing of architecture, to observe the simple law of always calling the door of the north transept the north door; and that on the same side of the west front, the northern door, and so of their opposites. This will save, in the end, much printing and much confusion, for a Gothic cathedral has, almost always, these five great entrances; which may be easily, if at first attentively, recognized under the titles of the Central door (or porch), the Northern door, the Southern door, the North door, and the South door.

But when we use the terms right and left, we ought always to use them as in going _out_ of the cathedral, or walking down the nave,--the entire north side and aisles of the building being its right side, and the south, its left,--these terms being only used well and authoritatively, when they have reference either to the image of Christ in the apse or on the rood, or else to the central statue, whether of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint, in the west front. At Amiens, this central statue, on the 'trumeau' or supporting and dividing pillar of the central porch, is of Christ Immanuel,--God _with_ us. On His right hand and His left, occupying the entire walls of the central porch, are the apostles and the four greater prophets. The twelve minor prophets stand side by side on the front, three on each of its great piers.[55]

[Footnote 55: See now the plan at the end of this chapter.]

The northern porch is dedicated to St. Firmin, the first Christian missionary to Amiens.

The southern porch, to the Virgin.

But these are both treated as withdrawn behind the great foundation of Christ and the Prophets; and their narrow recesses partly conceal their sculpture, until you enter them. What you have first to think of, and read, is the scripture of the great central porch, and the façade itself.

29. You have then in the centre of the front, the image of Christ Himself, receiving you: "I am the Way, the truth and the life." And the order of the attendant powers may be best understood by thinking of them as placed on Christ's right and left hand: this being also the order which the builder adopts in his Scripture history on the façade--so that it is to be read from left to right--_i.e._ from Christ's left to Christ's right, as _He_ sees it. Thus, therefore, following the order of the great statues: first in the central porch, there are six apostles on Christ's right hand, and six on His left. On His left hand, next to Him, Peter; then in receding order, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, Simon; on His right hand, next Him, Paul; and in receding order, James the Bishop, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas and Jude. These opposite ranks of the Apostles occupy what may be called the apse or curved bay of the porch, and form a nearly semicircular group, clearly visible as we approach. But on the sides of the porch, outside the lines of apostles, and not seen clearly till we enter the porch, are the four greater prophets. On Christ's left, Isaiah and Jeremiah, on His right, Ezekiel and Daniel.

30. Then in front, along the whole façade--read in order from Christ's left to His right--come the series of the twelve minor prophets, three to each of the four piers of the temple, beginning at the south angle with Hosea, and ending with Malachi.

As you look full at the façade in front, the statues which fill the minor porches are either obscured in their narrower recesses or withdrawn behind each other so as to be unseen. And the entire mass of the front is seen, literally, as built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. Literally _that_; for the receding Porch is a deep 'angulus,' and its mid-pillar is the 'Head of the Corner.'

Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that is to say of the Prophets who foretold _Christ_, and the Apostles who declared Him. Though Moses was an Apostle, of _God_, he is not here--though Elijah was a Prophet, of _God_, he is not here. The voice of the entire building is that of the Heaven at the Transfiguration, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him."

31. There is yet another and a greater prophet still, who, as it seems at first, is not here. Shall the people enter the gates of the temple, singing "Hosanna to the Son of _David_"; and see no image of His father, then?--Christ Himself declare, "I am the root and the offspring of David"; and yet the Root have no sign near it of its Earth?

Not so. David and his Son are together. David is the pedestal of the Christ.

32. We will begin our examination of the Temple front, therefore, with this its goodly pedestal stone. The statue of David is only two-thirds life-size, occupying the niche in front of the pedestal. He holds his sceptre in his right hand, the scroll in his left. King and Prophet, type of all Divinely right doing, and right claiming, and right proclaiming, kinghood, for ever.

The pedestal of which this statue forms the fronting or Western sculpture, is square, and on the two sides of it are two flowers in vases, on its north side the lily, and on its south the rose. And the entire monolith is one of the noblest pieces of Christian sculpture in the world.

Above this pedestal comes a minor one, bearing in front of it a tendril of vine which completes the floral symbolism of the whole. The plant which I have called a lily is not the Fleur de Lys, nor the Madonna's, but an ideal one with bells like the crown Imperial (Shakespeare's type of 'lilies of all kinds'), representing the _mode of growth_ of the lily of the valley, which could not be sculptured so large in its literal form without appearing monstrous, and is exactly expressed in this tablet--as it fulfils, together with the rose and vine, its companions, the triple saying of Christ, "I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley." "I am the true Vine."

* * * * *

33. On the side of the upper stone are supporters of a different character. Supporters,--not captives nor victims; the Cockatrice and Adder. Representing the most active evil principles of the earth, as in their utmost malignity; still, Pedestals of Christ, and even in their deadly life, accomplishing His final will.

Both creatures are represented accurately in the mediæval traditional form, the cockatrice half dragon, half cock; the deaf adder laying one ear against the ground and stopping the other with her tail.

The first represents the infidelity of Pride. The cockatrice--king serpent or highest serpent--saying that he _is_ God, and _will be_ God.

The second, the infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder or nether snake) saying that he _is_ mud, and _will be_ mud.

34. Lastly, and above all, set under the feet of the statue of Christ Himself, are the lion and dragon; the images of Carnal sin, or _Human sin_, as distinguished from the Spiritual and Intellectual sin of Pride, by which the angels also fell.

To desire kingship rather than servantship--the Cockatrice's sin, or deaf Death rather than hearkening Life--the Adder's sin,--these are both possible to all the intelligences of the universe. But the distinctively Human sins, anger and lust, seeds in our race of their perpetual sorrow--Christ in His own humanity, conquered; and conquers in His disciples. Therefore His foot is on the heads of these; and the prophecy, "Inculcabis super Leonem et Aspidem," is recognized always as fulfilled in Him, and in all His true servants, according to the height of their authority, and the truth of their power.

35. In this mystic sense, Alexander III. used the words, in restoring peace to Italy, and giving forgiveness to her deadliest enemy, under the porch of St. Mark's.[56] But the meaning of every act, as of every art, of the Christian ages, lost now for three hundred years, cannot but be in our own times read reversed, if at all, through the counter-spirit which we now have reached; glorifying Pride and Avarice as the virtues by which all things move and have their being--walking after our own lusts as our sole guides to salvation, and foaming out our own shame for the sole earthly product of our hands and lips.