the sixteenth centuries. From this latter date, however, the style
did not change, but was carried out with that devotion to the original
plan which should have inspired the imitators of Gothic in our own time
to have done better than they have.

The clerestoried choir of Cologne more nearly follows the French variety
than does any other in Germany; indeed no other in Germany in any way
approaches the dignity and harmony of those magnificent _chevets_ which
the French builders, for a hundred years before Cologne, had so proudly
reared.

Metz in a way also reflects the same motive, though that cathedral in
many other respects is French.

The apside is supported by twenty-eight flying buttresses, which again
are an echo from France; this time of Beauvais; and certainly, if they
do not excel the French type, they at least quite rival it in beauty and
grace.

One enters through a magnificently planned vestibule and comes at once,
not into darkness, but into a subdued and religious atmosphere which is
quite in keeping with the spirit of devotion.

There are numerous monuments scattered about, and there are eight
fifteenth-century tapestries from the Gobelins' factory.

The organ-case is unusually ornate and dates from 1572.

The pulpit is not perhaps so elaborate as one might expect from the
general splendour surrounding it, but its sculpture is distinctly good.

In the choir, on the screens above the stalls, is a series of restored
frescoes which came to light after a coating of whitewash had been
removed. They were admirably restored by Steinle in the mid-nineteenth
century and are very beautiful. The decorations depict scenes from the
life of the Virgin and are also reproduced in part in the glass of the
lady-chapel.

A modern altar, in the mediaeval style, has replaced the
seventeenth-century Renaissance work, which is manifestly for the
better, judging from the old engravings that one sees of the former
unlovely altar.

The glass throughout is hardly of the excellence that one might expect,
but the effect is undeniably good. A portion of that in the Chapel of
the Three Kings is a relic of the old Romanesque cathedral, while that
of the north aisle of the nave dates from the time of Duerer.

That of the windows of the Chapel of the Three Kings has been called one
of the most beautiful pages out of the book of the fifteenth-century
glass-worker. The subject referred to is, of course, "The Adoration of
the M