been as easily crushed as an
egg-shell in the hands of the lusty Huguenots,--these are the ornaments
of its wall, as true XIV century Gothic as the nave is XII century
Romanesque. It is sadly disappointing to find the Cloisters in
uninteresting ruin, but the church within is so full of great beauty
that all other things are unimportant. The windows glow in the glory
of their glass, and the tombs, especially those of the lower Chapel
of the Bishop, are wonderfully carved. The first burial place of de
Montfort, terrible persecutor of his Church's foes, lies near the High
Altar, and in the wall, there is a rude bas-relief representing his
siege of Toulouse. All these admirable details are puny in comparison
with the interior which contains them. It is to be feared that often,
too little time is spent upon the nave. Even in mid-day, lighted by the
southern sun, its beautiful, severe lines are mellowed but little, and
one turns too instinctively to the Gothic, the greater lightness beyond.
Yet it is a nave of exceedingly fine, rugged strength, and to pass on
lightly, to belittle it in comparison with its brighter choir, is to
wantonly miss in the great round columns, the heavy piers, and the dark
tunnel vaulting, the conception of generations of men who had ever
before their mind--and literally believed--"A mighty fortress is our
God." The choir is of the XIV century, a day when the "beauty of
holiness" seems to have been the Cathedral architect's ideal. Delicate,
clustered columns from which Saints look down, long windows beautifully
veined, a glorious rose at each transept's end, and high vault arches
springing with a slender pointed grace, all these are of exquisite
proportions; and the brilliant stained-glass adds a softening warmth of
colour, but not too great a glow, to the cold fragility of the shafts of
stone. Nothing in the Gothic art of the South, little of Gothic
elsewhere, is more thoughtfully and lovingly wrought than this choir of
Saint-Nazaire, and few churches in the Romanesque form are more finely
constructed than its nave. On the exterior, the Gothic choir and the
Romanesque nave are so different in style it seems they must be,
perforce, antagonistic, that the grace of the Gothic must make
Romanesque plainness appear dull, or that the noble simplicity of the
rounded arch must cause the Gothic arches, here so particularly tall and
slender, to seem almost fragile and undignified. In reality, this
juxtapositio