n of the styles has justified itself; and passing from one
to the other, the traveller is more impressed by the subtle analogies
they suggest than by the differences of their architectural forms. On
week-days, when the church is empty, they seem to prefigure the two
ideals of the religion which they serve--the stern, self-conquering
asceticism of a Saint Dominic, and the exquisite, radiant visions which
Saint Cecelia saw when heavenly music was vouchsafed her. Or, if one has
time to fancy further, the nave is the epic of its great religion; the
choir, a song which is the expression of most delicate aspiration, most
tender worship. On Sunday, when to this beauty of the godly habitation
is added all the beauty of worship, the music of the oldest organs in
France, slow-moving priests in gorgeous vestments, sweet smelling
incense, chants, and prayers of a most majestic ritual, one is tempted
to read into these stones symbolical meanings,--as if the heavy nave,
where the dim praying figures kneel, were typical of their life of
struggle--and their glances altarward, where all is light and beauty,
presaged their final coming into the presence and glory of God.

[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE OF THE ROMANESQUE.--CARCASSONNE.]

Hunnewell has finely written, that "while the passions and the terrors
of a fierce, rude age made unendurable the pleasant land where we may
travel now so peacefully, ... and while Religion, grown political,
forgot the mercy of its Lord and ruled supreme, ... an earnest faith and
consecrated genius were creating some of the noblest tributes man has
offered to his Creator," and it may be truly said that of these one of
the noblest is the church begun in that most cruel age of Saint Dominic
and de Montfort, in the very heart of the country they laid waste, in
the city which one conquered by ruse and the other tortured by
inquisition, the old Cathedral of Saint-Nazaire in Carcassonne.

[Sidenote: Castres.]

In the VII century Castres, which had been the site of a Roman camp,
became that of a Benedictine Abbey; and around this foundation, as about
so many others, a town grew through the Middle Ages, and came safely to
prosperity and importance. Untrue to its early protectors and in
opposition to the fervent orthodoxy of the neighbouring city of Albi,
Castres became a Protestant stronghold, and its fortunes rose and fell
with the chances of religious wars. It was, perhaps, one of the most
intrepid and obstina