d on
the opposite side of the river.

NOTRE DAME.

The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady
at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early
Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style
created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders
have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of
their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the
central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate
and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the
lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump;
prelate, noble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine
figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his
left the damned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to Hell: at
his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the
tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and
the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands.
On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and
damned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the
heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the
army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish
virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them
reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On
the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him,
bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180]

[Footnote 180: This portal suffered much from the vandalism of
Soufflot and his clerical employers of the eighteenth century (p.
252): all that remains of the original carvings in the tympanum is a
portion of the figure of Christ and the angels. The Revolutionary
Chaumette, when it was proposed to destroy the Gothic _simulacra_ of
superstition, protected the carvings on the west portals on the plea
that they related to astronomy, to philosophy and the arts. The
astronomer Dupuis was added to the Commission and the reliefs were
saved.]

We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In
the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the
Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the
Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glor