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 separatel