in
these six Latin lines,--au mieux mieux--beginning with his pastoral
office--_Feed_ my sheep--qui _pavit_ populum. And be assured, good
reader, these ages never could have told you what a Bishop's, or any
other man's, duty was, unless they had each man in his place both done
it well--and seen it well done. The Bishop Geoffroy's tomb is on your
left, and its inscription is:

"Behold, the limbs of Godfrey press their lowly bed,
Whether He is preparing for us all one less than, or like it.
Whom the twin laurels adorned, in medicine
And in divine law, the dual crests became him.
Bright-shining man of Eu, by whom the throne of Amiens
Rose into immensity, be _thou_ increased in Heaven."

Amen.

And now at last--this reverence done and thanks paid--we will turn
from these tombs, and go out at one of the western doors--and so see
gradually rising above us the immensity of the three porches, and of
the thoughts engraved in them.

27. What disgrace or change has come upon them, I will not tell you
to-day--except only the 'immeasurable' loss of the great old
foundation-steps, open, sweeping broad from side to side for all who
came; unwalled, undivided, sunned all along by the westering day,
lighted only by the moon and the stars at night; falling steep and many
down the hillside--ceasing one by one, at last wide and few towards the
level--and worn by pilgrim feet, for six hundred years. So I once saw
them, and twice,--such things can now be never seen more.

Nor even of the west front itself, above, is much of the old masonry
left: but in the porches nearly all,--except the actual outside
facing, with its rose moulding, of which only a few flowers have been
spared here and there.[54] But the sculpture has been carefully and
honourably kept and restored to its place--pedestals or niches
restored here and there with clay; or some which you see white and
crude, re-carved entirely; nevertheless the impression you may receive
from the whole is still what the builder meant; and I will tell you
the order of its theology without further notices of its decay.

[Footnote 54: The horizontal lowest part of the moulding between the
northern and central porch is old. Compare its roses with the new ones
running round the arches above--and you will know what 'Restoration'
means.]

28. You will find it always well, in looking at any cathedral, to ma