present, Joseph the
Carpenter, and a dove descends from heaven to settle on it.

"So Mary is given to Joseph, and the marriage takes place; Messiah is
born, and Herod massacres the Innocents; and there the gospel of the
Nativity ends, and the story is taken up by the Holy Scriptures, which
follow the Life of Jesus to the hour of His last appearance on earth
after His death.

"These scenes, set forth in small simple imagery, serve as a border at
the bottom of the vast presentment which extends from tower to tower
over all three doors.

"Here the scenes are placed which are intended to attract the crowd by
plainer and more visible images; here we see the general theme of this
portal in all its splendour, recapitulating the Gospels and achieving
the purpose of the Church itself.

"On the left we see the Ascension of Our Lord, soaring triumphant on
clouds rendered by a waving scroll held on each side, in the Byzantine
manner, by two angels; while below, the Apostles with uplifted faces,
gaze at this ascension pointed out to them by other angels who have
descended and hover over them, their fingers extended towards the sky.

"The hollow moulding of the arch is filled up with a calendar and zodiac
of stone.

"The right-hand side shows the Assumption of Our Lady, seated on a
throne, sceptre in hand, and holding the Infant, who blesses the world.
Beneath are the episodes of Her life: the Annunciation, the Visitation,
the Nativity, the homage of the shepherds, and the presentation of Jesus
to the High Priest; and the bend of the arch, rising to a point like a
mitre above the Mother, has the mouldings enriched with two lines of
figures, one of archangels bearing censers, with wings closely
imbricated as if with tiles, the other of personifications of the seven
liberal arts, each represented by two figures--one allegorical, and the
other the presentment of the inventor, or of the paragon of that art in
antiquity. This is the same scheme of expression as we see in the
cathedral at Laon; the paraphrase in sculpture of scholastic theology,
and a rendering in images of the text of Albertus Magnus, who, after
rehearsing the perfections of the Virgin, declares that She possessed a
perfect knowledge of the seven arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic,
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music--all the lore of the Middle
Ages.

"Finally, in the middle, the great doorway illustrates the subject round
which the storied carving of the