r presents no remarkable features.

To the artist's eye the gem of the building is undoubtedly the fine
grouping and ensemble of the flying buttresses at the rear of the choir.
Most persons, so gifted, have tried their prentice, or their master,
hands at depicting this grand marshalled array of "folded wings," and,
but for the gruesome morgue at its foot, which ever intrudes into the
view, one might almost say it is the most idyllic and most specious view
of a great cathedral that it were possible to have. Were it not for this
charming view of these buttressed walls, with the river flowing at their
feet, the Isle de la Cite would be indeed a gloomy spot, with its lurid
historical past, and its present gruesome association with the "house of
the dead." Indeed, it has been questioned as to whether the choir and
chevet of Notre Dame de Paris is not the most beautiful extant. The Isle
de la Cite was the ancient island village of the Parisii.

A sixteenth-century Dutch writer (De Sauteuil) has delivered himself of
these few lines concerning the Seine at this point:

"When first it enters the metropolis it ambitiously stays its rapid
course, and, being truly enamoured with the place, forgets its way, is
uncertain whither to flow, and winds in sweet meanders through the town;
thence filling the pipes with its waters. That which was once a river,
joys to become a fountain."

To carry the suggestion of contrast still farther one should read Hugo's
"Notre Dame" on the spot. It will give a wonderful and whimsical
conception of those weird gargoyles and devils, which have only to be
seen to awaken a new interest in what this great writer has put forth.
For another sensation, pleasant or otherwise, one might look up a copy
of Meyron's wonderful etching of the same subject, or refer to a most
excellent monograph, written not many years since, entitled "The Devils
of Notre Dame." The interior shows the earliest example wherein the
double aisles of the nave are continued around the choir, and the first
introduction of the quadruple range of openings from the pavement to
the vaulting. The aisles and nave are of almost equal height.

The choir, besides being merely apsided, is, in fact, a true semicircle,
a sufficiently unusual arrangement in an early Gothic church to be
remarked; and, in addition, is exceedingly narrow and lofty. The glass
of the rose windows is of old and gorgeous quality, it having escaped
destruction in Revolutio