nary times, whereas that of the lower range of
windows was mostly destroyed.

The choir stalls are of excellent wooden carving, but the high altar is
modern, dating only from 1874. The choir screen, of the fourteenth
century, shows twenty-three reliefs in stone, once richly gilded, but
now tarnished and dull.

[Illustration: _Notre Dame de Paris from the River_]

ST. LOUIS DE VERSAILLES

Allied with the see whose jurisdiction includes the Diocese of the
Department of the Seine, should be considered that of Seine and Oise,
which has its bishop's throne esconced in the Cathedral of St. Louis at
Versailles. To all intents and purposes the town is one of those
conglomerate units which go to make up the "traveller's Paris." More can
hardly be said with due regard to the magnificent edifices with which
this cathedral must naturally be classed. The other attractions of this
"court suburb" are so appealing to the sentimentally inclined that it is
to be feared that such will have little eye for the very minor
attractions of the cathedral. The Trianons, the "Grandes Eaux" and the
"Petites Eaux" are all in all to the visitor to Versailles.

As a matter of fact and record, the Cathedral of St. Louis must be
mentioned, if only to be dismissed in a word. Bourasee refers to it as
"a thing cold, unfeeling, and without life." Truthfully, it is a
remarkably ugly building of the middle eighteenth century, with no
details of note and no memorials worthy of even a passing regard, except
a monument to the Duc de Berry, who died in 1820. What embellishment is
given to the interior, is accounted for by the exceeding ruddy glow shed
by the contemporary coloured glass of the none too numerous windows.

[Illustration: _St. Julien; Le Mans_]

VII

ST. JULIEN; LE MANS

Le Mans, like Chartres, sprang from an ancient Celtic hill fort, and,
through successive stages, has since grown to a Roman, a mediaeval, and
finally a modern city. It crowns the top of a very considerable
eminence, the like of which, says Professor Freeman, does not exist in
England. Like Chartres, too, it has always retained the balance of power
which has made it the local civil and ecclesiastical capital of its
province. It is, too, more closely associated in English minds than is
Chartres, forming as it did a part of the dominion of a common
sovereign; also by reason of being the birthplace of Henry II., and the
burial-place of Queen Berengaria, the wife of R