a few modern sculptured monuments, are the only decorative
attributes to be seen, if we except the Renaissance Chapelle des Fonts
Baptismaux with its sculptured vaulting on the left.

The symmetrical choir is in itself the true charm of St. Mammes. It has
a fine ambulatory, and a range of eight monolithic columns, removed,
says tradition, from an ancient Pagan temple. Their capitals are
ornamented with carven foliage, grimacing heads, and fantastic animals.

A sixteenth-century screen surrounds the choir, but is more like unto a
triumphal arch than a churchly accessory.

The high altar is a comparatively modern work, as may be supposed, and
dates only from 1810.

On the right of the choir is an elaborate Roman doorway, and preserved
in the Chapter Room are five paintings depicting the "Chaste Susanne." A
remarkable collection of reliques is shown by the sacristan, in the
Chapelle des Reliques.

V

NOTRE DAME D'AUXONNE

The small town of Auxonne, lying between Dijon and Besancon, is seldom
thought of in connection with a cathedral church. There is little there
to compel one's attention beyond the fact that the Church of Notre Dame,
of the fourteenth-sixteenth century, is an interesting enough example of
a minor edifice which at one time was classed as a cathedral.

The church is mainly Gothic and has the unusual arrangement of a
Romanesque tower rising above the transept.

_PART V

East of Paris_

I

INTRODUCTORY

No arbitrary territorial arrangement can be made to include with
exactness each and every ecclesiastical division, but, since the Royal
Domain and the immediately adjacent territory includes the major portion
of what are commonly accepted as the Grand Cathedrals, it has been
thought permissible, in the present case, to make a further subdivision
which shall include Boulogne and St. Omer, north of Paris; eastward to
the Rhine and southward to include Dijon and Besancon. A topographer
might not make such a division or arrangement of territory; but no other
seems possible which shall include the region lying between the extremes
of Besancon and Boulogne.

The local characteristics or architectural types differ widely within
these limits, both as to style and excellence. In one way, only, have
they advanced under conditions of unity, that of the establishment of a
Christian church, but, otherwise, now favouring the northern influence
and now the southern. The frontier provin