come to accept as a debased form of art,
are nevertheless possessed of a grandeur and magnificence which in many
worthy examples are entirely lacking. The pair of western towers, of
Romanesque foundation, were developed, not in what one knows as Gothic,
but of the manifest and offensive pseudo-classic order. They are capped,
however, with something more akin to Moorish or an Eastern termination
than Italian. The spire which surmounts the central crossing is, without
question, a reminiscence of much that has been accepted as good Gothic
form in the great central-towered English churches. Up to a certain
point this can hardly be denied; but this rather weak, effeminate spire,
which forms such an unusual attribute of a French cathedral, more than
qualifies its right to a place in the first rank of spires. As for the
rest of the exterior, it is a _melange_ of nearly every known
architectural style. Undeniably fine in parts, like "the curate's egg,"
if a time-worn simile may be permitted, it forms an ensemble which would
preclude its ever being accorded unqualified praise from even the most
liberal-minded and optimistic enthusiast.

By far the most coherent view to be had near by is that from the gardens
of the Archbishop's Palace immediately to the rearward of the choir.
Here the clipped trees, the warm coloured wall, along which the vines
are trained, and what was once a canal, or moat, in the foreground,
combine to present a singularly artistic and pleasing composition.

The north transept, of Bishop le Veneur, is of the superlative degree of
its era (early sixteenth century), bordering upon the profusion of
splayed ornament which so soon after turned to dross, but standing, as
it does, of itself, clearly defined. The gulf was finally crossed when,
less than a half-century later, the incongruous west front with its
ill-mannered towers was built,--in itself a subject worth a deal of
study from the artist who would picture graven stone, but contrasting
unfavourably enough with the heights to which French ecclesiastical
architecture had just previously soared. Here is offered the one unified
Renaissance facade of a French cathedral, welded, as it were, in
unworthy fashion, to a fabric with which it has nothing in common. The
stone-mason here superseded the craftsman; and, with the termination of
the reign of Francois I., and following with that of Henry II., came the
flowering rankness of a degenerate weed, leaving, as evide