st mediaeval cities when viewed to-day; but with no
centre of habitation is it more true than of this city by the
sea,--though in reality it is not by the sea, but rather of it, with a
port always calm and tranquil. It takes rank with Brest as the western
outpost of modern France.

For centuries unconquered, and possessing an individuality of its very
own, this now important prefecture has much to remind us of its past.
History, archaeology, and "mere antiquarian lore" abound, and, in its
grandiose Cathedral of St. Corentin, one finds a large subject for his
appreciative consideration.

[Illustration: ST. CORENTIN _de QUIMPER_ ...]

It is of the robust and matured type that familiarity has come to regard
as representative of a bishopric; nothing is impoverished or
curtailed. Its fine towers with modern spires, erected from the proceeds
of a "butter tax," are broad of base and delicately and truly
proportioned. Its ground-plan is equally worthy, though the choir is not
truly orientated. Its general detail and ensemble, one part with
another, is all that fancy has told us a great church should contain,
and one can but be prepared to appreciate it when it is endorsed, and
commented on, by such ardent admirers as De Caumont, Viollet-le-Duc,
Corroyer, and Gonse, those four accomplished Frenchmen, who probably
knew more concerning Mediaeval (Gothic) architecture than all the rest of
the world put together.

From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century there grew up here a work
embracing the ogival and the flamboyant, neither in an undue proportion,
but as well as in any other single structure known. This well shows the
rise, development, and apogee of the style which we commonly call
Gothic, but which the French prefer to call "ogival," and which should
really, if one is to fairly apportion credit where it is due, be best
known as French Mediaeval architecture.

Its west facade, with its generous lines, is strongly original. The two
towers, pierced with enormously heightened lancets, are indubitably
graceful and impressive, while a flanking pair of flying buttresses,
with their intermediate piers, form an unusual arrangement in the west
front of a French cathedral.

Above the western gable is a curiously graven effigy of King Grollo in
stone.

Considered as a whole, the exterior is representative of the best
contemporary features of the time, but contains few if any which are so
distinctly born of its environment as