n therewith.

As a type to admire, there is no doubt but that the cathedral that
possesses an apsidal termination of the easterly or choir end, as is
nearly the universal custom in France, has charms and beauties which may
be latent, but which are simply winning, when it comes to picturing the
same structure with the squared-off ends so common in England.

It was Stevenson, was it not, who wrote of the satisfaction with which
one always looks upon the east end of a French cathedral, "flanging out
as it often does in sweeping terraces, and settling down broadly upon
the earth as though it were meant to stay." Certainly nothing of the
sort is to be more admired than the rare view of the choir buttresses of
Notre Dame at Paris, likened unto "kneeling angels with half-spread
wings;" the delicate and symmetrical choir buttresses of Amiens; the
sheer fall of Beauvais; or the triply effective termination of the
one-time cathedral of Noyon, which falls away in three gracefully
gentle slopes to the ground. Again Stevenson's power as a descriptive
writer lingers in our memory. He says, of no cathedral in particular,
"where else is to be found so many elegant proportions growing one out
of the other, and all together in one?... Though I have heard a
considerable variety of sermons, I have never yet heard one that was so
expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis the best preacher itself, preaches day
and night, not only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the
past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like
all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself,--and every man is
his own doctor of divinity in the last resort."

To best estimate the charms and values of these architectural monuments
one should consider; first, the history and topography of their
environment,--_i. e._ as to why and when they may have been planned and
built; secondly, their personality, as it were,--who were their
founders, their patrons, their bishops; thirdly, the functions in which
they may have partaken, any significant events which may have passed
within their walls or centred within their sees; and fourthly, the
artistic beauties of their fabric and its embellishments.

In most cases all of these values are so interwoven and indissolubly
linked with the growth of the structure itself from its very earliest
foundations that it is hardly possible to detail this information in
true chronological order. The picturesque and ro