paratively recent years has been entirely restored.

Its crowning glory is in the disposition and number of its fine group of
towers: two flank the western facade, and are rectangular at the base,
dwindling to a smaller polygon, which is flanked with corner belfries
and pierced by a tall lancet in the central structure, showing a
wonderful lightness and open effect. A curious and unique feature of
these towers is the addition of four oxen in carven stone perched high
aloft in the belfries. These sculptured animals may be merely another
expression of symbols of superstition, and if so are far more pleasing
than some of the hideous and monstrous gargoyles ofttimes seen. Two
other towers, each 190 feet in height, adjoin the transepts, to each of
which is attached a double-storied, apsidal, ancient chapel. Two
similarly projected towers are lacking. The lantern is square, with a
shallow, conical, modern roof.

In the transition type Romanesque influences were evidently dying hard.
The Gothic was seldom full blown, and at Laon shows but the merest trace
of pointedness to the arches of the western facade, either in the
portals or in the higher openings.

The lack of a circular termination to the choir is but another
indication of a link with a transitory past; an undeniably false note
and one very unusual in France, the choir being of the squared-off
variety so common in England. This may be coincident with the English
custom of the time, or it may be directly due to a local English
influence;--most probably the latter, inasmuch as an English prelate
held the see for a time, and the city, in the early fifteenth century,
was for a number of years in English hands. It is significant that in
some of the smaller churches of the diocese is to be noted the same
treatment.

The rose windows of both the eastern and western facades are Gothic in
inception and treatment, and are unusually acceptable specimens of these
supreme efforts of the French mediaeval builders, the glass therein being
distinctly good, though perhaps not remarkable.

The transepts are rectangular and, with the ensemble of the entire
structure, were their towers completed, there would be produced, not
only a unique example, but a towering effect only a degree less
interesting than the perfectly proportioned pyramidal form so much
admired in the perfectly developed Gothic.

The interior is equally attractive with the exterior, and, though the
church is not by