for Gothic lace-work, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. This is
the donkey's kick at the dying lion. It is the old oak, decaying at the
crown, pierced, bitten and devoured by caterpillars.
How different from the time when Robert Cenalis, comparing Notre Dame at
Paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus; "so loudly boasted by the
ancient pagans," which immortalized Herostratus, held the cathedral of the
Gauls to be "more excellent in length, breadth, height, and structure!"
Notre Dame at Paris is not, however, what can be called a complete,
definite monument, belonging to a class. It is neither a Roman nor a
Gothic church. The edifice is not a typical one. It has not, like the
abbey at Tournus, the sober massive breadth, the round expansive arch, the
icy bareness, the majestic simplicity of those buildings based on the
semicircular arch. It is not, like the cathedral at Bourges, the
magnificent, airy, multiform, bushy, sturdy, efflorescent product of the
pointed arch.
It is impossible to class it with that antique order of dark, mysterious,
low-studded churches, apparently crusht by the semicircular arch--almost
Egyptian, save for the ceiling; all hieroglyphic, all sacerdotal, all
symbolic, more loaded in their ornamentation with lozenges and zigzags
than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with
men; less the work of the architect than of the bishop; the first
transformation of the art, bearing the deep impress of theocratic and
military discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire, and ceasing with
William the Conqueror.
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