The impression the
latter give is of magnitude and mass; this French Cathedral strikes one as
lofty. The exterior is venerable, tho but little time-worn by the action
of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous niches,
almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth century.
The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches; and the
interior seemed to us, at the moment, as grand as any that we had seen,
and to afford as vast an idea of included space; it being of such an airy
height, and with no screen between the chancel and nave, as in all the
English cathedrals.
We saw the differences, too, betwixt a church in which the same form of
worship for which it was originally built is still kept up, and those of
England, where it has been superseded for centuries; for here, in the
recess of every arch of the side-aisles, beneath each lofty window, there
was a chapel dedicated to some saint, and adorned with great marble
sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all
cases, and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation.
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