ne arts.

[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. MACLOU. CARVED OAK PANEL FROM THE CENTRAL
DOORS]

The interior is scarcely less interesting, though it has suffered very
much from modern religiosity. Only forty-seven and a half metres long,
by scarcely twenty-five in width, its height is nearly twenty-three
metres in the three bays of the nave, rising to thirty-nine at the
lantern. Its greatest treasure now is the exquisite Escalier des
Orgues, from which the staircase to the organ loft at Ely was
imitated. This was built in 1519 for two hundred and five livres by
Pierre Gringoire, "Maistre Machon de Rouen." In examining more closely
that fragment of it, of which a plaster cast has been made for the
Musee du Trocadero in Paris, I could not help being struck with the
general resemblance of its plan to the more famous staircase which
adorns the exterior of the wing of Francis I. at the great chateau of
Blois in Touraine, which was built almost at the same time, from the
designs (as I have attempted to prove elsewhere) of Leonardo da Vinci,
and was decorated later on with statues by Jean Goujon. This sculptor
was only born the year after St. Maclou's staircase was finished, but
the main lines of the structure are so suggestive of the earlier work
that I cannot but imagine this fine piece of French Renaissance to be
a deliberate copy, by a master strong enough to retain his own
originality of treatment, of the main design that appears in the
courtyard of Blois.

[Illustration: TOUR ST. ANDRE]

Not all the churches of which Rouen is so full can boast even that
measure of preservation which storm and time and the more devastating
hands of man have spared to the three noblest of her religious
monuments. Of St. Andre, for instance, only the tower remains, that
stands alone above the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, like the Tour St. Jacques in
Paris, as an admirable specimen of the later Gothic architecture. A
still finer relic of an older past is that old church of St. Pierre du
Chastel, which is now turned into a stable and coach-house at No. 41
Rue Nationale. Unless you look for it, you will miss altogether the
great statue of David and his harp, which is the one massive
decoration of its strong and simple tower, and the carvings which may
still be traced through the neglect and mutilation of centuries upon
its western door. More degraded still, to even baser uses, is the
Church of St. Cande le Jeune, which has become some kind of an
electric