s conduces
to vague wonderings rather than to peaceful hours of thought. It has not
the dreamy solitude of Vaison, nor the bright beauty of Elne's little
close, nor any of the sunny cheerfulness that brightens the decaying
walls of Cahors.

[Illustration: THROUGH THE CLOISTER-ARCHES.--ARLES.]

The marvel of these Cloisters is the sculptured decorations of their
piers and columns. Those of the XII century are the richest, but each of
the later builders seems to have vied as best he might, in wealth of
conception and in lavishness of detail, with those who went before, and,
even in enforced re-building, the addition of the Gothic to the
Romanesque has not destroyed the harmony of the effect. In all the
sculptors' schemes, the outer of the double columns were given foliated
patterns or a few, simple symbols, and the outer of the piers were
channelled and conventionally cut; and although the fancy of the
sculptor is marvellously subtle and full of grace, his greatest art was
reserved for the capitals of the inner columns and the inner faces of
the piers, which meditating priests would see and study. The symbolism
authorised by Holy Church, the history of precursors of Our Lord, the
incidents of His life and the more dramatic doings of the Saints, all
these are carved with greatest love of detail and of art; and in them
the least arduous priest could find themes for a whole year of
meditation, the least enthusiastic of travellers, a thousand quaint and
interesting fancies and imaginations. It is not so much the beauty of
the whole effect that is entrancing in these Cloisters, nor that most
subtle influence, the good or evil spirit of a past which lingers round
so many ancient spots, as that mediaeval thought and mediaeval genius that
found expression in these myriad fine examples of the sculptor's art.

[Illustration: "A NAVE OF GREAT AND SLENDER HEIGHT."--ARLES.]

[Illustration: "THE BEAUTY OF THE WHOLE."--ARLES.]

Alexandre Dumas has written of Arles: "Roman monuments form the soil;
and about them, at their feet, in their shadow, in their crevasses, a
second Gothic city has sprung--one knows not how--by the vegetative
force of the religious civilisation of Saint Louis. Arles is the
Mecca of archaeologists." It is also the Mecca of those who love to
study people and customs, for, in spite of the railroad, and the
consequent influx of "foreign French," it has preserved the old
graeco-roman-saracenic type which has made