ilt by Robert of
Luzarches belonging to Amiens, as it is the Assumption by Rubens
belonging to Antwerp. It is scarcely the Cathedral of its patron, Saint
Firmin. It is the Cathedral of Amiens.

[Illustration: "THE DELICATE CHOIR OF SAINT-NAZAIRE."--CARCASSONNE.]

We hear many learned disquisitions on the decay of the art of church
building. Lack of time in our rushing age, lack of patience, decline of
religious zeal, or change in belief, these are some of the popular
reasons for this architectural degeneracy. Strange as it may seem none
of these have had so powerful an influence as the invention of printing.
The first printing-press was made in the middle of the XV
century,--after the conception of the great Cathedrals. In an earlier
age, when the greatest could neither read nor write and manuscripts even
in monasteries were rare, sculpture and carving were the layman's books,
and Cathedrals were not only places of worship, they were the
people's religious libraries where literature was cut in stone.

In the North, the most unique form of this literature was the drama of
the Breton Calvaries, which portrayed one subject and one only,--the
"Life and Passion of Christ," taken from Prophecy, Tradition, and the
Gospels. Cathedrals, both North and South, used the narrative form. They
told story after story; and their makers showed an intimate knowledge of
Biblical lore that would do credit to the most ardent theological
student. At Nimes, by no means the richest church in carvings, there are
besides the Last Judgment and the reward of the Evil and the
Righteous,--which even a superficial Christian should know,--many of the
stories of the Book of Genesis. At Arles, there is the Dream of Jacob,
the Dream of Joseph, the Annunciation, the Nativity, Purification,
Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt; almost a Bible in
stone. In these days of books and haste few would take the trouble to
study such sculptured tales. But their importance to the unlettered
people of the Middle Ages cannot be overestimated; and the incentive to
magnificence of artistic conception was correspondingly great.

The main era of Cathedral building is the same all over France. But with
the general date, all arbitrary parallel between North and South
abruptly ends. The North began the evolution of the Gothic, a new form
indigenous to its soil; the South continued the Romanesque, her
evolution of a transplanted style, and long knew no other. Sh