d of chapels, where structural science and beauty of
form are so admirably blended. The choir was so far advanced in 1143
that mass was sung at the high altar during a heavy storm while the
incomplete ribs of the new Gothic vaulting swayed over head. In 1219,
however, Suger's structure was nearly destroyed by fire and the upper
part of the choir, the nave and transepts were afterwards rebuilt in
the pure Gothic of the times, the more active reconstruction being
effected between 1231 and 1281. A visit to the monuments is unhappily
a somewhat mingled experience. Owing to the inscrutable official
regulations in force, the best of the mediaeval tombs are only seen
with difficulty and from a distance that renders any appreciation of
their beauty impossible.[237] The monuments are mainly those claimed
by Lenoir for his Museum at Paris when the decree of 1792 was
promulgated, ordering the "effacement of the proud epitaphs and the
destruction of the Mausoleums, that recalled the dread memories of
kings": they were restored to their original places so far as possible
by Viollet le Duc. The head of St. Denis is said to have been found
when his shrine was desecrated and appropriated by the revolutionists,
and in the cant of the time was brought back to Paris by "a miracle
greater and more authentic than that which conveyed it from
Montmartre to St. Denis, a miracle of the regeneration of opinion,
registered not in the martyrology but in the annals of reason."

[Footnote 237: We cannot too strongly impress on the traveller the
desirability of visiting the admirable Musee de Sculpture Comparee at
the Trocadero where casts of the most important sculpture and
architecture in France, including many of the monuments, here and
elsewhere in Paris, may be conveniently studied.]

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. DENIS.]

We are first led past some mediaeval tombs in the N. transept, then by
those of the family of St. Louis, which include that of his eldest
son, one of the most beautiful creations of thirteenth-century
sculpture. Our own Henry III. who attended the funeral is figured
among the mourners around the base which are only partially seen from
afar. The monument to Louis XII. and his beloved and _chere Bretonne_,
Anne, is next shown. It is in Italian style and was wrought by the
Justes, a family of Tourraine sculptors. The Royal effigies are twice
rendered: once naked in death under a tabernacle and again kneeling in
prayer. Befor