the place, neither wasteful of
his time, nor sparing of it, can suggest as worth looking at, when his
train glides out of the station.

He will see first, and doubtless with the respectful admiration which an
Englishman is bound to bestow upon such objects, the coal-sheds and
carriage-sheds of the station itself, extending in their ashy and oily
splendours for about a quarter of a mile out of the town; and then, just
as the train gets into speed, under a large chimney tower, which he
cannot see to nearly the top of, but will feel overcast by the shadow of
its smoke, he _may_ see, if he will trust his intelligent head out of
the window, and look back, fifty or fifty-one (I am not sure of my count
to a unit) similar chimneys, all similarly smoking, all with similar
works attached, oblongs of brown brick wall, with portholes numberless
of black square window. But in the midst of these fifty tall things that
smoke, he will see one, a little taller than any, and more delicate,
that does not smoke; and in the midst of these fifty masses of blank
wall enclosing 'works'--and doubtless producing works profitable and
honourable to France and the world--he will see _one_ mass of wall--not
blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago,
for the purpose of enclosing or producing no manner of profitable work
whatsoever, but one--

"This is the work of God; that ye should believe on Him whom He hath
sent"!

Leaving the intelligent traveller now to fulfil his vow of pilgrimage
to Paris,--or wherever else God may be sending him,--I will suppose
that an intelligent Eton boy or two, or thoughtful English girl, may
care quietly to walk with me as far as this same spot of commanding
view, and to consider what the workless--shall we say also
worthless?--building, and its unshadowed minaret, may perhaps farther
mean.

Minaret I have called it, for want of better English word.
Fleche--arrow--is its proper name; vanishing into the air you know not
where, by the mere fineness of it. Flameless--motionless--hurtless--the
fine arrow; unplumed, unpoisoned, and unbarbed; aimless--shall we say
also, readers young and old, travelling or abiding? It, and the walls it
rises from--what have they once meant? What meaning have they left in
them yet, for you, or for the people that live round them, and never
look up as they pass by?

Suppose we set ourselves first to learn how they came there.

At the birth of Christ, all this