was found
that the total expense was 9488 livres, 11 sous, and 3 obols
(decimes), or 474 napoleons, 11 sous, 3 decimes of modern French
money, or roughly four hundred sterling English pounds.

For which sum, you perceive, a company of probably six or eight good
workmen, old and young, had been kept merry and busy for fourteen
years; and this that you see--left for substantial result and gift to
you.

I have not examined the carvings so as to assign, with any decision, the
several masters' work; but in general the flower and leaf design in the
traceries will be by the two head menuisiers, and their apprentices; the
elaborate Scripture histories by Avernier, with variously completing
incidental grotesque by Trupin; and the joining and fitting by the
common workmen. No nails are used,--all is morticed, and so beautifully
that the joints have not moved to this day, and are still almost
imperceptible. The four terminal pyramids 'you might take for giant
pines forgotten for six centuries on the soil where the church was
built; they might be looked on at first as a wild luxury of sculpture
and hollow traceries--but examined in analysis they are marvels of order
and system in construction, uniting all the lightness, strength, and
grace of the most renowned spires in the last epoch of the Middle ages.'

The above particulars are all extracted--or simply translated, out of
the excellent description of the "Stalles et les Clotures du Choeur"
of the Cathedral of Amiens, by MM. les Chanoines Jourdain et Duval
(Amiens, Vv. Alfred Caron, 1867). The accompanying lithographic
outlines are exceedingly good, and the reader will find the entire
series of subjects indicated with precision and brevity, both for the
woodwork and the external veil of the choir, of which I have no room
to speak in this traveller's summary.]

6. I have never been able to make up my mind which was really the best
way of approaching the cathedral for the first time. If you have plenty
of leisure, and the day is fine, and you are not afraid of an hour's
walk, the really right thing to do is to walk down the main street of
the old town, and across the river, and quite out to the chalk hill[44]
out of which the citadel is half quarried--half walled;--and walk to the
top of that, and look down into the citadel's dry 'ditch,'--or, more
truly, dry valley of death, which is about as deep as a glen in
Derbyshire, (or, more precisely, the upper part of the 'Happy Vall