ke
your quarters of the compass sure, in the beginning; and to remember
that, as you enter it, you are looking and advancing eastward; and
that if it has three entrance porches, that on your left in entering
is the northern, that on your right the southern. I shall endeavour in
all my future writing of architecture, to observe the simple law of
always calling the door of the north transept the north door; and that
on the same side of the west front, the northern door, and so of their
opposites. This will save, in the end, much printing and much
confusion, for a Gothic cathedral has, almost always, these five great
entrances; which may be easily, if at first attentively, recognized
under the titles of the Central door (or porch), the Northern door,
the Southern door, the North door, and the South door.

But when we use the terms right and left, we ought always
to use them as in going _out_ of the cathedral, or walking down the
nave,--the entire north side and aisles of the building being its
right side, and the south, its left,--these terms being only used well
and authoritatively, when they have reference either to the image of
Christ in the apse or on the rood, or else to the central statue,
whether of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint, in the west front. At
Amiens, this central statue, on the 'trumeau' or supporting and
dividing pillar of the central porch, is of Christ Immanuel,--God
_with_ us. On His right hand and His left, occupying the entire walls
of the central porch, are the apostles and the four greater prophets.
The twelve minor prophets stand side by side on the front, three on
each of its great piers.[55]

[Footnote 55: See now the plan at the end of this chapter.]

The northern porch is dedicated to St. Firmin, the first Christian
missionary to Amiens.

The southern porch, to the Virgin.

But these are both treated as withdrawn behind the great foundation of
Christ and the Prophets; and their narrow recesses partly conceal
their sculpture, until you enter them. What you have first to think
of, and read, is the scripture of the great central porch, and the
facade itself.

29. You have then in the centre of the front, the image of Christ
Himself, receiving you: "I am the Way, the truth and the life." And the
order of the attendant powers may be best understood by thinking of them
as placed on Christ's right and left hand: this being also the order
which the builder adopts in his Scripture history on th