rnus, the grave and massive frame, the large
and round vault, the glacial bareness, the majestic simplicity of the
edifices which have the rounded arch for their progenitor. It is not,
like the Cathedral of Bourges, the magnificent, light, multiform,
tufted, bristling efflorescent product of the pointed arch. Impossible
to class it in that ancient family of sombre, mysterious churches, low
and crushed as it were by the round arch, almost Egyptian, with the
exception of the ceiling; all hieroglyphics, all sacerdotal, all
symbolical, more loaded in their ornaments, with lozenges and zigzags,
than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than
with men; the work of the architect less than of the bishop; first
transformation of art, all impressed with theocratic and military
discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire, and stopping with the time
of William the Conqueror. Impossible to place our Cathedral in that
other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted windows and
sculpture; pointed in form, bold in attitude; communal and bourgeois as
political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second
transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immovable and
sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which begins at the
return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX. Notre-Dame de Paris is
not of pure Romanesque, like the first; nor of pure Arabian race, like
the second.

It is an edifice of the transition period. The Saxon architect completed
the erection of the first pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch,
which dates from the Crusade, arrived and placed itself as a conqueror
upon the large Romanesque capitals which should support only round
arches. The pointed arch, mistress since that time, constructed the rest
of the church. Nevertheless, timid and inexperienced at the start, it
sweeps out, grows larger, restrains itself, and dares no longer dart
upwards in spires and lancet windows, as it did later on, in so many
marvellous cathedrals. One would say that it were conscious of the
vicinity of the heavy Romanesque pillars.

However, these edifices of the transition from the Romanesque to the
Gothic, are no less precious for study than the pure types. They express
a shade of the art which would be lost without them. It is the graft of
the pointed upon the round arch.

Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this
variety. Each face, each