septs are also much less strongly marked than our
English examples. There are even some great cathedrals (_e.g._,
Bourges) without transepts; and where they exist it is common to find
that, as in the case of Notre Dame de Paris, they do not project
beyond the line of the side walls, so that, although fairly
well-marked in the exterior and interior of the building, they add
nothing to its floor-space. The eastern end of a French cathedral (and
indeed of French churches generally, with very few exceptions) is
terminated in an apse. When, as is frequently the case, this apse is
encircled by a ring of chapels, with flying buttresses on several
stages rising from among them, the whole arrangement is called a
_chevet_, and very striking and busy is the appearance which it
presents.

_Walls, Towers, and Gables._

The walls are rarely built of any other material than stone, and much
splendid masonry is to be found in France. Low towers are often to be
met with, and so are projecting staircase turrets of polygonal or
circular forms. The facades of cathedrals, including ends of transepts
as well as west fronts, are most striking, and often magnificently
enriched. It is an interesting study to examine a series of these
fronts, each a little more advanced than the last, as for example
Notre Dame (Fig. 33), the transept at Rouen, Amiens (Fig. 35), and
Rheims, and to note how the horizontal bands and other level
features grow less and less conspicuous, while the vertical ones are
more and more strongly marked; showing an increasing desire, not only
to make the buildings lofty, but to suppress everything which might
interfere with their looking as high as possible.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--AMIENS CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT. (1220-1272.)]

_Columns and Piers._

The column is a greater favourite than the pier in France, as has
already been said. Sometimes, where the supports of the main arcade
are really piers, they are built like circular shafts of large size;
and even when they have no capital (as was the case in third-pointed
examples), these piers still retain much of the air of solid strength
which belongs to the column, and which the French architects appear to
have valued highly. In cases where a series of mouldings has to be
carried--as for example when the main arcade of a building is richly
moulded--English architects would usually have provided a distinct
shaft for each little group (or as Willis named them order), in