artres is nearer Paris of the two, one is
as accessible as the other; the historical associations of Chartres, as
far at least as Englishmen are concerned, certainly cannot be compared
to those of Le Mans; there is nothing at Chartres to set against the
early military and domestic antiquities of Le Mans; the secondary
churches of Le Mans distinctly surpass those of Chartres; though between
the two cathedral churches the controversy might be more equally waged.
Each has great and diverse merits; but for our own part, we have little
hesitation in preferring Le Mans even as a work of architecture; that it
is a building of higher historic interest there can be no doubt
whatever.

Both cities belong to a class of which we have few or none in England. A
Celtic hill-fort, crowning a height rising steeply from a river-side,
has grown into a Roman city, and the Roman city has remained to our own
times the local capital, alike civil and ecclesiastical. It would be
hardly possible to find a single town in England whose history has run
the same course--a course which is by no means peculiar to Chartres and
Le Mans, but which they share with many other cities in all parts of
Gaul. And Le Mans especially has a local history of unusual interest,
and that history is written with unusual clearness on the site and the
earliest remains of the town. But on that history we shall not at
present enlarge. Our present object is to compare the churches of the
two towns, especially the two great cathedrals, which, as usual, stand
within the earliest enclosure, and therefore upon the highest ground in
their respective cities.

Two or three events connect the cathedral of Chartres with general and
with English history. The first church of which any part survives is
that raised by Fulbert, the famous Bishop of Chartres in the early part
of the eleventh century, and the most diligent letter-writer of the
time. To this work, of which a vast crypt still remains, our great Cnut
was a benefactor. The dignity of the Lord of all Northern Europe has so
deeply impressed the writer of Murray's Handbook that he cuts him into
two, and speaks of the contributions of the Kings of England, France,
and Denmark. In the latter part of the next century, John of Salisbury,
so famous in the great struggle between Henry and Thomas, held the
Bishopric of Chartres. It was the spires of Chartres to which Edward the
Third stretched forth his hands when his heart smote him a