ny Italian churches--a few low,
broad steps to gain the choir, two or three to the high altar. To a
large extent the old pavement remains, though almost worn-out by the
footsteps of centuries. Priceless, though not composed of precious
material, it gains its effect [112] by ingenuity and variety in the
patterning, zig-zags, chequers, mazes, prevailing respectively, in
white and grey, in great square, alternate spaces--the original floor
of a medieval church for once untouched. The massive square bases of
the pillars of a Romanesque church, harshly angular, obstruct,
sometimes cruelly, the standing, the movements, of a multitude of
persons. To carry such a multitude conveniently round them is the
matter-of-fact motive of the gradual chiselling away, the softening of
the angles, the graceful compassing, of the Gothic base, till in our
own Perpendicular period it all but disappears. You may study that
tendency appropriately in the one church of Amiens; for such in effect
Notre-Dame has always been. That circumstance is illustrated by the
great font, the oldest thing here, an oblong trough, perhaps an ancient
saintly coffin, with four quaint prophetic figures at the angles,
carved from a single block of stone. To it, as to the baptistery of an
Italian town, not so long since all the babes of Amiens used to come
for christening.

Strange as it may seem, in this "queen" of Gothic churches, l'eglise
ogivale par excellence, there is nothing of mystery in the vision,
which yet surprises, over and over again, the eye of the visitor who
enters at the western doorway. From the flagstone at one's foot to the
distant keystone of the chevet, noblest of its species-- [113]
reminding you of how many largely graceful things, sails of a ship in
the wind, and the like!--at one view the whole is visible,
intelligible;--the integrity of the first design; how later additions
affixed themselves thereto; how the rich ornament gathered upon it; the
increasing richness of the choir; its glazed triforium; the realms of
light which expand in the chapels beyond; the astonishing boldness of
the vault, the astonishing lightness of what keeps it above one; the
unity, yet the variety of perspective. There is no mystery here, and
indeed no repose. Like the age which projected it, like the impulsive
communal movement which was here its motive, the Pointed style at
Amiens is full of excitement. Go, for repose, to classic work, with
the simple v