ect, frank, clearly apparent, with the result not
only of reassuring the intelligence, but of keeping one's curiosity
also continually on the alert, as we linger in these restless aisles.

The integrity of the edifice, together with its volume of light, has
indeed been diminished by the addition of a range of chapels, beyond
the proper limits of the aisles, north and south. Not a part of the
original design, these chapels were formed for private uses in the
fourteenth century, by the device of walling in and vaulting the open
spaces between the great buttresses of the nave. Under the broad but
subdued sunshine which falls through range upon range of windows,
reflected from white wall and roof and gallery, soothing to the eye,
while it allows you to see the delicate carved work in all its
refinement of touch, it is only as an after-thought, an artificial
after-thought, that you regret the lost stained glass, or the vanished
mural colour, if such to any large extent there ever were. The best
stained glass is often that stained by weather, by centuries of
weather, [116] and we may well be grateful for the amazing cheerfulness
of the interior of Amiens, as we actually find it. Windows of the
richest remain, indeed, in the apsidal chapels; and the rose-windows of
the transepts are known, from the prevailing tones of their stained
glass, as Fire and Water, the western rose symbolising in like manner
Earth and Air, as respectively green and blue. But there is no reason
to suppose that the interior was ever so darkened as to prevent one's
seeing, really and clearly, the dainty ornament, which from the first
abounded here; the floriated architectural detail; the broad band of
flowers and foliage, thick and deep and purely sculptured, above the
arches of nave and choir and transepts, and wreathing itself
continuously round the embedded piers which support the roof; with the
woodwork, the illuminated metal, the magnificent tombs, the jewellers'
work in the chapels. One precious, early thirteenth-century window of
grisaille remains, exquisite in itself, interesting as evidence of the
sort of decoration which originally filled the larger number of the
windows. Grisaille, with its lace-work of transparent grey, set here
and there with a ruby, a sapphire, a gemmed medallion, interrupts the
clear light on things hardly more than the plain glass, of which indeed
such windows are mainly composed. The finely designed frames of iron
fo