f threats,
seems to descend upon one. Monasticism is indeed the product of many
various tendencies of the religious soul, one or another of which may
very properly connect itself with the Pointed style, as we saw in those
lightsome aisles of Pontigny, so expressive of the purity, the lowly
sweetness, of the soul of Bernard. But it is here at Vezelay, in this
iron place, that monasticism in its central, its historically most
significant purpose, presents itself as most completely at home. There
is no triforium. The monotonous cloistral length of wall above the
long-drawn series of stately round arches, is unbroken save by a plain
small window in each bay, placed as high as possible just below the
cornice, as a mere after-thought, you might fancy. Those windows were
probably unglazed, and closed only with wooden shutters as occasion
required. Furnished with the stained glass of the period, they would
have left the place almost in darkness, giving doubtless full effect to
the monkish candle-light in any case needful here. An almost perfect
cradle-roof, tunnel-like from end to end of the long central aisle,
adds by its simplicity of form to the magnificent unity of effect. The
bearing-arches, which span it from bay to bay, being parti-coloured,
with voussures of alternate white and a kind of grey or green, [134]
being also somewhat flat at the keystone, and literally eccentric,
have, at least for English eyes, something of a Saracenic or other
Oriental character. Again, it is as if the architects--the
engineers--who worked here, had seen things undreamt of by other
Romanesque builders, the builders in England and Normandy.

Here then, scarcely relieving the almost savage character of the work,
abundant on tympanum and doorway without, above all on the immense
capitals of the nave within, is the sculpture which offended Bernard.
A sumptuous band of it, a carved guipure of singular boldness, passes
continuously round the arches, and along the cornices from bay to bay,
and with the large bossy tendency of the ornament throughout may be
regarded as typical of Burgundian richness. Of sculptured capitals, to
like, or to dislike with Saint Bernard, there are nearly a hundred,
unwearied in variety, unique in the energy of their conception, full of
wild promise in their coarse execution, cruel, you might say, in the
realisation of human form and features. Irresistibly they rivet
attention.

The subjects are for the most