e by the haunting thought of the Cathedral, and saying to
himself as he looked up at the spires,--

"How many varieties there are in the immense family of the Gothic; and
what dissimilarities. No two churches are alike."

The towers and belfries of those he knew rose before him as in those
diagrams on which, irrespective of distance, the buildings are placed
all close together at the same point of view to show their relative
height.

"It is quite true," thought he, "the towers vary like the basilicas.
Those of Notre Dame de Paris are thick-set and gloomy, almost
elephantine; cleft almost from top to bottom by deep bays, they seem to
mount slowly and with difficulty, and stop short, crushed as it were by
the burden of sins, dragged down to earth by the wickedness of the city;
we feel the effort with which they rise, and we are saddened as we
contemplate those captive masses, all the more depressing by reason of
the dismal hue of the louvre-boards. At Reims, on the contrary, they are
open from top to bottom, pierced as with needles' eyes, long narrow
windows of which the opening seems filled with a herring-bone of
enormous size, or a gigantic comb with teeth on each side. They spring
into the air, as light as filigree; and the sky gets into the mouldings,
plays between the mullions, peeps through the tracery and the
innumerable lancets, in strips of blue, is focussed and reflected in the
little carved trefoils above. These towers are mighty, expansive,
immense, and yet light. They are as speaking, as much alive, as those in
Paris are stern and mute.

"At Laon they are more especially strange. With their light columns,
here thrust forward and there standing back, they suggest a series of
shelves piled up in a hurry, crowned merely by a platform, over which
lowing oxen look down.

"The two towers at Amiens, built, like those of the Cathedrals at Rouen
and at Bourges, at different periods, do not match. They are of
different heights, lame against the sky; another that is really
magnificent in its solitude, and putting to shame the mediocrity of the
two belfries lately erected on each side of the west front, is the
Norman tower of Saint Ouen, its summit encircled by a crown. This is the
patrician tower among so many that preserve a peasant air, with bare
heads, or coifs made narrow and square at the top, sloped somewhat like
the mouthpiece of a whistle, such as that of Saint Romain at Rouen, or
rustic, pointed caps like