ry of red, the limpid
confidence of white, the repeated Hallelujahs of yellow, the virginal
glory of blue, all the quivering crucible of glass was dimmed as it got
nearer to this border dyed with rusty red, the tawny hues of sauces, the
harsh purples of sandstone, bottle-green, tinder-brown, fuliginous
blacks, and ashy greys.

As at Bourges, where the glass is of the same period, Oriental influence
was visible in these windows at Chartres. Not only had the figures the
hieratic appearance, the sumptuous and barbarous dignity of Asiatic
personages, but the borders, in their design and the arrangement of
their colours, were an evident reminiscence of the Persian carpets which
undoubtedly served as models to the painters; since it is known from the
_Livre des Metiers_ that in the thirteenth century hangings copied from
those which the Crusaders brought from the Levant were manufactured in
France, and in Paris itself.

But, apart from the question of subjects or borders, the various colours
of these pictures were, so to speak, but an accessory crowd, handmaidens
whose part it was to set off another colour, namely blue--a glorious,
indescribable blue, a vivid sapphire hue of excessive transparency, pale
but piercing and sparkling throughout, glittering like the broken glass
of a kaleidoscope--in the top-lights, in the roses of the transepts, and
in the great west window, where it burned like the blue flame of
sulphur, among the lead-lines and black iron bars.

Taken for all in all, with the tones of its stone-work and its windows,
Notre Dame de Chartres was fair with blue eyes. He personified Her as a
sort of white fairy, a tall and slender virgin, with large blue eyes
under lids of translucent rose. This was the Mother of a Christ of the
North, the Christ of a Pre-Raphaelite Flemish painter. She sat enthroned
in a Heaven of ultramarine, surrounded by these Oriental hangings of
glass--a pathetic reminder of the Crusades.

And these transparent hangings were like flowers, redolent of sandal and
pepper, fragrant with the subtle spices of the Magian kings; a perfumed
flower-bed of hues culled at the cost of so much blood in the fields of
Palestine; and here offered by the West, under the cold sky of Chartres,
to the Virgin Mother in remembrance of the sunny lands where She dwelt
and where Her Son chose to be born.

"Where could you find a grander shrine or a more sublime dwelling for
Our Mother?" said the Abbe as he pointed