nished the lower portion of the edifice, retires
into the background to make way for Sculpture, giving it the fine
opportunity of the doorways; and Sculpture, hitherto invisible at
excessive heights, as a mere accessory, suddenly finds itself supreme.
With due sense of justice it now comes forward where it can be seen, and
the sister art retires, leaving it to address the multitude, giving it
the noblest framework in those arched doorways, imitating a deeper
perspective by their concentric arches, diminishing and retreating to
the door-frames.

"In other instances Architecture does not give everything to one art,
but divides the bounty of her great _facade_ between sculpture and
painting; reserving to the former the hollows and nooks where statues
may find niches, and giving to glass-painters the tympanum of the great
door, where at Chartres the image-maker has displayed the Triumph of
Christ. This we see in the great west doors of Tours and of Reims.

"This plan of substituting glass for bas-reliefs had its disadvantages;
seen from outside--their wrong side--these diaphanous pictures look like
spiders' nets on an enormous scale and thick with dust. With the light
on them the windows are, in fact, grey or black; it is only by going
inside and looking back that their fire can be seen flashing; the
outside is here sacrificed to the inside. Why?

"Perhaps," said Durtal, answering himself, "it is symbolical of the soul
having light inwardly, an allegory of the spiritual life--"

He took in all the windows of the nave with a rapid glance, and it
struck him that their effect was a combination of the prison and the
grave, with their coals of fire burning behind iron bars, some crossed
like the windows of a gaol, and others twisting like black twigs and
branches. Is not glass painting of all arts that in which God does most
to help the artist, the art which man, unaided, can never make perfect,
since the sky alone can give life to the colours by a beam of sunshine,
and lend movement to the lines? In short, man fashions the form,
prepares the body, and must wait till God infuses the soul.

"It is to-day a high-day of light and the Sun of Justice is visiting His
Mother," he went on, as he walked to where the pillared thicket of the
choir ended at the south transept, to look at the window known as Notre
Dame de la belle Verriere, the figure, in blue, relieved against a
mingled background of dead-leaf olive, brown, iris violet,