e whole before going home.

He felt at once happy and awe-stricken, carried out of himself by the
tremendous and yet beautiful aspect of the church.

How grandiose and how aerial was this cathedral, sprung like a jet from
the soul of a man who had formed it in his own image, to record his
ascent in mystic paths, up and up by degrees in the light; passing
through the contemplative life in the transept, soaring in the choir
into the full glory of the unitive life, far away now from the
purgatorial life, the dark passage of the nave.

And this assumption of a soul was attended, supported, by the bands of
angels, the apostles, the prophets, and the righteous, all arrayed in
their glorified bodies of flame, an escort of honour to the Cross lying
low on the stones, and the image of the Mother enthroned in all the high
places of this vast reliquary, opening the walls, as it seemed, to
present to Her, as for a perpetual festival, their posies of gems that
had blossomed in the fiery heat of the glass windows.

Nowhere else was the Virgin so well cared for, so cherished, so
emphatically proclaimed the absolute mistress of the realm thus offered
to Her; and one detail proved this. In every other cathedral kings,
saints, bishops, and benefactors lay buried in the depths of the soil;
not so at Chartres. Not a body had ever been buried there; this church
had never been made a sarcophagus, because, as one of its
historians--old Rouillard--says, "it has the preeminent distinction of
being the couch or bed of the Virgin."

Thus it was Her home; here She was supreme amid the court of Her Elect,
watching over the sacramental Body of Her Son in the sanctuary of the
inmost chapel, where lamps were ever burning, guarding Him as She had
done in His infancy; holding Him on Her knee in every carving, every
painted window; seen in every storey of the building, between the ranks
of saints, and sitting at last on a pillar, revealing herself to the
poof and lowly, under the humble aspect of a sunburnt woman, scorched by
the dog-days, tanned by wind and rain. Nay, She went lower still, down
to the cellars of Her palace, waiting in the crypt to give audience to
the waverers, the timid souls who were abashed by the sunlit splendour
of Her Court.

How completely does this sanctuary--where the sweet and awful presence
is ever felt of the Child who never leaves His Mother--lift the spirit
above all realities, into the secret rapture of pure beauty!