rtal repeated to himself.

"Nor is that all," he went on. "Yet another distinction may be deduced
from these observations.

"The Romanesque is allegorical of the Old Testament, as the Gothic is of
the New.

"The parallel, when you consider it, is exact. Is not the Bible--the
inflexible Book of Jehovah, the awful Code of the Father, well expressed
by the stern and penitential Romanesque; and the consoling, tender
Gospel by the Gothic, full of effusiveness and invitation, full of
humble hope?

"If the symbols are these, it would seem that time very often plays the
part of man's purpose in evolving the completed idea and uniting the two
styles, as, in Holy Scripture, the two Books are united; thus certain
cathedrals present a very curious result. Some, austere at their birth,
are cheerful and even smiling as they are completed. All that is left
of the old Abbey church of Cluny is from this point of view a typical
instance. This, next to that of Paray-le-Monial, which remains entire,
is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent examples of the Burgundian
Romanesque, which, with its fluted pilasters, unfortunately betrays the
distressing tradition of Greek art imported into France by the Romans.
Still, allowing that these basilicas--which may have been built between
the eleventh and thirteenth centuries--are purely Romanesque, as
Quicherat opines, mentioning them as examples, their structure is
already of a mingled type, and the joyousness of the vaulted arch is
already to be seen there.

"Nor have we here, as at Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers, a Romanesque
facade, minutely elaborate, flanked at each wing by a low tower
supporting a heavy stone spire cut into facets, like a pine-apple. At
Paray there is none of the puerile ornament and heavy richness that we
see at Poitiers. The barbaric dress of the little toy church of Notre
Dame la Grande gives way to the winding-sheet of a flat wall, but the
exterior is none the less remarkably impressive with its solemn
simplicity of outline. And those two square towers, pierced with narrow
windows and overlooked by a round tower resting so calmly, so firmly on
an open arcade of columns joined by round arches, are a belfry at once
dignified and rustic, spirited and strong.

"And the august simplicity of the exterior is repeated in the interior
of the church.

"Here, however, the Romanesque has already lost its crushed, crypt-like
character, its obscure aspect as of a Persian ce