or curtailed. Its fine towers with modern spires, erected from the proceeds of a "butter tax," are broad of base and delicately and truly proportioned. Its ground-plan is equally worthy, though the choir is not truly orientated. Its general detail and ensemble, one part with another, is all that fancy has told us a great church should contain, and one can but be prepared to appreciate it when it is endorsed, and commented on, by such ardent admirers as De Caumont, Viollet-le-Duc, Corroyer, and Gonsé, those four accomplished Frenchmen, who probably knew more concerning Mediæval (Gothic) architecture than all the rest of the world put together.

From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century there grew up here a work embracing the ogival and the flamboyant, neither in an undue proportion, but as well as in any other single structure known. This well shows the rise, development, and apogee of the style which we commonly call Gothic, but which the French prefer to call "ogival," and which should really, if one is to fairly apportion credit where it is due, be best known as French Mediæval architecture.

Its west façade, with its generous lines, is strongly original. The two towers, pierced with enormously heightened lancets, are indubitably graceful and impressive, while a flanking pair of flying buttresses, with their intermediate piers, form an unusual arrangement in the west front of a French cathedral.

Above the western gable is a curiously graven effigy of King Grollo in stone.

Considered as a whole, the exterior is representative of the best contemporary features of the time, but contains few if any which are so distinctly born of its environment as to be otherwise notable.

The interior vies with the outer portion of the fabric in the general effect of majesty and good design. The triforium is remarkably beautiful and is overtopped by a range of clerestory windows which to an appreciable extent contain good early glass. The easterly end is the usual semicircular apse.

Among the relics of the Cathedral is a crucifix which is supposed to emit drops of blood when one perjures himself before it. It is, perhaps, significant that the people of Finistère, the department which claims Quimper as its capital, have the repute of being honest folk.

The Bishops of Quimper were, by virtue of the gift of le roi Grodlon le Grave, the only seigneurs of the city during the middle ages.

XVI

VANNES

Vannes was the ancient capital of the Celtic tribe of the Veneti, its inhabitants being put to rout by Cæsar in 57 B. C. Afterward it became the Roman town of Duriorigum, and later reverted back to a corruption of its former name. Christianity having made some progress, a council was held, and a bishop appointed to the city, and from that time onward its position in the Christian world appears to have been assured. For centuries afterward, however, it was the centre of a maelstrom of internal strife, in which Armoricans, Britons, Franks, and Romans appear to have been inextricably involved. Then came the Northmen, who burned the former Cathedral of St. Peter. This was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and in no small measure forms the foundation of the present structure, which to-day is the seat of a bishop, suffragan of Rennes.

From this early architectural foundation, to the most florid and flamboyant of late Gothic, is pretty much the whole range of Mediæval architectural style. By no means has a grand or even fine structure resulted. The old choir, suffering from the stress of time, was pulled down and rebuilt as late as 1770. Thus, this usually excellently appointed and constructed detail is here of no worthy rank whatever. The nave and transepts were completed within the hundred years following 1452, and show the last flights of Gothic toward the heights from which it afterward fell. Transformation and restoration have frequently been undertaken, with the result that nowhere is to be seen perhaps greater inconsistencies. The latest of these examples of a perverted industry is seen in the nineteenth-century additions to the tower and the west façade. The result is not, be it said, to the credit of its projectors.

THE END.

Appendices

One may wander from province to province, and continually find reminders, of another manner of building, from that which is recognized as the characteristic local species. This could hardly be otherwise. In the past, as in the present, imitators were not few, and if the adoption of new, or foreign, ideas was then less rapid, it was no less sure. Still, in the main, there is a cohesiveness and limitation of architectural style in France; which, as is but natural to suppose, is in no way more clearly defined than by the churches which were built during the middle ages, the earliest types retaining the influence of massive forms, and the later again debasing itself to a heavy classical order, neither a copy of anything of a pre-Gothic era, or a happy development therefrom. Between the two, in a period of scarcely more than three hundred years, there grew up and developed the ingenious and graceful pointed style, in all its fearlessness and unconvention.

Political causes had, perhaps, somewhat to do with the confining of a particular style well within the land of its birth, but on the other hand, warfare carried with it invasion and conquest of new sections, and its followers, in a measure, may be said to have carried with them certain of their former arts, accomplishments, and desires; and so grew up the composite and mixed types which are frequently met with.

There are a dozen or more architectural styles in what is known as the France of to-day. The Provençal (more properly, says Fergusson, it should be called "Gallia Narbonese,") one of the most beautiful and clearly defined of all; the Burgundian, with its suggestion of luxuriance and, if not massiveness, at least grandeur; the Auvergnian, lying contiguous to both the above, with a style peculiarly its own, though of an uncompromising southern aspect; Acquitanian, defining the style which lies between Provence, the Auvergnat and the Pyrénées, and a type quite different from either. The Angevinian, which extends northward from Limoges to Normandy and Brittany, and northeasterly nearly to Orleans, is a species difficult to place—it partakes largely of southern influence, but is usually thought to merit a nomenclature of its own, as distinct from the type found at Anjou. Turning now to the northern or Frankish influence, as distinct from the Romance countries; Brittany joins to no slight degree influences of each region; Normandy partakes largely of the characteristics of the type of Central France, which is thoroughly dominated by that indigenous to the Isle of France, which species properly might include the Bourbonnais and Nivernoise variants, as being something of a distinct type, though resembling, in occasional details, southern features. This list, with the addition of French Flanders, with its Lowland types, completes the arrangement, if we except Alsace and Lorraine, which favour the German manner of building rather more than any of the native French types.

II

A List of the Departments of France, and of the Ancient Provinces from which they have been evolved.

[*] The greater part of these provinces as they formerly stood were ceded to Germany, May 10, 1871.

III

The Church in France

La France Catholique is to-day divided into eighty-four dioceses, administered, as to spiritual affairs, by seventeen archbishops and sixty-seven bishops. To each diocese is attached a seminary for the instruction of those who aspire to the priesthood. Each chief town of a canton has its curé, each parish its desservant.

[**] The Archbishop of Bordeaux has three suffragans outside France: St. Denis and La Reunion, St. Pierre and Fort de France (Martinique), Basseterre (Guadaloupe).

IV

A List of the Larger French Churches which were at one time Cathedrals and usually referred to as such.

Note.—Those marked H. M. are classed as Les Monuments Historiques by La Commission de la Conservation des Monuments Historiques.

V

Chronology of the chief styles and examples of church building in the north of France from the Romano-Byzantine period to that of the Renaissance

VI

Dimensions and Chronology

NOTRE DAME D'AMIENS

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. MAURICE D'ANGERS

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. VAAST D'ARRAS

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. LAZARE D'AUTUN

Dimensions

Height of spire, 325 feet

Chronology

AUXERRE

Chronology

NOTRE DAME DE BAYEUX

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. PIERRE DE BEAUVAIS

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. ETIENNE DE BOURGES

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. ETIENNE DE CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE

Chronology

NOTRE DAME DE CHARTRES

Dimensions

Chronology

NOTRE DAME D'EVREUX

Dimensions

Chronology

NOTRE DAME DE LAON

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. JULIEN, LE MANS

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. ETIENNE DE MEAUX

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. PIERRE DE NANTES

Dimensions

Chronology

NOTRE DAME DE NOYON

Dimensions

Chronology

ST. CROIX D'ORLEANS

Dimensions