I engaged a young French artist of the name of Le Blanc to accompany me in an excursion to Chalons sur Marne, and Rheims, in order to assist me in sketching the Gothic Architecture of those two places. The road is not very pleasant; the first part lies mostly through a common field, but with trees of a tolerable size on each side: these trees admit of a side and front view of the country, but not an oblique one: from the straightness of the road, the front continues always the same, and the side view escapes in a moment, so that we have no time to dwell on any object. Tired of one everlasting defect, I began to wish the trees altogether out of the way; but before reaching Chalons, I became still more tired of an open country, to which the eye could hardly distinguish any boundary, and heartily wished for the trees again. The surface of the ground is a continued gentle undulation, and whether with or without trees, the straight road makes this form extremely sensible, and it is hardly possible to conceive any thing more dull and wearisome. This character however is not without exception. La Ferté is situated in a very pleasant valley, with scattered trees, steep banks, villages, and distant hills; and a little beyond the town, the road winds round the head of a charming hollow, of no great depth. The hills are steep, and partly woody, and the scene rich, with the mixture of trees, hedges, and cultivated ground; meadows, vineyards, and abundance of orchards, whose delicious fragrance was wafted by a soft and gentle breeze, very different from the cold winds which swept over the naked country. Chalons offered to our curiosity two Gothic churches. The cathedral, of which I have little to say, and that of Nôtre Dame, which both for its antiquity, and the beautiful effects of certain dispositions not usually met with, is extremely interesting. We find here a number of particulars, which generally accompany each other in these ancient French churches: these are, First, square towers, with semicircular headed openings. The mouldings round the windows are often ornamented; but the buttresses (which have little projection) and the surface of the walls, are always unadorned. Secondly, the windows are without tracery, and those of the choir are disposed three together, the middle one being the largest: this arrangement prevails also in Salisbury Cathedral, and in some other English buildings of the same period. Thirdly, detached single columns, which might almost be called Corinthian, support the arches at the back of the choir. Fourthly, the side aisles of the choir are generally in two stories, and frequently of the nave also: the upper story is supposed to have been for the use of the women. Fifthly, there is a gallery or triforium round the choir, above the two stories of the bas chœur, and below the windows, which is not continued along the nave. Sixthly, the end of the choir is circular, not polygonal, and the little chapels which surround it, and which are hardly ever wanting in France, are also terminated in portions of circles: in the later styles of Gothic Architecture both these became polygonal. Seventhly, the mouldings and ornaments externally are more like the Roman, than they are in the Gothic of a later period. Some of these peculiarities may be traced from the ponderous architecture which preceded it, and some may be pursued into the more ornamental style which followed. In attempting to arrange the productions of architecture in a chronological series, we shall find many aberrations in the style of building, from the exact order of dates: a fashion may be continued in one province, some years after it has ceased to be practised in another. Even in the same city the genius of one man may introduce a mode of construction afterwards generally followed, and there may yet be a considerable interval between its first introduction and its general adoption. It may be said then, that the cathedral of Amiens is less early than that of Nôtre Dame at Paris; meaning thereby to infer, not a precise priority of date in the latter, but that it exhibits indications of an earlier stage of knowledge or of taste; and announces a state of art, which, generally speaking, preceded that exhibited in the former.

I think I can now distinguish four styles of French Gothic; the earliest is that which I have just described, as exemplified in the church of Nôtre Dame, at Chalons; the second, that of the thirteenth century, is exhibited on a magnificent scale in the cathedral of Amiens. Here the lower part of the tower is ornamented with niches and statues; the upper part is comparatively plain, and very light. The windows are single, much larger than in the preceding style, divided by mullions, and I believe always rose-headed. There is only one story of aisles, which is nearly, or quite, as high as the two were before. The piers behind the choir, and every where else, except those of the chevet, are bundled, and adorned with rich capitals, representing detached foliage, or sometimes other objects: those of the chevet are sometimes, but not always simple. This word chevet, I have adopted from Whittington, without knowing whether he is correct in the use of it. It means, I think, in common use, the head-board of a bed. The part indicated by it in churches, as I understand it, is the circular or polygonal end of the elevated building forming the great avenue of the church. It is called also by the French the rond point. Our cathedrals rarely finish in this manner, and I do not recollect any appropriate name for the part in our language. Milner, I believe, calls it the apsis, but this is more properly applied to the great semicircular niche of the ancient Basilicas, in which the architecture of the nave was not resumed, as it always is in Gothic churches. This rond point or chevet, is, in this style, always a portion of a polygon, and not of a circle, and the chapels attached to it are also polygonal. The mouldings are much deeper, and more strongly contrasted than in the former style. Thus, at St. Remi, at Rheims, the bases are moulded nearly as in the first of the following figures,

in the cathedral of the same city, as in the last: the first exemplifying the taste of the first period; the second, that of which we are now treating. You may find in the one all the parts which are observable in the other, and in the same order. They are both modifications of the ancient Attic base, but managed very differently in the two examples, and so as to produce very different effects. A similar system of diminished heights, increased projection, and deeper hollows, is carried still further in the succeeding period, but the original disposition is no longer so strictly observed. During the prevalence of this style, the distinct leaves of the capital, imitated however clumsily from the ancient Corinthian, began to give way to running foliage. Besides the edifices already mentioned, the choir at Beauvais exhibits a late example of this style, where some of its characteristics are giving way to those of the third.

In the third style, the roses over the windows were generally succeeded by variously disposed foliage; and even the great rose windows were sometimes displaced for more intricate ornaments, or if the circular form was retained, the winding divisions of its area assumed something of a leafy form. In the former styles, the portals were almost exclusively adorned with shafts, placed in reveals, i. e. in receding angles made for them, thus,

and with statues; or three-quarter columns and statues, were placed against a sloping surface. In this, hollow mouldings are introduced, with a beautiful running foliage, the middle of which is worked in entire relief. The capitals of the piers and shafts are diminished both in number and size; and the shafts themselves form part of the masonry of the piers. This mode of construction is, however, occasionally found in much earlier buildings. There are specimens of this style in Paris, but no good one; and I have not met with any fine building altogether belonging to it.

The fourth style is more arbitrary and fanciful than the others, and less reducible to rule, so that it is difficult to say when it began or ended. Perhaps we should not estimate its full establishment earlier than the fifteenth century; but some buildings of the fourteenth exhibit more or less of the following characteristics. The piers, instead of being composed of a central mass and surrounding shafts, seem to be sometimes bundles of mouldings, with deep hollows between them; sometimes, as in the transept of the cathedral at Beauvais, they present merely an undulating outline, the projecting parts of which have the appearance of ribs, and branch out on the vaulting. The following sketches may serve to explain the general progress of the plans of the piers: in the first style they are sometimes massive cylinders; sometimes as at a. In the second, they are often as at b, but perhaps more frequently have only four attached shafts. The third varies from this towards C, and is at times still more complicated: D and E belong to the fourth style.

I have thought at times that the last mode (E) was adopted from economy. It is posterior in date to the other, and perhaps might be considered as forming a distinct style, but it is not accompanied with such a marked difference in the other parts as to enable me to separate it. The cathedral of St. Wulfram, at Abbeville, offers excellent examples of both sorts of piers. The portal and the five first arches of the nave in that church are the commencements of a most magnificent edifice, with the earlier characters of this fourth style. The remainder is an economical continuation of much inferior architecture, probably of about the year 1500. In the first the piers are formed somewhat in the manner above represented at D, in the other they are as at E; in both, the parts divide, and find their bases at different altitudes; and this peculiarity, and the want of capitals, I consider as the two most distinguishing marks of this style; for the idea of columns being thus lost, the capitals are almost always omitted. This style is also distinguished by more fanciful tracery, by mouldings interlacing with each other, and by the crenated ornament lying before the other ornaments, instead of forming the inner edge of the opening, thus:

the mouldings a a being continued close behind the ornament, and entirely detached from it. There is a crenated ornament in the great doorway at Amiens. It is on the first of a succession of ribs forming the vault of the portal; but though the inner ribs may be seen behind it, it does not lie over, or rather on the mouldings, as in the fourth style, but stands as the termination of a separate part, or division, of the architecture. This crenated ornament is also sometimes placed obliquely. Compound arches of this form

are frequently repeated in the divisions of the windows; and curved gables,

instead of straight ones, in the ornaments of the buttresses and pinnacles. In this style the architects seem to have had an aversion to flat surfaces, as well as to right angles among their mouldings. They were fond of dividing the thickness, and increasing the apparent intricacy, by giving to each half a different ramification; making for instance two sets of mullions and tracery in one opening, one before the other, and totally without correspondence.^[8] They divided the mouldings into separate parts, and placed those of their bases at different heights, one set of vertical mouldings passing between the bases of other vertical mouldings, and the bases of these again, are interrupted by the high plinths of the former bases, as if each penetrated the solid stone, and reappeared again where that did not cover it; many of these fancies are evidently taken from basket work.

The remaining fragment of the church of St. John the Baptist at Soissons, belongs to this style, and the new tower and spire at Chartres form a most beautiful specimen. The shrine work that surrounds the choir at Chartres is also an exquisite miniature example, which I shall mention more particularly hereafter. At about two leagues from Chalons, at a small village called L’Épine, is a little church of the fourteenth century. One tower only has been completed, and crowned with an elegant spire; but had the front been finished, it would offer perhaps the most beautiful specimen of Gothic external composition in the world. The arch of the doorway is large; even more so than the usual proportion in French churches, and its ornaments reach to the top of the rose window over it. The spire is short, with little flying buttresses at its base. It rises from an octagonal turret placed on the tower. Many of the parts themselves may be thought clumsy, but they are beautifully disposed, and every little defect vanishes in the perfection of the whole. Inside also it is an elegant building, if you except the white wash and yellow wash with which it is at present variegated. The front, including the two first arches of the nave, appears to be somewhat posterior to the rest of the church.

If we compare these examples with the buildings in our own country, we shall find the first nearly to correspond with the earliest specimens of what has been called the early English. The eastern parts of the cathedral at Canterbury form the best example I can cite to you; Salisbury Cathedral, and the transept at York, both agree with it in some particulars, while in others they approach to the second French style. Of this, after making some allowance for national differences, Westminster Abbey will furnish you a pretty good idea, or the eastern end of the cathedral at Lincoln. The nave at York would also belong to this style, excepting the vaulting and the west window. Of the third style good examples are rather deficient in England as well as in France; and perhaps it might be considered only as a variety of the second, yet it has a distinct and peculiar character. In our own buildings it is marked by a more complicated arrangement of the ribs on the vaulting; and in general it may be observed, that the English architects paid more attention to the enrichment of this part than the French. After this the two nations held a different course, and I can produce you no parallel to my fourth French style; nor have I met in France with any building like the choir at York, King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, or that of Henry the Seventh at Westminster.

I hope this general view of the subject will enable you to comprehend more easily my accounts of particular buildings, but in order to explain myself more fully, I shall request your attention to a very curious building of early date, which has been the subject of much controversy in France.

The church of St. Germain des Prés claims to be the oldest in Paris.^[9] The first edifice was begun by Childebert in 557, and finished in 558, a degree of expedition which does not announce much magnificence; yet we are told that it was in the shape of a cross, and that the fabric was sustained by large marble columns, the ceiling was gilt, the walls painted on a gold ground, the pavement composed of rich mosaic, and the roof externally covered with gold. This description is by Gislemer, a monk of the abbey, who lived at the end of the ninth century, after the church had been twice burnt by the Normans; and perhaps it rather gives us the author’s opinion of what a church ought to be, than what this once was. The building however does not appear to have been totally destroyed, since Morard, who became abbot in 990, perceiving that the repairs since its ruin by the Normans, had been hastily and slightly executed, determined to pull it down entirely and rebuild it; and he is said to have had the satisfaction of completing it, nearly as it exists at present, before his death, which happened in 1014. We learn from the inscription which was formerly legible on his tomb, that he added to the church a tower, containing a bell (signum): this addition may seem to throw some doubt on the extent of the works executed by him. A dedication took place in 1163, but we cannot suppose the building stood complete and useless for all that period. The old cloister was taken down in 1227, and another begun and finished in the course of the same year by Eudes, the abbot. A new refectory was commenced in 1236, and in 1244 the great chapel of the Virgin was undertaken. These were executed from the designs of Pierre de Montereau, and are cited as proofs of his exquisite taste and skill. The Chapter House, and a beautiful chamber which adjoined it, were constructed about the same time, and the dormitory over them in 1273; but all these parts have been destroyed during the revolution. A new cloister was erected in 1555, but in 1579 the church is described as being much out of repair, and though some restorations and alterations were made in 1592, yet in 1644 it was in a most dilapidated and dangerous condition. The nave was covered with the fragments of the ceiling, and in parts with the tiles of the roof; the pavement was so sunk, that it was necessary to descend to it by steps; and the vaulting of the transept threatened to fall in. The whole of these deficiencies were repaired in the course of two years, the vaulting of the transept was renewed, and the nave for the first time vaulted with stone. The pillars were ornamented with composite capitals, some of the windows enlarged, a new doorway opened to the south, and an alteration made in the disposition of the choir, which seems to have been the only part of the fabric which had been kept in sufficient repair. As it now stands the church is not a very large one. The inside is low and gloomy;^[10] in the nave and part of the choir, the piers consist of four half columns attached to a square pillar, the vaulting of the nave is slightly pointed, but the known recent date of this part renders its form of little consequence, nor is that of the choir of much more historical value. The piers of the chevet are cylindrical. All the arching is round, except that of the chevet, where the French and Whittington say it was pointed from necessity; but this is not very evident: the openings are smaller, but this is not the only way of carrying the arches to the same height. This may be done in the first place by making a Gothic arch formed from two centres, with a larger radius than the semicircular arches, (a pointed arch with the same radius would not rise so high) or with an arch from two centres, and the same radius on a base somewhat more elevated, or lastly, by a semicircular arch on a much more elevated base. The following diagram will explain this better than words.

To judge by the eye, the arches of St. Germain des Prés lie nearly in the middle between the second and third, i. e. between b and c. The base is considerably elevated by a perpendicular line continued above the capital, and the radius of the curve is smaller than that of the semicircle of the arches in the square part. As the architects have in some degree availed themselves of this elevated base, it is evident that they might, by doing it a little more, have preserved the semicircular form, and they must have been conscious that they had it in their power to do so. There is no gallery along the nave, but we find one round the choir, with square-headed openings. It has been much disputed whether this was, or was not the original form. M. Du Fourny contends, that as the first ceiling was of wood, and probably flat, it was highly natural that they should make these openings square-headed; but I think he is wrong. On the two towers at the entrance of the choir, we see openings, the lower parts of which are exactly similar to those abovementioned, and they are divided in the same manner by a little pillar; but these are arched above. It is probable that the arches have been removed in order to make room for the windows of the clerestory above, which in fact come down to them, but of which the lower part is filled up. All the windows are round-headed, (except those of the little chapels) without tracery or division of any sort, ornamented with a billetted moulding externally, and entirely plain within. Those of the chapels are pointed, but with the same ornament, and equally without tracery. There are some Saxon (or Norman) arcades below these windows; but there can be no doubt that these chapels in their present form (exclusively of the vaulting) are somewhat posterior to the church. The vaulting of the aisles is circular, and remarkably arched on the ridge, so as to present nearly a succession of portions of domes. The capitals, as usual in the Norman architecture, are very various, some resemble baskets, others are formed of a collection of figures of animals: some bear a resemblance to the Corinthian, but the masses are smaller in proportion to the size of the capital, and the relief less strongly marked. In this I think the artist judged rightly, and that the looseness of the Corinthian foliage would have been inconsistent with the massiveness of such a pillar. Here are also some decidedly composite capitals under the vaulting, but these were probably introduced in the repairs of 1644. Whittington says, that the proportions of the columns of the choir approach nearly to those of the Corinthian order. The shafts of the latter have full eight diameters in height: those of the former about four and a half.

The western tower is entirely incrusted in a wall of modern masonry except at the top, where we may observe a story of what we call Saxon architecture, with circular headed windows divided by little columns. In the other two towers, which flank the clerestory of the choir, the arches are also semicircular; but the openings are separated by piers, not by columns, and the workmanship of both, though somewhat differing, is more rude than that of the western tower. Judging by the little portion still exhibited, I should conclude this the latest of the three. Yet, as the masonry of these two ruder towers forms an essential part of the edifice, and the aisles are continued through their lower story, without exhibiting any difference of style in that part, we can hardly suppose them prior to the rest, more especially as the arches of the recesses, corresponding with the gallery of the choir, are surmounted with pointed arches. I cannot attribute this form to any alteration, because these arches do not correspond in style with any other restoration of the building. I must therefore be content to attribute the body of the church to Morard, excluding the vaulting, and to doubt about all the rest.

The western portal of this church exhibits the pointed arch. It is at present ornamented with shafts set in reveals, but some of them are restorations, and occupy the place either of statues, or of columns with statues attached to them: above is a series of ten small figures, whose faces have been broken by the Iconoclasts of the eighteenth century. The lower figures have been adduced as proofs of the antiquity of the tower, because they are supposed (two of them at least) to represent the family of Childebert, but the conclusion certainly does not follow from the premises, and I have no doubt that this portal, ancient as it is, was posterior to the body of the church. To make a theory for the chronology of this edifice from the dates we find in books, compared with the evidence of the architecture, we may suppose the bulk of the western tower to have been built in the eighth century, but nothing of this work remains exposed to view: the body of the church, northern tower, and lower part of the southern tower by Morard, between 990 and 1014: the upper part of the southern tower very shortly after. The upper part of the western tower followed. The western portal was certainly posterior to 1028: the reasons for fixing on this date are derived from the cathedral at Chartres. Bulliart does not give any representation of the arch of this doorway, and Whittington’s whole theory seems to indicate that he supposed it semicircular. I shall resume this subject in my observations on Chartres.

I have kept you so long vacillating about St. Germain, that you are tired of it, and so am I. After all, one derives but little satisfactory evidence from a building so rude, and so frequently altered, but it has been strongly pressed into the history of French architecture, and I could not pass it over; and now, after this terrible digression, I will return to the church at Nôtre Dame, at Chalons, an edifice in many respects similar, but of a much more finished construction, exhibiting more of its original form, and to judge from a comparison of the internal evidence, of a date very little later. It is an excellent specimen of what I have called the first style of French Gothic, but it is not entirely free from alterations. This church is said to have had formerly eight towers, and as many spires. I cannot make out the places of more than four; two at the end of the nave, and two at the entrance of the choir, immediately beyond the transept. Such an arrangement seems not to have been unfrequent; but here, both in this building, and in the cathedral, these towers flank the aisles of the choir: at St. Germain’s at Paris they abut upon the clerestory, and the aisles pass through them. On one of the towers in front, there is a wooden spire, the general form of which is an acute octangular pyramid, with a small square pyramid on the spaces left at each angle of the tower. This is the arrangement of the pinnacles over the buttresses of the cathedral of Rheims, but it has nothing to do with the Saxon towers of this building. The style of these towers much resembles the summit of the western tower of St. Germain, but is more ornamental, the semicircular headed windows being divided by groups of little columns, and the parts subdivided by a detached column. The projections are remarkably bold. There is no pointed arch in any of these towers inside or out, except in the upper story of two of them, and here they are without doubt of a later date; and the architecture of the church, which is mostly pointed, is not so united to the towers as to bring in the parts with perfect regularity. There are two stories of aisles to the nave as well as to the choir, and in some points of view the effect of this is so pleasing, that I feel quite reluctant to condemn it. The upper story cuts in places some ancient mouldings. In this vaulting a is the lowest point of the ridge, b is somewhat higher, and c still higher.

The piers of the chevet are circular, with capitals in some degree resembling those of the Corinthian order, and the slender detached columns behind the choir have, still more nearly, Corinthian capitals and proportions. They present something peculiarly graceful and pleasing in their appearance. As they certainly do not appear calculated to sustain the thrust of an arch, it is difficult to shew a reasonable ground for the admiration one cannot help feeling. The union of circular chapels with the circular end of the choir and its aisles, each part having its ornaments exceedingly well disposed, is also a beautiful circumstance in the external view; but it is rather conceived than seen in this instance, as the outside is much encumbered by small houses, and there are some enormous plain buttresses, on the date of which I will not pretend to decide: if they are posterior to the church, the original ceiling must have been of wood. The pavement is almost entirely composed of old monuments engraved in stone, exactly in the manner of the brass plates in England. Many of them represent the architecture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: one or two, from their extreme simplicity, may be taken from the architecture of the twelfth. There are none in which the arch is not pointed, and the trefoil ornament is always exhibited. Amongst, I dare say, two hundred monuments of this sort, I observed only one figure in mail, and that I could not find again on searching for it; and a fragment of one in plate armour: the earliest date is 1201, but the figures are not perfectly clear. There are also tombs of a blue stone, inlaid with white. I longed for Mr. L.; here were materials for an excellent lecture on the progress and changes of dress among our forefathers. I do not know that there is any thing amongst them which might not be found in England, but at the same time I know no place in England where there is such a collection of costumes.

The cathedral at Chalons has a tower at each end of the west side of the transept, a disposition not at all pleasing. Parts of these towers seem to be of the same date with those of Nôtre Dame, but they have been altered and added to in the seventeenth century, at which time the present vaulting, the two spires, and the whole of the west front, were erected by the Cardinal de Noailles. The body of the edifice appears to belong to the thirteenth century. Its nave has four ranges of windows: those of the clerestory; those of the galleries or triforia, great part of which are opened into windows; of the aisles; and of the side chapels. The last form no part of the original design; they are very low, and it would be an improvement to take them away. The slender spires which surmount the old towers, are perforated in all directions; and though they cannot be much praised, have something of a light and elegant effect. There is a considerable quantity of good stained glass in Nôtre Dame, and some likewise in the cathedral, but not so much; and the great rose window at the west end of the latter is entirely without it. I was in the church in the evening when the setting sun shone full into the building, and produced a painful glare, instead of the rich mellow splendor of painted glass in similar circumstances.

Chalons was the first place where I observed in common use the semicircular tiles, which are usually shown to us in Italian landscapes, but they were small and ill laid, and had a crowded effect.

We left Chalons early on the morning of the 30th of April, and for the first six leagues saw nothing but a boundless common field. The diligence does not change horses, but stops to rest them for an hour or two in the middle of the journey. The harness was partly rope, and partly leather, and some of the traces were chains. The rope traces are rather apt to break, because no one thinks of putting new ones, as long as there is any chance that the old ones will hold out the stage, but the chain traces are worse. They are originally slight, but when a link gives way its place is supplied by a bit of leather; this seldom lasts long, and it is not uncommon for it to give way a second time in the same stage, but with the most heroic perseverance the postillions apply another piece of leather. I have not yet met with the phenomenon of an iron chain entirely of leather, but I hope to see some considerable approach to it. The latter half of the ride presented to our view a range of hills, about two miles distant on the left, not very high, but steep and broken, the upper part mostly covered with wood, and the lower with vineyards. These hills form the edge of the materials occupying the Paris basin, which every where exhibit a strong contrast to the rounded swells of the chalk country. There were also some little hills on the right, but these were naked, except a few groups of trees at the base. This, though not a beautiful landscape, was a considerable improvement on the shelterless plain of the morning. There was something at least to amuse the imagination, but it did not last long, and we returned long before reaching Rheims to the usual expanse of common field.