The Spell of the Heart of France

art has given us. It rises with a flight so magnificent and so perfectly rhythmical that at the first glance one might think it a growth of nature; it see

the pointed turrets and the frail columns which flank the edifice, taper off its structure, precipitate its flight and make it impossible to perceive the point at which the square tower is transformed i

es, all seem to be arranged by a mysterious artist, who persists in incessantly bringing back our glance to the dom

the refined elegance of the fifteenth century; yonder, a wall decorated with pilasters and medallions, or a noble brick and stone crow-stepped fa?ade, witness the opulence of the citizenry at the time of the second Renaissance; there are admirable remains of hospitals of the thirteenth century; heavy Tuscan porches stand before beautiful h?tels of the eighteenth: and all this rich and varied architecture is an excellent commentary on the words of Je

ign which represents three scholars arguing with an ape would no longer have any flavor if we had to seek for it in some Place Garibaldi; it is delicious when found at Unicom Crossways. On the old Town Hall, an inscription continues to indicate the position of the rabbit and broom market; and it is very fine that the name of Louis Blanc or of Gambetta has not been given to the Street of the Cheese Makers, were it only out of consideration for that excellent Jean de Jandun who, decidedly, well knew how to appreciate all the merits of Senlis, for he wrote in regard to the cheeses of his native town: "The sweetest milk, a butter without admi

urn: the spire, always the spire of Notre Dame. It appears suddenly between two gables. It projects above the old brownish tile roofs. Above the flower-covered walls of the gardens it is framed between clumps of lilac and horse-chestnut. It overlook

re a fireplace of the thirteenth century, towers, casements.... But how completely indifferent all this archaeology leaves us when we behold the spire of the cathedral emerging from the greenery of the garden! The great trees conceal all the rest of the church. We see only, mounting into the full heaven, the golden pyramid, still f

et and the gable of a fifteenth-century house. One might suppose it to be the deserted and well-kept courtyard of a Flemish béguinage. In this ancient frame, in the midst of this solitude, the cathedral preserves all its youth. Here there is a perfect unison between the building and its surroundings. Not only are the trees, the walls, the houses, in harmo

an incomparable edifice even if it

uched neither the ruins of the charming calendar, whose popular scenes unfold themselves above the kings and the prophets, nor the marvelous statuettes, still almost intact, which adorn the voussoirs of the portal, nor the bas-reliefs of the tympan where angels huddle about the dead Virgin, that some may carry to heaven her body and others her soul. As to the Coronation of the Virgin, which occupies the upper part of the tympan, it also has been respected alike by iconoclasts and by restorers. Of all the imag

fire at the beginning of the sixteenth. It is possible to discover in the cathedral of today the traces of these various reconstructions. But, however interesting it ma

is period that the church took the form and t

ig

XII showed himself favorable to the request. Nobles, citizens and merchants contributed to the work. The spire was made firm. The walls of the nave were raised, the vaulting was reconstructed, the transept was built, and there were constructed at the north and south sides those two finely chiseled portals which give to Notre Dame de Senlis so much elegance and sumptuousness. How, without diminishing the pure beauty of the old cathedral, the architects of the Renaissan

the balustrades in Renaissance style, which garnish the upper galleries, shock us for a moment. The discrepancy in the st

all the lines of the monument inside and out. Two statues of the thirteenth century, one representing Saint Louis and the other Saint Levain, have been ridiculously colored, so that one

ased January 30, 1799.-This church owes to him its restoration and its embellishment. The grateful parishioners have erected this monum

al. But the sacristan of Notre Dame de Senlis dwells very far from his church, on the banks of the Nonette, in the place called the Asses' Backs; he goes home before eleven o'clock in the morning to get his lunch, and is never seen again at the cathedral, acco

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t a sky of pale blue; remnants of ramparts starred with golden flowers; great clumps of verdure rising everywhere among the rosy roofs, and finally the great belfry dominating all, the little town, the little valley, the fields which rise a

announce that this truly aristocratic to