In France, as in England, there is no one great typical building to which we can refer as a standard of perfection—no Hypostyle Hall or Parthenon which combines in itself all the excellences of the style adopted; and we are forced therefore to cull from a number of examples materials for the composition, even in imagination, of a perfect whole. Germany has in this respect been more fortunate, possessing in Cologne Cathedral an edifice combining all the beauties ever attempted to be produced in pointed Gothic in that country. But even this is only an imitation of French cathedrals, erected by persons who admired and understood the details of the style, but were incapable of appreciating its higher principles. The great cathedrals of Rheims, Chartres, and Amiens, are all early examples of the style, and as they were erected nearly simultaneously, none of their architects were able to profit by the experience obtained in the others; they are consequently all more or less experiments in a new and untried style. The principal parts of the church of St. Ouen at Rouen, on the contrary, are of somewhat too late a date; and beautiful though it is, masonic perfection was then coming to be more considered than the expression either of poetry or of power. Still in Rheims Cathedral we have a building possessing so many of the perfections and characteristic beauties of the art, that it may almost serve as a type of the earlier style, as St. Ouen may of the later; and though we may regret the absence of the intermediate steps, except in such fragments as the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, still between them we may obtain a tolerably clear idea of the form to which French art aspired during its most flourishing age. To avoid as far as may be possible the tediousness of repetition necessary if the attempt were made to describe each building separately, and at the same time not to fall into the confusion that must result from grouping the whole together, the most expedient mode will perhaps be, to describe first the four great typical cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens, and then to point out briefly the principal resemblances and differences between these and the other cathedrals of France. [Illustration: 620. Plan of Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris. (From Chapuy, ‘Moyen-Âge Monumental.’) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.] Of these four, that of Paris is the oldest; the foundation-stone having been laid 1163, and the work carried on with such activity by the bishop, Maurice de Sully, that the high altar was dedicated 1182, the interior completed 1208, and the west front finished about the year 1214.