at the sacrifice, to a certain extent, of the sober and simple majesty of the earlier examples. There is, nevertheless, so much beauty and so much poetry in the whole effect that it is scarcely fair to apply the cold rules of criticism to so fanciful and fascinating a creation. Externally the same progress is observable in these four cathedrals as in their interior arrangements. The façade of the cathedral at Paris (Woodcut No. 626) is simple in its outline, and bold and majestic in all its parts, and though perhaps a little open to the charge of heaviness, it is admirably adapted to its situation, and both in design and proportion fits admirably to the church to which it is attached. The flanks, too, of the building, as originally designed, must have been singularly beautiful; for, though sadly disfigured by the insertion of chapels, which obliterate the buttresses and deprive it of that light and shade so indispensable to architectural effect, there yet remain a simplicity of outline, and an elegance in the whole form of the building, which have not often been excelled in Gothic structures. The lower part of the façade at Chartres (Woodcut No. 627) is older than that of Paris, and so plain (it might almost be called rude) as hardly to admit of comparison with it; but its two spires, of different ages, are unsurpassed in France. Even in the southern or older of the two, which was probably finished in the 12th century, we find all the elements which were so fully developed in Germany and elsewhere in the following centuries. The change from the square to the octagon, and from the perpendicular part to the sloping sides of the spire, are managed with the most perfect art; and were not the effect it produces destroyed by the elaborate richness of the other spire, it would be considered one of the most beautiful of its class. The new or northern spire was erected by Jean Texier between the years 1507 and 1514, and, notwithstanding the lateness of its date, it must be considered as on the whole the most beautifully designed spire on the continent of Europe; and, though not equal in height,[38] certainly far surpassing in elegance of outline and appropriateness of design those at Strasburg, Vienna, or even Antwerp. If it has rivals it is that at Friburg, or those designed for the cathedral at Cologne; but were its details of the same date, it can hardly be doubted that it would be considered the finest spire of the three. [Illustration: 627. North-west View of the Cathedral at Chartres. (From Chapuy.)]