it does an elegance to every edifice where it is found, and finding its parallel alone among the graceful fancies of the Saracenic architects of the best age. [Illustration: 654. Window at Chartres.] CIRCULAR WINDOWS. By far the most brilliant examples of this class in France are to be found among the great circular windows with which the west ends and transepts of the cathedrals were adorned. There is, I believe, no instance in France of the great straight-mullioned windows of which our architects were so fond, and even where the east end terminates squarely, as at Laon, it has a great rose window. There can be little doubt that the circle, so long as it was wholly adhered to, was the noblest form architecturally, both externally and internally; but when the triforium below it was pierced, and the lower angles outside the circle were filled with tracery, making it into something like our great windows, the result was a confusion of the two modes, in which the advantages of neither were preserved. Of the earlier circular windows, one of the finest is that in the western front at Chartres (Woodcut No. 655), of imperfect tracery, like the greater part of that cathedral, but of great size and majesty. Its diameter is 39 ft. across the openings, and 44 ft. 6 in. across to the outer mouldings of the circle. Those of the transepts are smaller, being only 33 ft. across the opening, but show a considerable advance in the art of tracery, which by the time they were executed was becoming far better understood. [Illustration: 655. West Window, Chartres.] [Illustration: 656. Transept Window, Chartres.] [Illustration: 657. West Window, Rheims.] [Illustration: 658. West Window, Evreux.]