Its magnificent portal, with its one finished tower 406 ft. in height, was commenced in 1422, but only finished in 1518, and is more in accordance with the taste of the 16th century than of the original design. Although from the lateness of its date it is impossible to be satisfied either with the outline or the detail, it is still so gorgeous a specimen of art, and towers so nobly over the buildings of the city, as to extort our admiration, and a man must have very little feeling for the poetry of art who can stop to criticise it too closely. The spire at Chartres (Woodcut No. 627) is more elegant in outline, but the design of its base does not accord with that of the upper part, and its effect is injured by the great height of the building to which it is attached. That at Strasburg is very inferior in outline, so is St. Stephen’s at Vienna, and it is not quite clear that the open-work spires of Freiburg and Cologne are not mistakes. The base of the Antwerp spire is perfect in proportion and good in detail; the caprice begins only when near the top, where it constructively can do no harm, and is much less offensive than it would be lower down. It cannot perfect, but taking it altogether it is perhaps the most beautiful thing of its kind in Europe. It is a great question if the second spire, were it completed as originally designed, would add to, or detract from, the beauty of the composition. An unfinished design is always unpleasing, but, on the whole, twin spires, without a very prominent central object, do not seem a pleasing form of design. The church of St. Rombaut at Malines, though very much smaller than that at Antwerp, being only 300 ft. in length internally, and, including the tower, only 385 ft. over all externally, is still a far more satisfactory church in every respect. Indeed, it is one of the finest of those which have round pillars in the nave instead of the clustered columns which give such beauty and such meaning to most of the churches of this age. It was originally designed to have one western spire, which, if completed, would have risen to the height of nearly 550 English feet. It was never carried higher than to the commencement of the spire, 320 ft., and at that height it now remains. Even as it is, it is one of the noblest erections of the Middle Ages, the immense depth of its buttresses and the boldness of its outline giving it a character seldom surpassed. St. Pierre’s, of Louvain, is a worthy rival of these two; for though perhaps a century more modern, or nearly so, it seems to have been built at once on a uniform and well-digested plan, which gives to the whole building a congruity which goes far to redeem the defects in its details. The façade, which would have rendered it the noblest building of the three, has never been completed. It was designed on the true German principle of a great western screen, surmounted by three spires, the central one 535 ft. in height, the other two 430 ft. each.[50]