cause, it certainly is not pleasing to our eyes, and we therefore turn with pleasure to the ruder but more purpose-like inventions of the purely Gothic architects of the same age. [Illustration: 602. View in Aisle at Autun. (From Chapuy, ‘Cathédrales Françaises.’)] [Illustration: 603. View in Nave at Autun. (From Chapuy.)] Among these the province affords no more beautiful specimen than the nave of the church of Vezelay, which possesses all the originality of the Norman combined with the elegance of the southern styles. In this specimen the pier arches are wide and low, there is no triforium of any sort, and the windows are small. The vault is formed by immense transverse ribs, crossing from pier to pier, and forming square compartments, each divided by plain intersecting arches, without ribs, and rising considerably in the centre. This certainly is an improvement on the vault at Cluny, though it cuts the roof too much up into divisions. Perhaps its greatest defect is its want of height, being only 60 ft. in the centre, while the total width is 86 ft. from wall to wall. But the details of the whole are so elegant as in a great measure to redeem these faults. [Illustration: 604. Section of Narthex at Vezelay. (From Didron’s ‘Annales Archéologiques.’)] The narthex, or ante-church, resembles that at Cluny both in its importance and in being somewhat more modern than the church itself. At Vezelay (Woodcut No. 604) it dates from the beginning of the 12th century, while the nave seems wholly to belong to the 11th. It is an extremely instructive example of the progress of vaulting. It has the bold transverse ribs, and the plain intersecting vaults, which are here in accordance with the southern practice, abutted by the arches of the galleries. In the walls of the galleries are windows large enough to admit a considerable amount of light. But the vaults are here fast losing their original purpose. The arch construction supports the solid external roof over the side-aisles, but the central vault is covered by a wooden roof, so that the stone vault has become a mere ceiling, leaving only one easy step towards the completion of the plan of Gothic roofing. This step was to collect the vaults of the side galleries into a mass over each pier, and use them as flying buttresses, and to employ wooden roofs everywhere, wholly independent of the vaults which they covered. Vezelay is one of the most beautiful of the remaining churches of its age in Burgundy, notwithstanding that the choir, which is a chevet in the early pointed style, like those in the northern province, rather disturbs the harmony of the whole. Among the remaining churches of this class, the cathedral at Besançon is one of the few double-apse churches of France, and is, in plan at least, very much more like those we find on the banks of the Rhine.