I was charmed with the very medieval air of Amiens, when we reached there, a bare, gray, cobble-stony city which, however, appeared to be solid and prosperous. Here, as in the rest of France, I found that the conical-roofed tower, the high-peaked roof, the solid gray or white wall, and the thick red tile, fluted or flat, combined to produce what may be looked upon as the national touch. The houses here varied considerably from the English standard in being in many cases very narrow and quite high for their width--four and five stories. They are crowded together, too, in a seemingly defensive way, and seem to lack light and air. The solid white or gray shutters, the thick fluted rain-pipe, and the severe, simple thickness of the walls produced an atmosphere which I came to look upon after a time as supremely Gallic, lingering on from a time when France was a very different country from what it is to-day. Amiens was all of this. It would have seemed hard and cold and bare and dry except for these little quirks of roofs, and the lightness of the spirit of the people. We wandered through high-walled, cobble-paved streets until suddenly we came on the cathedral, soaring upward out of a welter of the dreary and commonplace. I had thought Canterbury was wonderful--but now I knew that I had never seen anything in my life before so imposing as Amiens. Pure Gothic, like Canterbury, it was so much larger; a perfect maze of pinnacles, towers, arches, buttresses and flying buttresses; it soared into the sky--carven saint above carven saint, and gargoyles leering from every cranny. I could scarcely believe that the faith of man had ever reared so lovely a thing. What a power religion must have been in those days! Or what a grip this form of art must have taken on the imagination of some! To what perfection the art of architecture had attained! The loving care that has been exercised in designing, shaping and placing these stones is enough to stagger the brain. I did not wonder when I saw it that Ruskin and Morris had attained to a sort of frenzy over the Gothic. It is a thing for sighs and tears. Both Barfleur and I walked around it in reverent silence, and I knew that he was rejoicing to know that I was feeling what I ought to feel.