Notre Dame is answered by the buttresses, while above the rose-window another balustrade corresponds to the tall traceried arcade, and the lancets of the belfry stage, double in Notre Dame, are here grouped in threes. Except the buttresses, every feature of the old front has its counterpart, but by the emphasis given to the horizontal lines, and the diminution of the vertical lines, in one instance amounting to an effacement, the whole aspect of the façade is transformed. This is an admirable example of the manner in which a modern architect may employ his inheritance. Another, not less admirable, is the adoption in the transept entrance of the main and most characteristic feature of the famous “triple northern porch” of Chartres, the interpolation of narrow arches between the main portals and below the springing of their arches. This is a still more signal instance of what we have been saying of the power of changing the expression of a feature while retaining its substance, for the northern porch of Chartres is one of the loveliest fantasies of a late and highly ornate Gothic, and it is here translated back into the severer Romanesque, as all the structural features of a fully developed cathedral might be. IV But it is not in its details nor in its features, fine as many of these are, that Mr. Richardson’s design for Albany offers the most inspiring suggestions and the safest model. It is in the sense that pervades it of the all-importance of the relation of its masses, and in the mastery it shows of architectural composition. It was long ago noted as a mark of an artistic work of architecture that it “pyramidizes,” and this implies a single culminating feature to which the parts converge and rise. In the work which first fixed Mr. Richardson’s rank among American architects--Trinity Church in Boston--the most striking merit of the design is the manner in which the parts are subordinated to the noble and massive central tower. In his design for Albany the same subordination is carried through more gradations, and it is both more subtle and more successful. The outer aisles of the nave are secluded altogether from the interior, and set off in the “cloisters” or loggie that are among the most effective features of the building, and among the happiest suggestions its designer derived from the study of Spanish architecture. The roofs of these recede to the walls of the aisle proper, the roofs of which are conspicuous, so that the clere-story is seen above a succession of terraces. At the east end the circle of chapels and the aisle roofs and the sharp slope of the main roof rise in receding masses that converge towards the great central tower, which from the side broadens down upon the flanking towers of the transept. The relation between the western and the central towers is far happier than in the earlier example, and the central tower itself shows as great an advance upon the tower of Trinity as does that upon the tower of