named, some of the most admirable description, such as warrant any one, who is at all troubled with feeling for his art, in using strong language about those who neglect them. In Italy we shall find the same careful shutting of men’s eyes to what is good, simply because it belongs to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. Orvieto is left on one side in order to spend time over work not possessed of a tithe of the beauty of that on its cathedral façade; and, indeed, just as the French examples, they appear only too often never even to have been so much as heard of! The study of ancient sculpture in England is not quite so easy, because our old buildings are not so rich in it as are the French; but if one is told--as one is too often--that the art of sculpture in the middle ages was unknown or rude in comparison with its state now, one may fairly refer to some of the modern attempts at its imitation for a proof that this was not the case, as e.g. to the recumbent effigy of Archbishop Howley at Canterbury, or to another, of some more humble individual, in the south transept of Chichester Cathedral; a glance only at which, and a comparison with some of the noble mediæval effigies lying in all the stateliness of their repose by their sides, will at once show any one that it is not merely necessary to put an effigy upon its back with its hands in prayer in order to vie with the effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The position is something, but not all, and requires very much more skill in its treatment than of late years we have had to bestow. From S. Clothilde we went first to the pleasant gardens of the Luxembourg--gardens which always make one envious for London--and thence to Notre Dame. Here I always feel no slight pride in the success which its architect has achieved. Six hundred years have passed over Paris, one effort after another has been made, vast sums of money have been spent, and still this great work stands supreme and separated by a vast distance from all competition, and greatest beyond comparison of all Parisian buildings, not only in its general scheme, but equally in the admirable design and execution of every detail. There is much to be seen and learnt here in every way. The west doors are superb. The planning and construction are very fine, and the series of sculptures behind the stalls full of interest and well worthy of study.