Geologically, Lâon is a limestone island in the denuded plain of Soissonais and Béarnais, and was a Celtic stronghold, as its name, a contraction of _Laudunum_, shows, _dun_ standing for a hill fortress. The town resembles in plan a blunt crescent, one horn of which is occupied by the cathedral and citadel. An electric railway connects the upper with the lower town, and a street from the market-place leads through the Parvis to the very beautiful west façade of the church. Cathedral, strictly speaking, it is no longer, for at Lâon we have another of those instances, always somewhat melancholy, of a deserted bishopstool. Here it is almost more pathetic, when we remember that the Bishop of Lâon was second in importance only to the Archbishop of Rheims himself, and, going back to the days of William Longsword, we find Lâon not only a bishopric, but a capital town--one of the great trio of cities which ruled northern France and fought amongst themselves for the chief mastery. There was the Duke of Paris in his capital; there was the Duke of the Normans, an outsider who by force of arms had settled at Rouen, and was a source of continual trembling to the Parisian duchy; and there was the King of the Franks on the hill-top at Lâon, nominally suzerain of both the others, but really in daily fear lest one or other, or both, should swoop down and storm his hill-fortress and add the royal city of Lâon to lands which in those days went to any man who could get possession of them. Tradition says that St. Béat, who lived towards the close of the third century, gathered his faithful together in a small chapel hewn out of the rock, over which was built later on the cathedral church of Notre Dame. This church, according to M. Daboval, seems to have been still in existence in the fifth century, and was even then of sufficient importance to attract thither many scholars who wished to study the Holy Scriptures. In the twelfth century the cathedral, Bishop’s palace, and many other churches were burnt down, owing to communal troubles during the bishopric of Gaudry. The present cathedral has one specially distinctive feature: the east end, instead of being apsidal, follows the English type of a square termination. There are other churches in the neighbourhood built on a similar plan, which suggests the possibility of English architects having been engaged in their construction. Lâon is, however, in one important feature, a variant from the common arrangement in English churches of the eastern wall. It has there a great circular window only, instead of the immense wall of glass usually adopted in this country. The bays of the aisles are four-storied, in pairs, with alternating piers, and of great beauty, the ribs of the vaulting springing from clusters of light shafts. There is a large ambulatory over the aisles, “which are built up in two stories, both of them vaulted, and the upper vaulted aisle giving valuable abutment to the