clerestory wall.” This internal arrangement appears to have been in favour with the architects of the early French Gothic style. The twenty-eight side chapels are enclosed by some very lovely screens of a later date, which, being erected during the latter part of the sixteenth century, and of Renaissance design, are considered by the ultra-Gothic mind to clash with the rest of the cathedral. Nevertheless they are very beautiful in proportion and appropriateness, reticent in design, and admirable in execution. Viollet-le-Duc, in his review of the cathedral of Lâon, says that it has a certain ring of democracy and is not of that religious aspect that attaches to Chartres, Amiens, or Rheims. From the distance it has more the appearance of a château than of a church: its nave is low when compared with other Gothic naves, and its general outside appearance shows evidence of something brutal and savage; and as far as its colossal sculptures of animals, oxen and horses, which appear to guard the upper parts of the towers, are concerned, they combine to give an impression more of terror than of a religious sentiment. One does not feel, as one regards Notre Dame de Lâon, the stamp of an advanced civilisation, as at Paris or at Amiens. Everything is rude and rough; it is the monument of a people enterprising and energetic and full of great virility. They are the same men as are seen building elsewhere in the neighbourhood--a race of giants. As we approach Rheims from Paris, Lâon, or Soissons, there is very little sign of the vineyards which one associates with the champagne country. The “vine-clad” hills lie to the south in the Epernay district. Here to the north of the city we see only well-watered, well-timbered country, lush meadow-lands, and even market-gardens, reminding us more of the upper reaches of the Thames valley than of a wine-growing country. Rheims chiefly recommends itself to the English mind as the place where the kings of France were crowned. It would seem also as though the fact of being crowned at Rheims was a patent of royalty, so to speak, to the kings themselves, since, as Freeman remarks, their rights were never disputed after their anointing with the _sainte ampoule_. “Every king of the French crowned at Rheims,” he says, “has been at once a Frenchman by birth and the undisputed heir of the founder of the dynasty. Hugh and his son Robert, neither of them born to royalty, were crowned, the one at Noyon, the other at Orléans. Henry the Fourth, the one king whose right was disputed, was crowned at Chartres.” [Illustration: THE RAMPARTS, LÂON]