In imitation of its prototype, _Notre Dame de Paris_, twin towers rise in stateliness to a height of two hundred and twenty-seven feet, and are visible for a distance of thirty miles. The facade is impressive, the style a modification of different schools adapted to carry out the design intended. Three colossal statues of the Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist are placed over the arcades. The sublime structure belongs to a branch of the Gothic, in the pointed arch type of architecture which was brought home from the Crusades,--a style which has come down from the time-honoured architecture of the old world, when religious thought that now finds expression in books was written and symbolized in stone. From a vestibule at the foot of the western tower, an ascent of two hundred and seventy-nine steps offers a most enchanting view of mountain, river, street and harbour, with such a wilderness of dome, steeple and belfry, that the exclamation involuntarily arises--this is truly a city of churches! On the descent, a pause on a platform gives the opportunity of admiring "_Le Gros Bourdon_," or great bell, and one of the largest in the world. It weighs twenty-four thousand, seven hundred and eighty pounds, and is six feet high. Its mouth measures eight feet, seven inches in diameter. The tone is magnificent in depth and fullness. On occasions such as the death of high ecclesiastics or other solemn events, its tolling is indescribable in its slow, sonorous vibrations. In the eastern tower hang ten smaller bells of beautiful quality, and so harmonized that choice and varied compositions can be performed by the eighteen ringers required in their manipulation. On high festivals, when all ring out with brazen tongues, caught up and re-echoed from spire to spire in what Victor Hugo describes as:--"Mingling and blending in the air like a rich embroidery of all sorts of melodious sounds"--America can furnish no greater oratorio. Its interior, which is profusely embellished and enriched, the spacious, two-storied galleries, in a twilight of mysterious gloom, and an altar upon which so much wealth has been consecrated, combine to make it a temple worthy of any time or race. "Whatever may be the external differences, we always find in the Christian Cathedral, no matter how modified, the Roman Basilica. It rises forever from the ground in harmony with the same laws. There are invariably two naves intersecting each other in the form of a cross, the upper end being rounded into a chancel or choir. There are always side aisles for processions or for chapels, and a sort of lateral gallery into which the principal nave opens by means of the spaces between the columns.