The external side elevation of the church is best seen from the cloister, and, with a few words upon this, I will leave this portion of the building. Here, even more clearly than inside, the division of the building into work of different epochs is seen. The two bays nearest the crossing have large coupled windows in the aisle, with parti-coloured voussoirs and jamb shafts. The clerestory is very peculiar in its treatment, and undoubtedly very effective; the windows are of one light in each bay and round-headed and on each side of them above the springing there is a recess in the wall, in the centre of which a detached shaft is placed to carry the cornice. A similar recess and a smaller shaft occur immediately over the arch of the window, and the window-arch being built of alternately dark and light stone, and all the sunk panels being filled in with geometrical patterns, composed in the same way, an extremely rich effect is obtained. Recesses of the same kind in the upper part of the walls occur all along the eastern face of the transept at Le Puy; and between the clerestory windows of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont; S. Paul, Issoire; and commonly in Auvergne. But so far as I can judge from the portion of the cathedral in which they occur, and from the early and simple character of the work itself, I am inclined to believe that it is earlier here than in any of the other examples. It would be of great interest to have some more positive evidence on this and other similar questions of date. But, so far as I have been able to discover, there is no such evidence, and we are left in doubt, therefore, whether this portion of the architecture of Velay came from Auvergne, or whether the reverse was the case; as also whether this external decoration of the fabric is coeval with its first erection, or is a subsequent addition.