I went to my old quarters at the Hôtel de France, and we were shown into the same room I had occupied two years before. We got a light dinner and set off to the cathedral. The first sight of its west front was almost painful after that of Reims, there being certainly a confusion and want of harmony in its parts; while the southern tower being left twenty feet lower than the northern combines to spoil the effect. But I was no sooner in the interior than a full sense of its prodigious superiority to every other building we had seen established itself on my mind; and the impression my first visit two years ago made was more than repeated. Only St. Ouen may enter at all into competition; but the vast proportions of Amiens, combined with the great purity of its style, more than counterbalance the, if any, superior grace and lightness of the other. In the evening we walked out to the west, in the hope of catching a good view of the cathedral, but we could not find the right place. Amiens has nothing else remarkable which fell under our observation. _Saturday, July 26._--After breakfast we went to the cathedral, and passed over all the galleries inside and outside, and the roofs. The best external view from the building itself is on the north tower; the arcs boutants of the choir and the whole arrangement are much more striking than those of the nave. The guide, a very intelligent man, assured us there was no danger apprehended within or without to any part of the building. As far as M. and I could judge, we thought it would last as easily for the next 500 years as it had gone through the last. The view through the eight compartments of the upper chamber of the central clocher is pretty; it seems to fit into so many frames the city and the vast plain in which it stands. We saw the towers of Corbie. In the inside I noticed four particulars of its great superiority, over and above the unequalled proportions of the whole. 1st, The triforium and its windows, especially of the choir; these windows commence on the east side of the transept. In the rest there are arches, which have been filled up with masonry from the beginning. I think this triforium superior to that of St. Ouen, chiefly from the geometric character of its forms; whereas those of St. Ouen approach to the perpendicular. Each bay has six divisions, save the five of the apse, which have four. 2nd, The windows of the clerestory, all of pure geometric tracery. I measured one on the south side of the nave, nineteen feet three inches wide, clear light. 3rd, The north transept end. A rosace above, of most brilliant glass, thirty-six feet in diameter; open gallery of fifteen divisions.