The capitals of the lower storey (or the aisles and apsidal chapels), are of the Corinthianesque description, intermixed with others of interwoven stalks, etc., and are eminently beautiful. I give a sketch of one of the apsidal chapels, both within (Fig. 34) and without (Figs. 35, 36), as a parallel to those at St. Denis. The comparison will certainly tend to confirm the theory as to its date, as the prevalence of the round arch gives it an appearance of even earlier age; but we shall see from other examples that this evidence is not wholly to be relied on. [Illustration: Figs. 34, 35.--Cathedral of Noyon. Interior and Exterior of one of the Apsidal Chapels.] [Illustration: Fig. 36.--Cathedral of Noyon. Plan of one of the Apsidal Chapels.] The plan of this church is exceedingly beautiful, having apsidal terminations, not only to the choir (Fig. 36), but to each transept. In this it is supposed to have been imitated from the noble transepts at Tournay, with which see Noyon was connected till the year 1153, almost the very year to which both of these works have been attributed, though the transepts at Tournay are still purely Romanesque, and that of the very grandest and boldest kind, excepting only the pointed vaulting; while those at Noyon (which, however, are somewhat later than the choir) are of very light and almost flimsy construction, and though containing many round arches, are, in their whole aspect, of the Pointed style. The church at Noyon is of a construction to which I barely alluded in my former lecture--that in which the aisles are of two storeys, both of which are vaulted. It is customary to call this second storey a triforium, but I should rather term it a _gallery_, for the triforium proper occupies the interval between the roof and the vaulting of the aisles, a space which occurs _over_ these galleries; so that a church of this construction has _four_ storeys--the aisle, the gallery, the triforium, and the clerestory; the triforium being, as its name seems to import, the _third_ storey, though in churches of the more customary type it is only the _second_. This construction was very common at this period in France and Germany, though in England I recollect only one instance--the choir of Gloucester--which, however, is so altered as almost to conceal its construction.[17] The vaulting at Noyon is pointed, but its side cells are, I think, in every case round. The exterior of the apsidal chapels at Noyon is not unlike those at St. Denis, though without its crypt. Like it, it has columns used for buttresses, an idea inherited from those of earlier date--as those at Nôtre Dame du Pont at Clermont, at Issoire, and many others. There are noble portals on the east sides of the transepts in which the carved foliage is of the most gorgeous description, and which were formerly replete with sculpture, every vestige of which is now gone, having been most carefully cut out at the Revolution.