The great glory, however, of the French churches is their doorways; and beautiful as are those of our own, they make no kind of pretension to vie with those of our neighbours in magnificence. In this respect the architects of the two nations seem to have gone on quite contrary principles; for the French, even in buildings on a secondary scale, introduced portals of prodigious size and extreme richness, while the English, even in buildings on a grand scale, often made their doorways very inconspicuous. Compare, for instance, the façades of Amiens and of Wells: in one the portals are everything, so that you can recollect little else; in the other they are nothing, and you can scarcely recollect their existence; while, in the façade above, the English example is the richer of the two; and the illustrative sculpture which in the one case is expended on the portals, is in the other diffused over the entire front. In England a magnificent portal is of rare occurrence; in France one looks for it as a thing of course. Nothing more glorious than the great French portals can be conceived: the lofty and deeply-receding jambs are divided in their ample height into two portions, the pedestal or basement of which is richly decorated either with diaper-work or with sculptured medallions, or, as at Amiens, with both; and the upper stage contains colossal figures of apostles or other holy men of old, who appear to view with severe and solemn benignity the entering crowd, and to express, by the gravity of their countenances, the caution, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.” In the tympanum are sculptured scenes from Scripture history, the lives of saints, our Lord surrounded by the evangelistic symbols, or perhaps the awful scenes of the final Judgment; and the mouldings of the arch are probably filled with angelic figures, as if the guardians of the faithful worshippers; while this impressive array of imagery is placed in a setting of the noblest and most perfect architecture, and that on a scale well suited to the sublimity of the sentiments expressed. The portals of Nôtre Dame at Paris, of Amiens, and of Chartres, may be instanced as among the most striking examples; but all great churches of the end of the twelfth and of the thirteenth century have the same truly glorious approaches, well calculated to solemnise the minds of those entering by them, and to prepare the way for the overwhelming dignity of the interior. The nearest approach which we have in England to this class of doorway is the south entrance to the [Illustration: Fig. 109.--Western Portals, south entrance, St. Alban’s Cathedral.] eastern part of Lincoln--a truly noble portal;[41] but on the whole, though of a different class, the most dignified approach to any English cathedral is the western porch of Ely.[42] St. Alban’s has had three magnificent western entrances. The smaller ones have been wonderful works of art, though now ruined.