=Dimensions.=--The length of Notre Dame is 390 ft.; the width at the transepts, 144 ft.; the length of the nave, 225 ft.; and the width of the nave (without the aisles), 39 ft. The height of the vaulting is 102 ft. De Breul, in his _Théâtre des Antiquités de Paris_, mentions a copper tablet which formerly hung against one of the pillars of Notre Dame and gave the dimensions of the cathedral in the following verses:-- Si tu veux sçavoir comme est ample, De Notre-Dame le grand temple, Il y a, dans œuvre, pour le seur, Dix et sept toises[10] de hauteur, Sur la largeur de vingt-quatre, Et soixante-cinq sans rebattre, A de long aux tours haut montées Trente-quatre sont comptées; Le tout fondé sur pilotis, Aussi vrai que je te le dis. [Footnote 10: A “toise” is something over six feet.] The curiosity of these lines excuses the inaccurate statements, comparatively trifling, conveyed in them. Notre Dame, unlike most mediæval churches on the Continent, is almost painfully clean. The gaudy shrines which render some of the most splendid of Italian churches almost grotesque are absent from Notre Dame. The broom and the duster have been too freely used: all that is not appropriate has been too sedulously banished. In the old floor, amongst a multitude of other interesting memorials of the dead, the tombstones of the following were to be found: Philippe (son of Louis VI. and Archdeacon of Paris), _d._ 1161; Prince Geoffrey of England, _d._ 1186; Queen Isabelle of Hainault, _d._ 1189; the dauphin, Louis (son of Charles VI.), _d._ 1415; Louise (mother of François I.), _d._ 1531; and Louis XIII. (his viscera only), 1643. Amongst the more famous ecclesiastics were the following: Eudes de Sully (1208); Etienne II. (1279); Cardinal Aymeric de Magnac (1348); Bishop Pierre d’Orgemont (1409); and Dumoulin, Patriarch of Antioch (1447). In addition there were three Archbishops of Paris who died during the seventeenth century, and Renaud, Archbishop of Sens (_d._ 1616). The substitution of squares of marble for the tombstones of these historic personages admits of absolutely no defence. Let us now consider the =Roof=. Mr. Charles Herbert Moore thus describes it in his _Development and Character of Gothic Architecture_:--