Regarding this cathedral, then, as a French, rather than as a Spanish church, and giving up all attempt to make it illustrate a chapter of the real national artistic history, we shall best be able to do justice to it as a work of art. It is, indeed, in almost every respect worthy to be ranked among the noblest churches of Europe. Its detail is rich and beautiful throughout, its plan very excellent, the sculpture with which it is adorned quite equal in quantity and character to that of any church of the age, and the stained glass with which its windows are everywhere filled, perhaps some of the most brilliant in Europe. There are many features in its construction and design which must be referred to somewhat in detail, and to this part of my subject I must now turn. I have already mentioned that the triforium throughout the church was originally glazed. In order to obtain this the aisles were covered with gabled roofs, whose ridges were parallel with the nave; and in order to allow of this being done a stone gutter was formed below the sills of the clerestory windows, and below this again corbels were built into the wall to carry the aisle roofs; cross gutters also of stone were carried through the roof in each bay from the clerestory gutter to the outer wall of the aisles. I cannot say that the effect of this arrangement is good. The eye seems to require some grave space of wall between the main arches and the glazing of the clerestory; and it is difficult to say on what ground the triforium is to be treated as a separate architectural division of the fabric, when it is in truth, as it is here, nothing more than a prolongation of the clerestory. The flying buttresses are rather steep in pitch, and each consists of two arches abutting against very broad buttresses rising from between the side chapels; the lower arch supports the clerestory just at the level of the springing of the groining; the higher a few feet only below the parapet. Two pinnacles rise out of each of the buttresses, and others form a finish to them all round the clerestory, and at the angles of the chapels of the apse. The windows throughout have good traceries. They are all of pure geometrical character; those in the chapels of the choir being of two lights, with large cusped circles in the head, and those in the clerestory of four lights, subdivided into two divisions, similar to the chapel windows, with another cusped circle above. The heads of the lights throughout the windows are uncusped, the cusping being confined to the traceries. The clerestory windows originally had six lights, but the outer lights were rather clumsy additions to the original scheme for four-light windows, and have since been walled up, to give the necessary strength to the groining piers. The general arrangement of the traceries in this part of the church will be best understood by reference to the engraving which I give of one bay of the choir. [Illustration: Bay of Choir, Leon Cathedral.]