There are two rare and striking features in this building to which we would draw the reader's notice: the triforium, perhaps the most perfect existing expression of the Brabant architect's ideal of what a triforium should be; and the clustered cylindrical columns beneath the tower, which itself forms, as is the case in most Brabant churches, the first bay of the nave. The treatment of these columns constitutes almost a reversion to the method of treating grouped columns during the first period of Gothic architecture. Each group consists of a central column of the same form and dimensions as the columns which support the other bays of the nave, and four columns attached to it of like form, but more slender. This method of treating groups of columns, though not so rare in Brabant as in England in third period work, is nevertheless sufficiently uncommon, albeit groups of this kind are occasionally to be met with even in the latest Gothic work. Witness the group in the chancel of _Notre-Dame au-delà de la Dyle_ at Mechlin. [Illustration: NOTRE-DAME AU-DELÀ DE LA DYLE.] Symmetry, simplicity, unity, these are the most striking characteristics of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle: the great cylindrical pillars on each side of the central avenue are all made after the same model, the clustered columns which separate the inner from the outer aisles are alike, nearly every capital throughout the building is carved in one fashion, triforium answers to triforium, spandrel to spandrel, arch to arch, each window, alike in aisle and clerestory, beholds in the window opposite the reflection almost of its own fair face. And yet in crystallising the child of his fancy, the designer of this church was able to impress his handiwork with the charm of the picturesque. How did he accomplish this feat? Artist as he was to his finger-tips--all architects were artists in those days, and this man was surely the first of his craft--he knew very well that if a building were perfectly and geometrically symmetrical it would be as cold and as stiff and as lifeless as a statue designed under similar conditions, and he subtly introduced into his ground plan a modicum of irregularity: he made the western bay of his central avenue slightly narrower than the three succeeding bays, these of like dimensions, and the fifth and the last, which are not equal to one another, each of them a trifle broader. The discrepancies are so minute that they are not at first sight perceptible, but their influence extends, it goes without saying, to every part of the building. Further, such was his sublime contempt for the sacrosanct law of precision, that he ventured on something bolder still: he determined not to make the central line of his nave the true central line of the building; in other words, that each of the northern aisles should be narrower than the corresponding aisle on the other side of the church. And here again the dissimilarity is imperceptible, and