The three western windows of limpid blue belong, as we have said, to the twelfth century. And we know that by the year 1220 all the great legendary lights of the nave and all the windows of the choir, with the exception of those given by S. Piedmont of Castile and Jeanne de Dammartin, had been placed in the bays. Almost all the original glazing remains. There is, of course, fine thirteenth-century glass in England, at Canterbury for instance, and at Lincoln, whilst Salisbury and York are scarcely to be surpassed for the pale beauty of their silvery grisailles. But we have nothing in this country to compare in quantity, and therefore in effect, with the gorgeous glass which illustrates the great French churches. It is at Reims, Le Mans and Bourges, and most of all at Chartres, that are to be found the largest and most complete and therefore the most gorgeous galleries of the deep, rich mosaic glass of that date. At Chartres, throughout the whole vast expanse of jewelled lights, there is scarcely one that is not early, and there are very few that are not of the thirteenth century. Consider the list of them now as they have come down to us across the ages, in spite of fires and sieges, artists and vandals, cleansing and restoring, in spite of the winds that sweep across La Beauce and the desire of the people to read: in spite even of the eighteenth-century architects and their eagerness to throw daylight upon their abominable deeds. This is the reckoning:--One hundred and twenty-four great windows, three great roses, thirty-five lesser roses, and twelve small ones! And in these are painted 3889 figures, including thirty-two contemporary historical personages, a crowd of saints and prophets in thirty-eight separate legends, and groups of tradesmen in the costumes of their guilds. This is the national portrait gallery of mediæval France! It is one of the most precious documents of mediæval archæology. It is one of the most rich and poetical applications of symbolic art. Amazing, unspeakable are the glories of this unrivalled treasure of stained glass. ‘I gaze round on the windows, pride of France!’ Language is futile in the presence of their rich, deep, gem-like colouring, and the memory of them, faint though it must be, compared with the intense impression conveyed by the immense reality, makes the tongue to falter, the pen to fail. ‘I gaze round on the windows, pride of France!’