It is not known at this time of writing (May, 1917) whether Amiens has suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans. Perhaps without its destruction there have been sufficient crimes committed against the church in the name of military necessity, and it thus has been spared. For some reason or other Ruskin was not overenthusiastic over Amiens. He described the beautiful "flèche," which rose so gracefully from the great bulk against the sky, as "merely the caprice of a village carpenter," and he further declared that the Cathedral of Amiens is "in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative splendor to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure sculpture to Bourges." On the other hand, the great Viollet-le-Duc called it the "Parthenon of Gothic Architecture." Of the two authorities, one may safely pin one's faith to the opinion of the eminent Frenchman, who spent his life in restoring great works rather than in abusing them. Whewell says: "The mind is filled and elevated by the enormous height of the building (140 feet), its lofty and many colored clerestory, its grand proportions, its noble simplicity. The proportion of height to breadth is almost double that to which we are accustomed in English cathedrals; the lofty solid piers, which bear up this height, are far more massive in their plan than the light and graceful clusters of our English churches, each of them being a cylinder with four engaged columns. The polygonal E apse is a feature which we seldom see, and nowhere so exhibited, and on such a scale; and the peculiar French arrangement which puts the walls at the outside edge of the buttresses, and thus forms interior chapels all around, in addition to the aisles, gives a vast multiplicity of perspective below, which fills out the idea produced by the gigantic height of the center. Such terms will not be extravagant when it is recollected that the roof is half as high again as Westminster Abbey." Indeed this great height is only surpassed by that of one cathedral in all of France--Beauvais. The vast arches here rose to nearly half the height of the structure, and then above these the architect placed a lovely band or frieze of carved foliage; then the triforium, and above this the glorious windows, separated from each other only by tall slender pillars springing gracefully from heavier ones. Nearly all the original painted glass was destroyed in the thirteenth century, but that which replaced it was of a certainty entirely satisfying.