Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/572

 540 FKENCII ARCHITECTURE. Paut IT, Paris (Woodcut No. 392) is simple in its outline, and bold and ma- jestic in all its pails, and though, perhaps, a little open to the charge of heaviness, it is admirably adapted to its situation, and both in design and proportion fits admirably to the church to which it is attached. The flanks, too, of the building, as originally designed, must have been singularly beautiful, for, though sadly disfigured by the insertion of the chapels, which obliterate the buttresses and deprive it of that light and shade so indispensable to architectural effect, there yet remains a simplicity of outline, and an elegance in the whole form of the building, that has not often been excelled in Gothic structures. The lower part of the facade at Chartres (Woodcut No. 393) is older than that of Paris, and so plain (it miglit almost be called rude) as hardly to admit of comparison with it; but its two sjjires, of different ages, are unsurpassed in France. Even in the southern or older of the two, which was probably finished in the 12th century, we find all the elements which were so fully developed in Germany and elsewhere in the following centuries. The change from the square to the octagon, and from the perjiendicular part to the sloping sides of the spire, are managed with the most perfect art; and were not the effect it produces destroyed by the elaborate richness of the other spire, it would be considered one of the most beautiful of its class. The new or northern spire was erected by Jean Texier between the years 1507 and 1514, and, notwithstanding the lateness of its date, it must be considered as on the whole the most beautifully designed. spire on the continent of Euro]:)e ; and, though not equal in height, ^ certainly far surpassing in elegance of outline and appropriateness of design those at Strasburg, Vienna, or even at AntAverp. If it has rivals it is that at Friburg, or those designed for the cathedral at Cologne ; but Avere its details of the same date, it can hardly be doubted that it woidd be considered the finest spire of the three. The transepts at Chartres have more projection than those of Paris, and were originally designed with two towers to each, and two others were placed one on each side of the choir; so that the cathedral would have had eight towers altogether if completed ; but none except the western two have been carried higher than the springing of the roof; and though they serve to vary the outline, they do not relieve, to the extent they miglit have done, the heavy massiveness of the roof. Tn other respects the external beauty of the cathedral is somewhat injured by the extreme heaviness of the flying buttresses, which were deemed necessary to resist the thrust of the enormous vault of the central nave ; and, though each is in itself a massive and beautiful object, they crowd the clerestory to an ' The height of the old spiic is 342 ft. 15 in. with the cross; of the new, 371 ft.