Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/584

 552 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. Pakt II. for its noble nave Avithout aisles, possesses a chevet worthy of it, and two spires of great beauty at the ends of the transepts, the only spires so placed, I think, in France. Autun has a spire on the intersection of the nave with the transepts as beautiful as anything of the same class elsewhere. The cathedral of Lyons is interesting, as showing liow hard it was for the Southern people of France to shake off their old style and adopt that of their Northern neighbors. With much grand- eur and elegance of details, it is still so clumsy in de- sign that neither the whole nor any of its parts can be considered as satisfactory. The windows, for in- stance, as shown in the woodcut (No. 404), look more like specimens of the so- called carpenter's Gothic of modern times than exam- ples of the art of the Middle Ages. There still re- mains to be men- tioned the cathe- dral at Rouen. This remarkable building possesses parts belonging to all ages, and ex- hibits most of the 406. Plan of Cathi-.lnil at Bourges. (From Girardot, " Desciip- beautieS, aS also, it tiou lie la Cathedrale.") Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. ,., must be coniessed, most of the defects of each style. It was erected with a total disregard to all rule, yet so splendid and so picturesque that we are almost driven to the wild luxuriance of nature to find anything to which we can compare it. Internally its nave, though rich, is painfully cut up into small parts. The undivided piers of the choir, on the contrary, are too simple for their adjuncts. Externally, the transept towers are beautiful in them- selves, but are overpowered by the richness of those of the west front. The whole of that facade, in spite of the ruin of some of its most