Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/181

Rh afraid of an hour's walk, the really right thing to do is to walk down the main street of the old town, and across the river, and quite out to the chalk hill out of which the citadel is half that the total expense was 9488 livres, 11 sous, and 3 obols (décimes), or 474 napoleons, 11 sous, 3 décimes of modern French money, or roughly four hundred sterling English pounds.

For which sum, you perceive, a company of probably six or eight good workmen, old and young, had been kept merry and busy for fourteen years; and this that you see—left for substantial result and gift to you.

I have not examined the carvings so as to assign, with any decision, the several masters' work; but in general the flower and leaf design in the traceries will be by the two head menuisiers, and their apprentices; the elaborate Scripture histories by Avernier, with variously completing incidental grotesque by Trupin; and the joining and fitting by the common workmen. No nails are used,—all is morticed, and so beautifully that the joints have not moved to this day, and are still almost imperceptible. The four terminal pyramids 'you might take for giant pines forgotten for six centuries on the soil where the church was built; they might be looked on at first as a wild luxury of sculpture and hollow traceries—but examined in analysis they are marvels of order and system in construction, uniting all the lightness, strength, and grace of the most renowned spires in the last epoch of the Middle ages.' The above particulars are all extracted—or simply translated, out of the excellent description of the "Stalles et les Clôtures du Chœur" of the Cathedral of Amiens, by MM. les Chanoines Jourdain et Duval (Amiens. Vv. Alfred Caron. 1867). The accompanying lithographic outlines are exceedingly good, and the reader will find the entire series of subjects indicated with precision and brevity, both for the woodwork and the external veil of the choir, of which I have no room to speak in this traveller's summary.