Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/187

Rh even aver the best—that ever was, or is again likely for many a day to be, on the unquaking and fruitful earth, where one could calculate on a pillar's standing fast, once well set up; and where aisles of aspen, and orchards of apple, and clusters of vine, gave type of what might be most beautifully made sacred in the constancy of sculptured stone. From the unhewn block set on end in the Druid's Bethel, to this Lord's House and blue-vitrailed gate of Heaven, you have the entire course and consummation of the Northern Religious Builder's passion and art.

11. But, note further—and earnestly,—this apse of Amiens is not only the best, but the very first thing done perfectly in its manner, by Northern Christendom. In pages 323 and 327 of the sixth volume of M. Viollet le Duc, you will find the exact history of the development of these traceries through which the eastern light shines on you as you stand, from the less perfect and tentative forms of Rheims: and so momentary was the culmination of the exact rightness, that here, from nave to transept—built only ten years later,—there is a little change, not towards decline, but to a not quite necessary precision. Where decline begins, one cannot, among the lovely fantasies that succeeded, exactly say—but exactly, and