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A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE.
structure like the turreted mansion on the hillside of
Le Mans is that it is not simply a house. It is a per-
son, as it were, as well. It would be well, indeed, if
it might have communicated a little of its personality
to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its
own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has a
romanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower.
One sees from without, at a glance, the peculiarity of
the church,—the disparity between the romanesque
nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and
the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a
period a hundred years later. Outside, this end of
the church rises far above the nave, which looks merely
like a long porch leading to it, with a small and curious
romanesque porch in its own south flank. The transepts,
shallow but very lofty, display to the spectators in the
place the reach of their two clere-story windows, which
occupy, above, the whole expanse of the wall. The
south transept terminates in a sort of tower, which is
the only one of which the cathedral can boast. Within,
the effect of the choir is superb; it is a church in it-
self, with the nave simply for a point of view. As I
stood there, I read in my Murray that it has the stamp
of the date of the perfection of pointed Gothic, and I
found nothing to object to the remark. It suffers little
by confrontation with Bourges, and, taken in itself,
seems to me quite as fine. A passage of double aisles
surrounds it, with the arches that divide them sup-
ported on very thick round columns, not clustered.
There are twelve chapels in this passage, and a charm-