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[Ed. Hautecœur, Paris.
CHIMÈRES.
I have already said enough in reference to the commanding position occupied by Notre Dame among the monuments of Paris. The great cathedral seen at a distance looks ancient indeed, but a closer inspection proves to us that the hands of modern men have been at work on it. Indeed, one writer goes so far as to regret that it has been scraped and patched without, and bedizened and bedaubed within. In the first edition of Victor Hugo’s famous novel, Notre Dame, he tells us that if we examine one by one the traces of destruction imprinted on this ancient church, the work of time would be found to form the lesser portion—the worst destruction has been perpetrated by men—especially by men of art. Since Hugo wrote this much more “restoration” has been carried out at the metropolitan church of Paris. But though I regret so-called “restoration” on principle, I cannot help feeling that the work executed by M. Viollet-le-Duc and M. Lassus is far less objectionable than it might have been. Fortunately, unlike so many great Continental churches, Notre Dame stands free and clear, and may be examined on all sides without difficulty. Indeed, it is now perhaps somewhat too isolated at the west end. Of course it does not possess one of those venerable closes, with a supplement of ancient ecclesiastical buildings, which is the glory of the great churches of our own land.
The Façade.—The west fronts of the greater Gothic churches of France are as a rule the most majestic features of their exteriors. One might write much to prove that the west front of Amiens or of Chartres is superior to that of Notre Dame, but this, after all, is an arguable question. When we stand in front of the church by the Seine we are struck by the reticence, by the obvious disdain of the easily obtained picturesque, which seem to have animated its designers. The thing is symmetrical with a fine symmetry rare among buildings of the time. Before we discuss the façade in detail, let us quote a translation of Victor Hugo’s detailed description, in the romance already alluded to:
“Assuredly there are few finer pages of architecture than this façade, in which, successively and at once, the three receding pointed portals; the decorated and lace-like band of twenty-eight royal niches; the vast central rose window flanked by the two lateral ones, like the priest by the deacon and sub-deacon; the lofty yet slender gallery of trefoiled arcading, which supports a heavy platform upon its light and delicate columns; and lastly the two dark and massive towers with their eaves of slate,[9]—harmonious parts of an entirely magnificent whole,—rising one above another in five gigantic stories,—unfolding themselves to the eye combined and unconfused, with innumerable details of statuary and sculpture which powerfully emphasise the grandeur of the ensemble: a vast symphony in stone, if one may say so—the colossal work of a man and of a nation ... on each stone of which one sees, in a hundred varieties, the fancy of the craftsman disciplined by the artist: a kind of human creation, mighty and prolific as the Divine Creation itself of which it seems to have caught the double characteristics—variety, eternity.” In the last few phrases Victor Hugo has, perhaps, been guilty of the licence readily granted to so great a master of rhetoric; but the west front of Notre Dame was a monument certain to appeal to a writer to whom none deny the gift of eloquence. Even a specialist who scrupulously avoids rhapsody is compelled to use superlatives in his description of this façade: “This vast and superb design is not only the most elaborate that had been produced up to its time, but in point of architectural grandeur it has hardly ever been equalled.” Mr. C. H. Moore, in the book alluded to in a former chapter, rightly insists that the component elements of the front are so treated as to manifest the Gothic spirit not merely in the portals, the arcades, and the apertures, but even in so comparatively small a matter as the profiles of the mouldings.
[9] These have been removed.