THE WESTERN PORCH, SAUMUR

I will add but a few words as to the constructional polychromy which distinguishes the exterior of the churches throughout this volcanic district. So far as I have seen, it was never, save in Le Puy cathedral, admitted into the interior,[65] and this is much to be regretted, because it seems that the vaults of their naves, the domes of their crossings, and the semi-domes of their sanctuaries, would have afforded most admirable fields for this kind of decoration. As I have stated, the walls were once covered with painting, and as long as this existed a mosaic of black and white and dull red would have been valueless; but now that the iconoclast, the whitewasher, and the restorer have done their worst, the want of some decoration on the otherwise bald surface of the vaults is painfully felt everywhere. Externally the coloured materials are used in two ways; sometimes the whole of the wall is built of the dark volcanic products, and patterns are obtained by the occasional use of white stone or by alternate courses of this and the darkest scoriae that can be found. Or else the walls generally are built of stone, and the patterns only formed with the dark material. Here, too, as is the case in all old examples of coloured constructions with which I have ever met, the colours follow the natural course of the construction. At Le Puy, for instance, the courses are alternately light and dark, producing bold horizontal bands of colour. The arch stones are continued generally in one line of colour all across an arch, even when it consists of several orders, and from the arch on into the wall. The bands of ornament are similarly arranged in horizontal stripes, generally placed where they will dignify and give value to some very prominent architectural member. They never occur below the line of the springing of an arcade, and are richest under cornices and between their corbels. And when we consider the date at which this inlaid work was executed, and compare it with what we know of our own art at the same period, or, indeed, with that of any other portion of the country which is now France, we cannot too highly extol its delicacy and grace and its carefulness of design and execution. I believe that we may regard the whole of the work in Velay and Auvergne as that of native artists. The detail of sculpture is, when compared with such work as is to be found in Provence, exceedingly rude. It is vigorous, indeed, but wanting in that extreme delicacy and refinement which marks the work of the early Provençal artists.

Were I to attempt to say anything about the buildings of a later date, it would be impossible to do more than give a catalogue, which would be as unintelligible as it would be tedious. I will only say, therefore, on this head, that Clermont cathedral well deserves careful study, and is rich in very fine glass; that at Montferrand may be seen as large a collection of mediaeval houses of all dates as in almost any small town that I know; that Riom possesses a fine S. Chapelle; and that in the abbey of La Chaise-Dieu is still preserved a very rare and complete series of tapestries of the sixteenth century. Besides these, a large number of articles of church-plate are to be found scattered up and down in the village churches, and all this goodly store of antiquities is set before you in a province whose physical features are so full of interest and beauty as in themselves to make a journey through Velay and Auvergne one which none will repent having undertaken.

APPENDIX

[I.]S. Mary’s, Stone
[II.]Churches in Northern Germany
[I.]Lübeck
[II.]Naumburg
[III.]Erfurt and Marburg
[IV.]Münster and Soest
[V.]German Pointed Architecture

I
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CHURCH OF S. MARY, STONE, NEAR DARTFORD

(From the papers of the Kent Archæological Society, in Archæologia Cantiana, 1860)

Having given these preliminary notes, illustrative of the history of the church, it will be well now to give a detailed architectural description of the fabric, illustrated, as far as may be, by the discoveries which have been made in the course of its restoration.[66]