Vanished Halls and Cathedrals of France

by George Wharton Edwards

* Guizot's "History of France."

What wonder then that Lille retains so few remarkable public monuments. Perhaps of all the Flemish towns she suffered most from pillage and fire. Farther on in the Rue Royale, beyond the statue of General Négrier, was the eighteenth century church of St. André, once belonging to the "Carmes déchaussés," where there were some good paintings by a native artist, Arnould de Vuez, who enjoyed considerable celebrity. Following the attractive quays along the river front, which was teeming with life and movement, one reached the small square of St. Martin, where was the church of "Notre Dame de la Trielle," which is said to have occupied the site of the ancient moated Chateau du Buc, which formed the origin of the city of Lille, and which the Flemish to this day call Ryssel. A fortress of the first class, Lille's citadel is said to have been Vauban's masterpiece, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why the invaders of 1914 surrounded it with the network of concrete trenches and galleries which formed the angle of the famous Hinden-burg line after the disastrous retreat from Arras in April, 1917. So far Lille has not suffered very much from the bombardment of this present year, but it is safe to say now that the invader will not spare it in retreat.

AMIENS

THERE was no better way of realizing the great bulk and height of the Cathedral than by proceeding to the banks of the river Somme northward, and from this point appraising its architectural wonder rising above the large and small old gray houses, tier above tier, misted in the soft clouds of gray smoke from their myriad chimneys, capped with red dots of chimney pots, "a giant in repose."

In approaching Amiens the traveler was offered no "coup d'oeil" like that of other cathedral towns; here "this largest church in the world except St. Peter's, at Rome," was hidden from view as one entered the town, and followed the Rue des Trois Cailloux, along what was formerly the boundaries of the ancient walls. It was difficult to obtain a good view of the façade, that of the west point was seen from a parvis, which qualified the difference in level between the east and west ends, and here was the central porch which took its name, "Porche de le Beau Dieu d'Amiens," from the figure of the Savior on its central pillar, and of which Ruskin wrote, "at the time of its erection, it was beyond all that had then been reached of sculptured tenderness."

It is not known at this time of writing (May, 1917) whether Amiens has suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans. Perhaps without its destruction there have been sufficient crimes committed against the church in the name of military necessity, and it thus has been spared.

For some reason or other Ruskin was not overenthusiastic over Amiens. He described the beautiful "flèche," which rose so gracefully from the great bulk against the sky, as "merely the caprice of a village carpenter," and he further declared that the Cathedral of Amiens is "in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative splendor to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure sculpture to Bourges." On the other hand, the great Viollet-le-Duc called it the "Parthenon of Gothic Architecture."

Of the two authorities, one may safely pin one's faith to the opinion of the eminent Frenchman, who spent his life in restoring great works rather than in abusing them.

Whewell says: "The mind is filled and elevated by the enormous height of the building (140 feet), its lofty and many colored clerestory, its grand proportions, its noble simplicity. The proportion of height to breadth is almost double that to which we are accustomed in English cathedrals; the lofty solid piers, which bear up this height, are far more massive in their plan than the light and graceful clusters of our English churches, each of them being a cylinder with four engaged columns. The polygonal E apse is a feature which we seldom see, and nowhere so exhibited, and on such a scale; and the peculiar French arrangement which puts the walls at the outside edge of the buttresses, and thus forms interior chapels all around, in addition to the aisles, gives a vast multiplicity of perspective below, which fills out the idea produced by the gigantic height of the center. Such terms will not be extravagant when it is recollected that the roof is half as high again as Westminster Abbey." Indeed this great height is only surpassed by that of one cathedral in all of France—Beauvais.