On entering the church one is immediately struck by a fine appearance of space and airiness. This is partly owing to the great dimensions; the nave is 10 feet wider, and above 50 feet higher than that of Salisbury Cathedral. The side aisles at Salisbury are only 38 feet high. Those at Amiens are 64; and this I have no doubt also contributes greatly to the impression of superior magnificence. In length the French cathedrals are generally inferior to ours, but they are without screens, and the whole extent presents itself at once to the eye of the spectator. A range of side chapels, corresponding with the divisions of the side aisles, is also a noble feature which we have not in any English building, or have it only very imperfectly in Chichester Cathedral.
These dimensions and comparisons may perhaps assist your imagination in forming an idea of the building, but it is impossible to communicate the feelings produced by the first view of its interior. It not only far surpassed my expectations, but possessed a character and expression quite new to me. In our English cathedrals the eye is confined to one avenue, and the sublime effect is nearly limited to the view along it. Here the sight seems to penetrate in all directions, and to obtain a number of views, all indeed subordinate to the principal one, but all beautiful, and offering, by the different position of the parts with regard to the spectator, the greatest variety. I sat down for some time to enjoy this sublime scene, and then paced slowly up the nave, as far as the intersection of the cross, where my attention was arrested by the beautiful rose window at each end of the transept. Without seeing them one can form no idea of how much beauty a rose window is capable; the splendid colouring of the glass, glowing among the rich tracery, has a brilliancy and magnificence for which I can cite to you no parallel in England.
On the rise of the Italian school of architecture the preceding style, which then received the appellation of Gothic, was reproached as heavy, dark, gloomy, and void of simplicity. Nothing can be more unjust than this censure. In its interiors, on the contrary, it offers the greatest simplicity and harmony; not entirely free from defects, and occasionally exhibiting traces of the rude age in which it flourished, but bearing these as slight blemishes on a beautiful face. It is extremely light, as opposed to heavy, for no style of building performs, or appears to perform so much with so little material; and the blaze of daylight from its numerous and spacious windows is insufferable, when not corrected by the deeply coloured glass, and even by its coarse joinings. These rose windows, brilliant as they are when seen from below, I found, on nearer inspection, to be divided by very wide strips of lead, and these again had collected about them a quantity of dust, which still farther obscured the light, but all this was lost in the general splendour of the effect as seen from below. These two large roses of the transept open into a square space underneath them, so that, strictly speaking, they are not rose windows, but merely rose-headed. The circle, however, occupies so large a portion, and the remainder is comparatively so insignificant, that we must be permitted to call them rose windows. That of the nave comprises only the circle. The design of the tracery is, probably, somewhat later than that of the building; at least, in England we should attribute it nearly to the middle of the fourteenth century, here we know enough of the building to assign it with confidence to the thirteenth. Those of the transept I judge to be later still, chiefly on account of their union with the window below. The western rose has become internally the dial of the clock; the figures denoting the hours are more than seven feet apart, and the hour hand moves nearly an inch and a half in a minute. In that of the northern transept we find the pentalpha, a form to which some persons imagine a mysterious meaning to be attached. The same arrangement which prevails in the nave is continued in the choir, only the outer aisle being no longer divided into chapels, there is a double side aisle continued from the transept to the polygonal end of the building; to this part chapels are again attached, presenting five sides of an octagon. The ladies’ chapel, in the centre, is lengthened, but terminates in the same manner.
In the French Gothic there is no moulding along the ridges of the vault, except, and that rarely, in some of the latest edifices. This moulding, in drawings of English buildings, is generally represented as a straight line, but does, in fact, usually form a crooked one, descending to the direct arch, and rising to the intersection of the groins. In the French buildings this mode of construction is much more evident than with us, the intersection of the groins being always considerably higher than the point of the direct arch, and sometimes so much so, for instance, in the church of St. Germain des Près, in Paris, as to form almost a portion of a dome. In some of the late Gothic examples I think I have seen exactly the reverse take place, and the point of the direct arch made the highest in the vaulting.
It is totally impossible that any style of building should be peculiarly calculated for a particular set of opinions. Some Protestant writers attribute to Gothic architecture a mysterious connexion with the Roman Catholic religion, and, indeed, seem to think that all magnificent churches have a tendency to support that system. Such an opinion does not deserve consideration, but it is certainly true, that some buildings are calculated to excite emotions favourable to religious impressions, to produce a serious frame of mind, and one in which we are more inclined to acknowledge the present existence of superior power, and more ready to submit to the influence of this conviction. Such means of excitement are liable to abuse, and no person can remain long in these edifices, and observe what passes before him, without being made sensible of the power they possess by the degree to which it is abused. But as this abuse is by no means a necessary attendant on the use, it is not a fair argument against it. Mankind in general, at least in France and England, are dull and sluggish in the affairs of religion; they find it difficult to detach their thoughts sufficiently from worldly affairs. It is desirable, therefore, that every help should be given them, for in this, as in every other good object, human means are to be used, when they are put within our reach. A place of worship should, therefore, in the first place, possess in its style and decoration, a decidedly different appearance from a common dwelling-house: this tends to break the associations with the every day employments of life, and gradually to form new associations with the objects of religion, which become of considerable importance in the government of the attention. A merchant, on entering his counting-house, is more strongly led to think of ships and commerce, than on coming into a dining-room. Secondly, a place of worship should possess a decided character of power and sublimity: if from the conditions of our nature any style of building is calculated to induce serious feelings, that style is fitted for a church. In the third place, if any style be already connected in our imagination with the duties of religion, it is fitter for the purpose than one, which having equally the two former qualifications, is deficient in the latter. These considerations point out the Gothic architecture as preferable to every other, for the churches of our own country; but it would not be at all necessary, in the erection of new structures, to retain the awkward arrangement usually found in a parish church.
I have already observed that the chapels at Amiens are not coeval with the building, but some of them are very little posterior. They are said to have originated from the following circumstance. In the year 1244, Geoffroi de Milly, great bailiff of Amiens, hung five clerks, or scholars, without any legal process, because they were accused by his daughter of an assault on her person. It is uncertain whether they were really guilty, or whether, having surprised her in too close conference with her lover, she accused them in order to invalidate their testimony against herself. The bishop, indignant at this wanton abuse of power, after examining the circumstances, pronounced the following severe sentence, and though it must be confessed that the bailiff had fully merited it, yet it seems astonishing that so galling a penance could be strictly performed, which we are told was the fact. Geoffroi was to be conducted on the following Saturday after dinner and before vespers, i. e. between one and two o’clock, with his arms and feet naked, a halter round his neck, and his hands tied behind him, in the manner usually practised towards felons, from the place called Malmaison to the gallows; and after reposing there a little while he was to be reconducted as far as the church of St. Montau, at which place his hands being untied, the body of one of the said five clerks, with a cloth of fine linen, was to be delivered to him, and he was to carry it to the Mother Church, and thence to the burying ground of St. Dionysius, and afterwards, in the four following days to carry the other four bodies in the same manner, first to the Mother Church, and then to the Cemetery. Moreover, he was directed to appear at the cathedral at Rheims, at the other churches of the diocese, and at the churches of Rouen, Paris, and Orleans, and to attend the processions on one Sunday, or feast day, at each, with his arms and feet naked, his hands tied behind him, and without any thing to shelter him from being fully seen, and at each place, during the procession, the sentence of his condemnation was to be read. Moreover, he was to swear never to hold any office conveying jurisdiction, and to submit himself in all particulars to the sentence of the bishop, and to perform all that it enjoined within the time prescribed, and to bring back with him certificates from each place of his having done so. Moreover, he was to provide five basins of silver, each weighing five marks, in which were to be five wax candles, each weighing three pounds. These were to be kept constantly burning in the church at Amiens, and the criminal had to provide funds in perpetuity. Nor was this all; the day after the feast of “Monsieur St. Jean Baptiste,” he was enjoined to take a journey to the Holy Land, and never to return to Amiens, without the consent of the bishop and chapter. Not content with thus punishing the bailiff, the bishop issued a decree against the mayor and aldermen (echevins) of Amiens, for having permitted the bailiff to proceed to such extremities against the five clerks, condemning them, under penalty of a thousand marks of silver, to found six chapels, and to appoint to each a rent of twenty Parisian livres, and in consequence of this decree were founded the first chapels of this church. Before quitting the nave I must point out two monuments too interesting to pass unnoticed, though such objects do not come within my general plan, except as they afford examples of architecture. They are on the right and left of the western doorway, and represent, in brass figures of the size of life, bishop Everard, the founder of the church, and Bertrand D’Abbeville, who completed it. They were originally placed in the midst of the nave, but were transferred in 1762 to their present position. On the pavement of the church is a labyrinth, indicated by the arrangement of black and white stones which compose it. Such an ornament occurs in many French churches. I do not know if it had any mysterious meaning.
Finding myself very cold while making my sketches, I walked round the church, through the galleries, and in the roof. The latter is very well constructed, three braces resting at different heights on each side of the king-post, exemplifies the origin of an English word for that part, roof-tree.
The timbers are generally small, but they are well disposed and well put together. They are said to be of chesnut, a statement still more general in France than in England as to the timber of old buildings, but I have no proof that it is not oak. The rafters are laid flatwise; the laying them edgewise is an improvement of modern date in England, and has not yet got into general use in France. The tie-beam is placed several feet above the vaulting. The central spire is also said to be of chesnut. It is well built, but the ornaments, which look sharp, and accurately defined, from below, appear round and clumsy when close to the eye. One may walk also on the outside over the roofs of the side aisles and chapels, among the flying buttresses, and behind the statues of the front gallery.
I found a very fine point for an external view of the cathedral in the garden of the Palais de Justice, but the cold and snow interrupted me. The palace seems now to be a school. Soon after I entered the garden, the maid-servant came in, in order to drive out the boys. They were quite as untractable as English boys usually are under the same authority, but after some quarrelling she gave one as loud a box on the ear as I ever heard; it rung through the court, and echoed from the ruins of a neighbouring monastery. One of them hid himself behind a tree, and after the danger was over, came out to tell me that he was very fond of drawing, that they had a drawing-master in the school, that they did little but draw, and that the master would not let them use compasses, but sometimes allowed them to measure. I objected to the latter liberty. “Ah Monsieur, vous savez que quand on commence à dessiner, on ne peut pas juger des mesures.” “Mais pour vous,” I replied, “qui dessinez bien?” “Ah pour moi qui dessine bien, ce n’est pas permis, il me gronderoit bien s’il trouvoit que je mesurois quelque chose.”