Lyon, 11th July, 1816.
The first object of my curiosity in every town is the cathedral. This city possesses a magnificent one. A little description of Lyon, which I have purchased, says, that the nave appears to be of the age of St. Louis, (1226 to 1271), I wanted history, and not conjecture, but this is probably about the truth. There is less ornament, and less ingenuity in the management of the different parts than at Amiens, but the piers are more slender, and more complicated; the bases have more projection, and the capitals are smaller than in that edifice, and I can easily believe it to be a little, though but little later. The choir is more ancient, but I must give you a little description.
The original building consists of a nave with side aisles, a transept without them, a chapel of two arches on each side of the choir, but neither aisle nor chapel in the chevet. The choir is lower than the nave, and there is a rose, or rather a wheel window above it. The chevet is polygonal, and its windows are divided into two parts by a little column, and have a sort of trefoil in the upper part.
The straight part of the choir and the transept have the windows placed by threes, or perhaps it would be better to say, divided into three by small columns, but the parts are not united either externally or internally by a common arch.
At each end of the transept is a fine wheel window, understanding by this term a circular window, in which little columns placed as spokes in a wheel, form the principal part of the composition. I do not know if, when this arrangement was first introduced, the centre was ever left solid, but we have very early specimens, in which it was perforated. Each division between the columns was usually terminated towards the circumference by a trefoil, but sometimes there is a simple or a double arch. By degrees other perforations were made beyond these primary divisions, but still included in a common circle. After a time the spokes ceased to be little columns, and the direct radiating lines became a very small portion of the composition. Other arches and ornaments were introduced, and the former were frequently based upon the circumference instead of appearing to spring from the centre; and lastly, the divisions variously branched seemed to lose all relation to the original idea, except in the general circular form. I have three names to apply to these different distributions, which might form botanically, five species.
1st. Columnar spokes and no exterior openings, as at St. Stephen’s at Beauvais, and the window over the choir at Lyon.
2nd. Columnar spokes and exterior openings. In France we find such at Chartres, and in the end windows of the transept of which I am now treating: to both these I should give the name of wheel windows.
3rd. No columns; the divisions are variously branched, but still exhibiting an appearance of radiation. Such as this we have at Amiens, Beauvais, Lyons, and many other places, and I should appropriate to them the name of rose windows.