4th. Arches and ornaments arising from the circumference as well as from the centre. This disposition gives a squareness to the ends of the divisions which may well merit the name of marigold windows, the cathedrals at Mantes and at Chalons sur Marne, will offer examples.
5th. No radiation preserved in the principal divisions. I do not know that I can cite for this any other example than that at the cathedral at Troyes, and it may, without inconvenience, be left without a name.
I believe these different arrangements succeeded each other nearly in the order I have mentioned, but not uniformly so. In small windows of the same epoch, the disposition is generally more simple than in the large ones, but after the columnar spokes had once been abandoned, it does not appear that they were ever resumed.
The gallery or triforium, of the transept and choir, has semi-circular arches resting on columns almost Corinthian, and on pilasters which might be deemed of the renaissance, if some of the latter were not zig-zag. On the whole, if I had met in the north of France with a building corresponding in character with the choir and transept of the cathedral at Lyon, I should say that it had been erected about the year 1200, or rather earlier, when the first style of pointed architecture was beginning to give way to the second. In the nave, the larger shafts are connected with the masonry of the piers and walls, the smaller are constructed separately. At Nôtre Dame at Dijon, exactly the reverse takes place; there, the large shafts have an independent construction, and the smaller are united with the mass of the work. Some of the pillars next the choir, as well as those of the choir itself, have nearly the ancient Attic base; in others, the Gothic forms are fully developed. The groining of the vaults is oblique, and the last pair of pillars seems to be an addition of the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, several chapels were added to the nave; the last and most beautiful of which is that which was built for Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, who was king of France for four hours. This Charles, Duke de Vendôme, Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, and legate of Avignon, was born in 1523, put upon the throne in 1589 by the Duke de Mayenne, and died in 1590; is it possible we can have Gothic architecture in this city of so late a date? My guide-book tells me that his brother, Pierre de Bourbon, who finished this chapel, married the daughter of Louis XI. and multiplied the thistle among his ornaments, to signify that the king had made him a ‘cher don.’ Louis XI. died in 1483, and I suspect that my history is not correct. This chapel is entirely in the pointed style, and part of the vaulting exhibits some indication of the manner of our Henry the Seventh’s chapel at Westminster. We find also the bases of adjoining parts on different levels, and mouldings lost and re-appearing, or seeming to pass one behind the other; but I cannot find the complicated arch, so common in the late French Gothic, in any of the ornaments.
The towers of this cathedral are placed, one at each end of the transept. The lower part, and perhaps the whole of what has been executed of the northern, seems to be of the same date with the nave. The southern tower is of the fifteenth century. They are both unfinished, except by a sort of balustrade, on which is laid a modern Italian tiled roof, a termination not at all in harmony with the character of the building.
The portal, including in that term the whole western front, is said to be of the time of Louis XI., who reigned from 1462 to 1483. It hardly seems to me all of one date, I should have assigned to some parts an earlier epoch, but there is a considerable quantity of ornamental work above the doorway, which may well belong to the date assigned. The filling in of the rose window belongs to the third style of Gothic. The idea of the composition seems to have been a square, with a turreted buttress at each angle, crowned with a gable in the middle, and a tower at each extremity, but without any thing below to carry the division of these parts down to the ground. The towers, however, have never been finished, and at present do not rise so high as the gable. On the sides of the nave, the windows of the clerestory are divided into three parts, with three roses above them pyramidally disposed, but not united externally in a common arch.
Besides the cathedral, there is a church dedicated to St. Paul, of Saxon architecture, said to have been built by Saint Sacerdos, in the sixth century, and repaired, first by Ledrade in 802, and afterwards by Hugh the First, in 1103. The ancient work remaining is probably of the last date, but the inside is a poor modern restoration. The intersection is crowned with an octangular tower, ornamented with Norman arches, and a fine cornice with modillions, many of which are sculptured with the heads of men and animals.
