Notre Dame at Rodez is a "warm, mouse-coloured cathedral;" St. Cécile d'Albi is at once "a fortress and a church," and the once royal city of Aigues-Mortes is to-day but "a shelter for a few hundred pallid, shaking mortals."
Such expressions are figurative, but, so far as words can put it, they are the concentrated result of observation.
These observations do not aspire to be considered "improving," though it is asserted that they are informative.
Description of all kinds is an art which requires considerable forethought in order to be even readable. And of all subjects, art and architecture are perhaps the most difficult to treat in a manner which shall not arouse an intolerant criticism.
Perhaps some credit will be attained for the attempts herein made to present in a pleasing manner many of the charms of the ecclesiastical architecture of southern France, where a more elaborate and erudite work would fail of its object. As Lady Montagu has said in her "Letters,"—"We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing new, we are dull, and have observed nothing. If we tell any new thing, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic."
This book is intended as a contribution to travel literature—or, if the reader like, to that special class of book which appeals largely to the traveller.
Most lovers of art and literature are lovers of churches; indeed, the world is yearly containing more and more of this class. The art expression of a people, of France in particular, has most often first found its outlet in church-building and decoration. Some other countries have degenerated sadly from the idea.
In recent times the Anglo-Saxon has mostly built his churches,—on what he is pleased to think are "improved lines,"—that, more than anything else, resemble, in their interiors, playhouses, and in their exteriors, cotton factories and breweries.
This seemingly bitter view is advanced simply because the writer believes that it is the church-members, using the term in its broad sense, who are responsible for the many outrageously unseemly church-buildings which are yearly being erected; not the architects—who have failings enough of their own to answer for.
It is said that a certain great architect of recent times was responsible for more bad architecture than any man who had lived before or since. Not because he produced such himself, but because his feeble imitators, without his knowledge, his training, or his ambition, not only sought to follow in his footsteps, but remained a long way in the rear, and stumbled by the way.