Let us consider the cathedral of Amiens in the department of the Somme, about sixty miles north of Paris. This we may take as being the accepted representative of French Gothic churches, lacking indeed some features which others of its own time have retained, but completely typical in its plan and structure. [Plate XXVII] gives the interior looking westward from the choir and shows the nave in steep perspective so that its seven bays are much foreshortened, and with this a part of the north aisle and a part of the choir in which we stand. The great height of the nave is shown without that sometimes disagreeable appearance of a narrowness disproportionate to the height such as is sometimes seen in photographs taken directly on the axis of so lofty a church. The members which go to make up this great height are also visible; the first row of nave arches repeated in the choir and in the transept, the second story of arched openings which gives us the triforium,[41] and the third story which is called the clearstory, and which contains the great windows as well as the vaulting which constitutes the inner roof of the church. The round window in the distance forms an important part of the west front. Close to the spectator the lofty wall broken up into canopies and arches and crowned with a forest of pinnacles is entirely of carved oak, and includes an incredible number of most exquisite carvings, which decorate all parts of the partition itself as well as the stalls or the seats for choristers which are dimly seen below. The iron gates, seen as closed, give access to this enclosure which is the liturgical choir, that is to say, the enclosure made within the architectural choir, and intended to serve for the clergy and their assistants. As to epochs, the whole structure of the church is of the thirteenth century: its vaulting, its arches and piers and windows and its delicate sculpture; and its original plan, though conceived during the last years of the twelfth century, cannot be thought to have been perfected until the structure rose upon it. The carved work of the choir is very much later, representing the last development of Gothic art and belonging more properly to our Chapter V:
