The whole building is over three hundred feet long. Four rows of pillars divide it into three naves and collateral chapels, which are twenty-one in number, extending quite around it, each with paintings, and statues, and altars of marble, and its oaken confessional,
"Where the graveyard in the human heart
Gives up its dead at the voice of the priest."
The baptismal font, in the first chapel to the left, is of a single block of fine black Belgian marble. One lingers reverentially before it, to think of all the souls that have there been regenerated, and of the holy joy of the guardian angels around it.
The windows are glorious in their effect. Thereon are represented all the principal characters of the Bible, beginning with Adam and Eve; interspersed are the sibyls (Teste David cum sibylla) and saints of the middle ages. The bright sun, streaming through these "storied windows richly dight," revealing in brightest hues "many a prophet, many a saint," casts a rich light of purple and crimson and gold over altar and saint and shrine; not the dim religious light of the poets, but bright and glorious as the rainbow that spans the Eternal Throne! I could sit in their light for ever. What a beautiful missal, gorgeously illuminated, they form for the common people, and a book ever open, full of the beauty of holiness! I envy those who have worshipped in such a church from infancy, whose minds and tastes have been formed, in part, by its influences, whose earliest religious associations are connected with so much that is beautiful as well as elevating. There must be a certain tone to their piety, as well as to their minds, wanting to those who have only frequented the humbler chapels of the new world. I can never enter the plainest Catholic church without emotion. The very sight of a humble altar surmounted by the rudest cross, goes to my heart; how much more a magnificent church like this, where every thing appeals to the heart, the soul, the imagination!
Over the doors leading to the transepts are the rose-windows.
"Flamboyant with a thousand gorgeous colors,
The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness!"
Beyond the transepts is the choir—a church within a church; for it is enclosed by a high wall with a screen and rood-loft in front. Here the canons chant the divine office seven times a day. The stalls in which they sit are fit for princes—each one a marvellous piece of workmanship, like the handiwork of a fairy rather than of man.
The panels with their large figures in relief, the Gothic niches with their statuettes, the desks all covered with carved animals and plants almost in the perfection of nature, the canopy with its hangings, beautiful as lace, are all perfectly wrought in black oak, and surpass all conception. I have heard it said the wood was kept under water twenty years, and the carver was fifty years in completing his work; and you would believe it could you see the effect. I have seen finer churches, in some respects, but no carvings to surpass these. One is never weary of examining every inch of this exquisite choir, so full of perfection is every part. Sacred and profane history, mythological and legendary lore, the fauna and flora, are all mingled in these stalls. There are one hundred and thirteen of them—sixty-seven superior, and forty-six inferior; and three hundred and six statuettes in wonderful little Gothic niches. Each superior stall has its large panel, on which in demi-relief is the image of some saint or sibyl. One of them represents St. Martha of Bethany, with an aspersoir in her hand and the Tarasque at her feet, alluding to the old legend so popular in Provence, of her subduing a monster which ravaged the banks of the Rhone by sprinkling him with holy water. The city of Tarascon commemorates the tradition. A magnificent church built there, under the invocation of St. Martha, was endowed by Louis XI.
At three o'clock the canons came for vespers, after which we went to the tower to see the view and examine the bells, the largest of which is covered with medallions of the apostles and the Blessed Virgin, and with mottoes. It bears the name of Mary.