and from its magnificent galleries, following majestically the shady avenue of the quay, the eye wanders across the river and lingers for a moment on the cupola and the classic façade of the Institut de France, built in the seventeenth century in accordance with the testament of Cardinal Mazarin, and occupied by the five academies that form the Institute only since the year 1806. Then we look up the stream, and enjoy that unique view of Notre Dame and the Île de la Cité which at all moments of the day and of the night is one of the marvels of Paris-a vision of vast splendor that the changing hour bathes in the mystery of changing hues, now silvery gray, now violet, now rose, now blue; in the daytime brilliant

famous view from the bridge. At the other end of the island, between Notre Dame and the river on the north side, there are four narrow streets-the Rues du Cloître, des Chantres, Chanoinesse, and des Marmousets-where the buildings are of ancient date, having formerly been exclusively reserved for the dwellings of the canons of the cathedral. But, with these exceptions, there remains nothing of the primitive aspect of the mediaval city of Paris, with its many churches, mansions, and thickly clustered houses. Far from being crowded, the modern Île de la Cité tends to look bare and deserted; its immense and severe monuments-the Palais de Justice, the Tribunal of Commerce, the Prefecture of Police, the bar

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Notre Dame, on the other hand, has been disengaged on all sides; each façade is freely presented; and the front, with its grand portal and towers, can be viewed as a whole both from near and from afar, thanks to the great open space of the parvis and the extended perspective of the quays and river. In the same way the apsis may be seen in its complete development from the charming garden that occupies the site of the now demolished archbishop's palace. Admirably restored by Violletle-Duc and Lassus in the middle of the present century, Notre Dame is certainly the most perfect of French ogival churches, and a model of the ecclesiastical architecture of the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, one doubts whether it has gained by being isolated, and whether it has not lost something of its imposing and severe character by being cleared of all the parasitical constructions, the narrow streets, the humble dwellings,

MONSTER OF NOTRE DAME.

and quaint old shops and stalls that sought the shelter of its shadow in former times. That the Gothic cathedral, with its forest of flying buttresses and the diversity of its varied symbolism and ornamentation, was conceived with a view to being presented to the eye in its entirety, seems scarcely a tenable view. We may even go further and affirm that the isolation of these complex monuments was never anticipated by the architects, who built them almost invariably in the close and crowded neighborhood of houses, as if to invite the intimacy of the population. For these Gothic cathedrals had a

VIEW FROM THE PONT DU JOUR.

profound and widely reaching signification.

Apart from all political considerations, and examined purely from the moral, the sentimental, and the educational points of view, the Gothic cathedral of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a popular encyclopædia of religion, knowledge, and general edification. As it was recorded in the proceedings of the second council of Nicæa, "the holy Catholic Church brings all our senses into play in order to guide us to penitence and to the observation of the commandments of God; it endeavors to lead us not only by the hearing, but by the sight, in the desire that it has to perfect our morals.' Hence the wealth of statues, bass-reliefs, carvings. paintings, and symbolic ornaments that decorate the ancient churches of Europe. Hence the prodigious iconography of the façade of Notre Dame, resuming the whole Christian epopee and the religious ideal of the Middle Ages in all its naïveté

and terror on the tympanum of the great door. In the centre Christ is represented with his feet on the lion and the dragon, and around the Saviour are figured the twelve apostles, with symbols of their martyrdom or their distinctive qualities; the twelve virtues and the twelve vices; the wise and the foolish virgins; and, completing the ensemble, the graphic scene of the last judgment. Two angels blow trumpets; the dead rise from their graves; kings, knights, peasants, and noble dames all answer this supreme call; Saint Michael holds the scales wherewith to weigh the souls; to the right, the elect, clad in long robes and wearing crowns, see the heavens open to them; to the left, the demons drag away the unrighteous strung along a chain-a bishop, a king, a knight, clerks and laymen and women, all pell-mell, with terror and anguish depicted on their faces. the upper part of the tympanum of the great portal, Christ seated, with his feet on the globe, shows his wounded body; two angels standing, one on each side, hold in their hands the instruments of the passion; behind the angels, the Virgin and Saint John kneel and intercede for mankind; while the six mouldings that

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form the archivolt and frame the composition are sculptured with chaplets of angels, prophets, doctors, martyrs, and virgins. The northern and southern doors are also decorated with admirable statues and high reliefs. Then between the doors are colossal statues of Saint Denis and Saint Étienne, and of the Church and of the Synagogue, while over the arches are the twenty-four kings of Judah, and above, in the gallery, isolated statues of Adam and Eve, and in the centre the Virgin accompanied by two angels.

In contrast with the serene spirituality of this majestic façade, at one time gorgeous with color and gilding, we have

only to look upwards to the roof and the towers in order to see a legion of monsters of stone, beasts, chimeras, and birds, and strange combinations of human and animal forms, prodigies of abnormal creation, such as Saint John saw in the hallucinations of Patmos. Such are those grotesque beings that stand with their fore paws on the parapet of the towers of Notre Dame, and look down with astonishment at the city below, while the stone birds open their beaks as if to utter stupid cries, and fix their fierce eye on some prey that they can never seize; for all these monsters are captives in the tower, built into the very stones when they are not carved out of them, like that quaint devil at one corner of the tower, who rests his head lazily on his two hands, and lolls his tongue out at the people in the street. The towers and the whole roof of Notre Dame bristle with innumerable monsters that seem, as it were, imprisoned in these lofty solitudes, from which they peep out wistfully here and there.

All this imagery, sacred and grotesque, edifying and admonitory, was intended to be the daily guide of citizens, the open book that all could read as they passed. Coming along the narrow streets that ra

SAINTE CHAPELLE AND PONT SAINT MICHEL.

diated from the cathedral, the Parisians of old caught sight not of the whole monument, or even of a façade, but of a single tower, of a sculptured door, of an arched buttress, or of a quaint gargoyle, and thus the smallest details were presented as if in a frame, and so acquired a value and a power of action that they have perhaps lost now that the vast monument is thrust upon the view in its entirety, and with all the profusion of its symbolism. which remains mere confusion until systematic and reasoned observation has discovered the key to the labyrinth of storied stone. However, to regret the vanished picturesqueness of the old surroundings of Notre Dame is useless; the spirit of the past has gone the way of past things; the