vants; and the glorious carvings of the exterior walls and interior wood of the choir, which an English rector would almost instinctively think of as done for the glorification of the canons, was indeed the Amienois carpenter's way of making his Master-carpenter comfortable,[1]—nor less of showing his own native and insuperable virtue of carpenter, before God and man.
5. Whatever you wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen, at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your existence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one quarter of an hour, not out of breath—for the contemplation of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles and porches, lancet windows and roses, you can see elsewhere as well as here—but such carpenter's work, you cannot. It is late,—fully developed flamboyant just past the fifteenth century—and has some Flemish stolidity mixed
- ↑ The philosophic reader is quite welcome to ' detect ' and 'expose' as many carnal motives as he pleases, besides the good ones,—competition with neighbour Beauvais—comfort to sleepy heads—solace to fat sides, and the like. He will find at last that no quantity of competition or comfort-seeking will do anything the like of this carving now;—still less his own philosophy, whatever its species: and that it was indeed the little mustard-seed of faith in the heart, with a very notable quantity of honesty besides in the habit and disposition, that made all the rest crow together for good.
