carry vases, which figure for the stern lanterns.  There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell.  At any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow.  At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation.  The old admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise.  The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old age.

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft.  From above, the town was a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of Chateau Coucy.

I find I never weary of great churches.  It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery.  Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral:  a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail.  The height of spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye!  And where we have so many elegant proportions, growing one out of the other, and all together into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself, and became something different and more imposing.  I could never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral.  What is he to say that will not be an anti-climax?  For though I have heard a considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral.  ’Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches day and night; not only telling you of man’s art and aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself;—­and every man is his own doctor of divinity in the last resort.

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons.  I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the service I beheld.  Four or five priests and as many choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar when I went in.  There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement.  After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from