Notre Dame de Lâon, the stamp of an advanced civilisation, as at Paris or at Amiens. Everything is rude and rough; it is the monument of a people enterprising and energetic and full of great virility. They are the same men as are seen building elsewhere in the neighbourhood—a race of giants.

As we approach Rheims from Paris, Lâon, or Soissons, there is very little sign of the vineyards which one associates with the champagne country. The “vine-clad” hills lie to the south in the Epernay district. Here to the north of the city we see only well-watered, well-timbered country, lush meadow-lands, and even market-gardens, reminding us more of the upper reaches of the Thames valley than of a wine-growing country.

Rheims chiefly recommends itself to the English mind as the place where the kings of France were crowned. It would seem also as though the fact of being crowned at Rheims was a patent of royalty, so to speak, to the kings themselves, since, as Freeman remarks, their rights were never disputed after their anointing with the sainte ampoule. “Every king of the French crowned at Rheims,” he says, “has been at once a Frenchman by birth and the undisputed heir of the founder of the dynasty. Hugh and his son Robert, neither of them born to royalty, were crowned, the one at Noyon, the other at Orléans. Henry the Fourth, the one king whose right was disputed, was crowned at Chartres.”

THE RAMPARTS, LÂON

Like Soissons, like Lâon, like Bourges even, Rheims has carried down to modern times the remains of that prestige which must always attach to a royal city, even though the royalty have long ago departed from it. It moreover brings us once again to the story of Joan the Maid. It is the scene of her mission’s fulfilment, of France’s triumph, of the beginning of that monarchy which Louis XI. established in its complete form and which the later Bourbons wrecked; and here, when the crown is safe on her king’s head and Charles VII. has his own again, does Joan ask her reward—permission to return to her flocks in the fields of Domrémy. And but that this boon was too simple to grant, Joan’s story might have ended with this, her greatest triumph, instead of in the market-place at Rouen.

After the relief of Orléans, Joan had captured Jargeau and Beaugency, and defeated the English in a great fight at Patay, in which Talbot, the English leader, was taken prisoner. Having cleared these last obstacles from Charles’s path, she now set forth to tell him that all was ready and to persuade him to make all speed to Rheims. Speed, however, was what the Dauphin either could not or would not make; and it is always the most unsatisfactory part of the history of Joan the Maid that when she had pressed on, scarcely resting by night or day, to win back his kingdom for him, Charles seemed in no hurry to enter upon his honours, but preferred dawdling with his favourites in Touraine; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he was persuaded to ride to Rheims with Joan. Selfish indulgence, foolish favouritism, petty jealousies—were such things as these to stand in the path from which the Maid had swept all other barriers? Joan, however, was resolute. In hopes of rousing him she withdrew her army into the country, and this retreat had the desired effect. Charles the Laggard allowed himself to be brought into Rheims, and on July 17 Joan, banner in hand, stood by his side in the cathedral while the Archbishop anointed him with the holy oil and crowned him Charles VII. of France. Here, so far as Rheims is concerned, the story of Joan is at an end.

Two papal councils were held at Rheims, in the days when the Gallican Church was rising to its highest power, though it had not yet gone so far as to resent the yoke of the Papacy. Pope Leo IX. in 1049 entered the city in full state to consecrate for Abbot Heremas his newly-built monastery of Saint Remi, and followed up the consecration by convoking a vast synod composed of nearly every prelate in Europe, archbishops, bishops, abbots, clergy, and laity from every quarter, who sat at Rheims for six days; but their business seems to have been connected only with the usual canonical laws. The later council, which took place in 1119 and was presided over by Calixtus, appears to have occupied itself chiefly with quarrels between Henry of England and Louis of France on matters not even ecclesiastical. It further confirmed the Truce of God which had been imposed at Caen sixty years before, and patched up a peace between the two kings, after an interview between Henry and Calixtus at Gisors, in which the English king took care to make his case good before the Pope and to represent that all his incursions upon the territory of Louis had been made solely from religious motives.

Rheims boasts as one of its early bishops the saint Remigius, who in the fifth century baptised Clovis here with great pomp, and who received from heaven, as the legend has it, a flask of oil wherewith to anoint his king before admitting him into the Church, with the stern injunction, “Burn now that which thou hast worshipped and worship that which thou hast burnt.” This flask was preserved as one of the Church’s most precious relics until the general devastation at the time of the Revolution, when it was broken to pieces by a fanatic. At the time of the consecration of Charles X. it reappeared in a mysterious fashion, and is now shown in the Trésor of the cathedral with various other relics.

It is a sad fact to record that the most beautiful cathedral façade ever built is now almost entirely hidden by scaffolding necessary for the restoration of the building; and, judging by the appearance of the timbering and the paucity of workmen, it is not yesterday that the work was commenced, nor is it by to-morrow that it will be completed.

LÂON FROM THE BOULEVARDS

In the early part of the thirteenth century Robert de Coucy was entrusted with the rebuilding of the cathedral after the complete destruction of the early church by fire. He built it on a simple plan of a vast choir, no transepts, and a rather narrow nave. “Cet édifice a toute la force de la Cathédral de Chartres, sans en avoir la lourdeur; il réunit enfin les veritables conditions de la beauté dans les arts, la puissance et la grace; il est d’ailleurs construit en beaux materiaux, savamment appareillés, et l’on retrouve dans toutes ses parties un soin et une recherche fort rares à une epoque où l’on batissait avec une grande rapidité et souvent avec des ressources insuffisantes.”—Viollet-le-Duc. The beautiful portals, “deep and cavernous,” record by their thousand sculptures, in a clear and impressive manner, the creation of the world, the whole history of the Old Testament, the life of our Saviour and the redemption of mankind, and convey to all who pass by this great object-lesson of their faith. The tympana of these porches are glazed instead of being filled in with stone. This was done to guard against the possible breaking of the doorway lintel, which, if large, might very well give way under the weight of the superincumbent mass of stone.

Mr. Bond, referring to the deeply recessed porches of the French cathedrals—which, if we exclude the Galilees, find few analogues in the English churches—considers them as lineal descendants of the