Notre-Dame de Chartres! It was a world to explore, as if one
explored the entire Middle Age; it was also one unending, elaborate,
religious function--a life, or a continuous drama, to take one's part
in. Dependent on its structural completeness, on its wealth of well-
preserved ornament, on its unity in variety, perhaps on some
undefinable operation of genius, beyond, but concurrently with, all
these, the church of Chartres has still the gift of a unique power of
impressing. In comparison, the other famous churches of France, at
Amiens for instance, at Rheims or Beauvais, may seem but formal, and
to a large extent reproducible, effects of mere architectural rule on
a gigantic scale. The [29] somewhat Gothic soul of Gaston relished
there something strange, or even bizarre, in the very manner in which
the building set itself, so broadly couchant, upon the earth; in the
natural richness of tone on the masonry within; in its vast echoing
roof of timber, the "forest," as it was called; in the mysterious
maze traced upon its pavement; its maze-like crypt, centering in the
shrine of the sibylline Notre-Dame, itself a natural or very
primitive grotto or cave.
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