It seems very like presumption to criticise such a building, yet I know not the use of architectural study if it is to be pursued with that blind faith which obliges one to admire indiscriminately everything that was built in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The mere fact that the main intention of the people of Beauvais was to build something finer than their neighbours at Amiens is in itself suggestive; and I am not surprised that a building erected on such terms is unworthy of its age. It is one of the very few buildings of the kind which impresses me in this way; for usually the feeling derived from the study of mediaeval churches is one of respect for the absence of anything but the most thoroughly artistic feeling on the part of their builders. No doubt the architect of Amiens did his work in the best way he could, with little reference to what was being done by his neighbours; and it is curious that the grand success which he achieved should have led, both at Beauvais and (I think also) at Cologne, to unworthy and unsuccessful attempts at rivalry. I can quite see that a claim may be made for the architect of Beauvais, as a man of genius who was not quite so safe a constructor as his contemporaries, but who nevertheless conceived the grandest idea of his age, as far as size and height were concerned. I can only answer that this is not the character of a great architect, and would lead me to class him with the architect of the abbey of Fonthill, rather than with the architect of Amiens or Chartres. The first architect of Beauvais was, however, a better architect, in some respects, than his successor; for though his details (seen in the apse only) were not of the first order, those of the latter are about the worst I have ever met with in a French church of such pretensions.
The glass in the clerestory windows has a band of figures and canopies crossing them at mid-height, with light glass above and below: this is an arrangement often met with, and generally productive of good effect, especially in windows of such great height. A museum attached to the west side of the north transept contains a few antiquities; but the feature of most interest is a late, but good cloister, noticeable for the extreme delicacy of the shafts and piers between the trefoiled openings. In the museum is a fair embroidered mitre, which belonged to F. de Rochefoucald, Bishop of Beauvais, in 1792.