Great effect is produced by the profusion of chevron and nail-head ornament used on the exterior of the church; a double course of the former of the very simplest kind forms the cornice under all the eaves, and is also used down the edges of all the flying buttresses. On the north side of the nave there still remains a portion of the cloisters, of fine early character; two sides only remain, with a room of the same date with groining resting on detached shafts. Some remains of gateways in the old walls of the abbey are worth noticing, as also the old walls which surround the church, built for the most part against the rock on which it stands, with here and there very small openings, which make them look as though they were intended for defence. Whilst I was in the church some boys came to toll the passing-bell. They said that they always did so on Fridays, at three o’clock.[17]
I saw nothing between S. Leu and Beauvais, though in the part of France bordering on the Oise, I believe that every village would afford something worth seeing in its church. My time, however, was limited.
As you reach Beauvais, the country changes; there is a great deal of wood, a very scattered population, and but few churches. Of course the first object of every one at Beauvais is the cathedral; a building from the study of which I derived less satisfaction than might be expected. It is unpleasant to find an artist striving after more than he is really able to attain, and this was conspicuously the case with the architect of Beauvais. The church was consecrated in A.D. 1272 and fell in A.D. 1284. In order to repair its defects the arches of the choir were subdivided, and from the great size of the columns, and the narrow span of the arches, the present effect is that of a church in which the arches have but little to do, and in which everything has been sacrificed to keep the building from falling again. Then when the roofs and passages about the building are mounted it is seen that the great object of the architect has been simply to obtain one grand effect--that of height and airiness, and that to this everything has been sacrificed, the details throughout being poor, coarse, and slovenly in their mode of execution. The whole gave me the impression of being the work of an unsatisfactory architect, though at the same time it is impossible to deny the excessive grandeur of the vast dimensions of the interior so far as it is completed, or the beauty of arrangement which marked the original scheme of the ground-plan, unpractical and unstable as it was. It may be right, however, to attribute some of the failures, with M. Viollet-le-Duc, to the carelessness of workmen; though no good architect allows himself to be so excused.