Since, however, it is necessary to choose, let us choose Amiens; for perhaps this church is most widely acknowledged as the finest example of the Gothic style. Its façade is a masterpiece of decoration. Three deeply recessed portals in the lower story are covered with a wealth of sculptured figures in the round and in relief. Bible lessons and the events of human life and history, carved here in stone, taught the terrors of sin and hell and the joys of a godly life as preached in the church beyond these lofty doors. Nor is the decoration confined to sculpture; for the whole façade, and in fact the entire church, is a tracery of stone.
[Illustration: SOUTH PORTAL OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL
_The statue of the Virgin which stands in the portal replaces that of St. Honoré, which was moved to the north transept. The carvings about the south portal are taken from the life of St. Honoré._]
It is from a side view, however, that Amiens shows at its best the true glory of Gothic architecture. Nearly five hundred feet long and over two hundred feet to the ridge line of the roof, it rises high above the buildings of the city in which it stands, a symbol of the supremacy of spiritual over earthly things. To be sure it has its faults. The towers are too low and the central spire is of awkward shape; but the huge windows, with their tracery in geometric patterns, occupying the entire space between the buttresses, and these buttresses themselves with their soaring arches spanning the aisle roofs below, afford an unsurpassed example of beauty of design combined with the utmost structural daring. Moreover, the interior is even more imposing. Lofty piers and pointed arches separate the nave from the aisles. Slender shafts carry the ribs of the huge vaults of stone forty-three feet in span, which seem suspended in air one hundred and forty feet from the pavement below. In the support of these vaults lies the keynote of Gothic architecture. Though they seem hung as if by magic over walls of glass, with very little masonry for their support, their weight and thrust are borne by the sweeping arcs of the exterior flying buttresses and the huge piers of masonry from which they rise beyond the side aisle walls. Viewed from a central point, the majestic sweep of the nave, the soaring height of the eastern apse, the wondrous window of the northern transept, and the maze of piers and arches and chapels, all unite to produce a glorious whole which cannot be surpassed in any monument of any age.