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The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and subli old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the nuradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable ne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last
On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar ~Telad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid
Time is a devourer; man, more so
If we had leisure to examine with the reader, one by one, the diverse traces of destruction imprinted upon the old church, time's share would be the least, the share of men the most, especially the men of art, since there have been individuals who assu the last two centuries
And, in the first place, to cite only a few leading exaes than this façade, where, successively and at once, the three portals hollowed out in an arch; the broidered and dentated cordon of the eight and twenty royal niches; the immense central rose , flanked by its two lateral s, like a priest by his deacon and subdeacon; the frail and lofty gallery of trefoil arcades, which supports a heavy platform above its fine, slender columns; and lastly, the two black and massive toith their slate penthouses, harantic stories;--develop themselves before the eye, in a mass and without confusion, with their innu, and sculpture, joined powerfully to the tranquil grandeur of the whole; a vast symphony in stone, so to speak; the colossal work of one ether one and complex, like the Iliads and the Rorouping together of all the forces of an epoch, where, upon each stone, one sees the fancy of the workenius of the artist start forth in a hundred fashions; a sort of human creation, in a word, powerful and fecund as the divine creation of which it seems to have stolen the double character,--variety, eternity
And e here say of the façade must be said of the entire church; and e say of the cathedral church of Paris, must be said of all the churches of Christendos are in place in that art, self-created, logical, and well proportioned To iant