I. It is the admitted privilege of a custode who loves his cathedral to depreciate, in its comparison, all the other cathedrals of his country that resemble, and all the edifices on the globe that differ from it. But I love too many cathedrals - though I have never had the happiness of becoming the custode of even one - to permit myself the easy and faithful exercise of the privilege in question; and I must vindicate my cindour, and my judgment, in the outset, by confessing that the cathedral of Amiens has nothing to boast of in the way of towers, - that its central flèche is merely the pretty caprice of a village carpenter, - that the total structure is in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative splendour to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure-sculpture to Bourges.