Amiens
At Amiens there is not much glass, and yet the student will not have wasted his time, for he will there see one of the finest cathedrals in Europe, and will furthermore be able to note what the lack of coloured glass means, in this way learning to value it even more highly than before. If a visit to this great church renders us no other service than this, we shall all agree that it is no small one. We shall never again question that a magnificent ecclesiastical interior is not only vastly improved, but actually needs its light tempered by stained glass. Our pilgrim has long ere this learnt that he cannot always rely on guide-books to tell him whether or not fine windows are to be found in certain towns, and therefore we may serve a useful purpose and save some reader a disappointing trip by setting out the facts. The cathedral owes its chief beauty to the extraordinary detail and amount of sculpture to be found without and within. So complete are the scriptural events chronicled upon its west front that Ruskin has given it the title of the “Bible in Stone.” Nor are the carvings which are to be found inside in any way inferior to those which fascinate us without. The stone screen which runs around the ambulatory would alone repay much study, but the most notable display of the carver’s art is the little army of nearly four thousand figures upon the choir stalls. Notwithstanding this wealth of sculpture, we are struck by the bareness of the lofty interior. We long for a touch of mystery and cannot but feel that in the glare of light streaming through the immensely tall uncoloured windows everything is too clearly revealed and there is lacking the softness which would add so much to the beauty of the carvings. What a change there would be for the better if we could wave a wand and by some fairy power will back into the windows their ancient glories. Everything is too stately and cold, too sharply outlined; in fact, far too much denuded of the mysterious charm, the awe-inspiring gloom which lays hold upon us at Chartres or Bourges.
Although but little of its glass has survived, it is almost all of the thirteenth century, and some is very good. In one of the choir chapels to the left is an interesting Tree of Jesse in the medallion style. The left window of the easternmost chapel has a charming blue background and a novel use of small white birds in its border. Above us in the easternmost window of the clerestory (the only one in the clerestory that has survived intact) another unique feature catches the eye—its four slender lancets contain some very decorative lettering introduced into the design. This lettering is glazed in white on a blue background and its legend when deciphered sets out that those three windows were given by Bernard d’Abbeville, Bishop of Amiens, in the year 1269. In contrast to these meagre remains of glass, there are also to be seen three fine rose windows which are completely glazed. They all have quaint names, that in the west façade being called the “Rose of the Sea”; that in the north the “Rose of the Winds”; that in the south the “Rose of Heaven.” This poetic and quaintly familiar method of naming windows is not unknown elsewhere; it is also found at Chartres. The huge western rose, thirty-eight feet in diameter, although dating from 1241, has lost its original glass and was reglazed in the sixteenth century. There are no figures in the north rose, but instead a mosaic of colour; we have noticed a similar arrangement at St. Quentin. In the south rose, red predominates, but with it there is also considerable green. If the reader decides to visit Amiens, notwithstanding the small amount of glass to be seen there, he will surely conclude that the day has not been wasted, for he will not leave that splendid interior without a truer appreciation of the great service which the glass artist rendered to the architect, as well as a sigh for the fragile beauty which is no longer there.