There is rather a quiet, satisfactory _place_ in front
of the cathedral, with some good "bits" in it; notably
a turret at the angle of one of the towers, and a very
fine, steep-roofed dwelling, behind low walls, which it
overlooks, with a tall iron gate. This house has two
or three little pointed towers, a big, black, precipitous
roof, and a general air of having had a history. There
are houses which are scenes, and there are houses
which are only houses. The trouble with the domestic
architecture of the United States is that it is not
scenic, thank Heaven! and the good fortune of an old
structure like the turreted mansion on the hillside of
Le Mans is that it is not simply a house. It is a per-
son, as it were, as well. It would be well, indeed, if
it might have communicated a little of its personality
to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its
own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has a
romanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower.
One sees from without, at a glance, the peculiarity of
the church, - the disparity between the romanesque
nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and
the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a
period a hundred years later. Outside, this end of
the church rises far above the nave, which looks merely
like a long porch leading to it, with a small and curious
romanesque porch in its own south flank. The transepts,
shallow but very lofty, display to the spectators in the
_place_ the reach of their two clere-story windows, which
occupy, above, the whole expanse of the wall. The
south transept terminates in a sort of tower, which is