springs from spontaneous, logical, and well-proportioned art. To measure a
toe, is to measure the giant.

Let us return to the facade of Notre-Dame as we see it at the present day,
when we make a pious pilgrimage to admire the solemn and mighty cathedral,
which, as its chroniclers declare, inspires terror. This facade now lacks
three important things: first, the eleven steps which formerly raised it
above the level of the ground; next, the lower series of statues which
filled the niches over the doors; and lastly, the upper row of the twenty-
eight most ancient kings of France, which adorned the gallery of the first
story, from Childebert down to Philip Augustus, each holding in his hand
"the imperial globe."

The stairs were destroyed by Time, which, with slow and irresistible
progress, raised the level of the city's soil; but while this flood-tide
of the pavements of Paris swallowed one by one the eleven steps which
added to the majestic height of the edifice, Time has perhaps given to the
church more than it took away, for it is Time which has painted the front
with that sober hue of centuries which makes the antiquity of churches
their greatest beauty.

But who pulled down the two rows of statues? Who left those empty niches?
Who carved that new and bastard pointed arch in the very center of the
middle door? Who dared to insert that clumsy, tasteless, wooden door,
carved in the style of Louis XV., side by side with the arabesques of
Biscornette? Who but men, architects, the artists of our day?

And if we step into the interior of the edifice, who overthrew that
colossal figure of Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues by the same
right as the great hall of the palace among halls, as the spire of