It is the greatest of pities
that its grandeur and solemnity should just now be so infinitely marred
by the workmen's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the whole centre
of the edifice, and screening all its best effects. It seems to have
been already most richly ornamented, its roof being painted, and the
capitals of the pillars gilded, and their shafts illuminated in fresco;
and no doubt it will shine out gorgeously when all the repairs and
adornments shall be completed. Even now it gave to my actual sight what
I have often tried to imagine in my visits to the English cathedrals,--
the pristine glory of those edifices, when they stood glowing with gold
and picture, fresh from the architects' and adorners' hands.
The interior loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity
which would swallow up anything that might look gewgawy in its
ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by
pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising over us and
spreading about us in such a firmamental way, that we cannot spoil them
by any pettiness of our own, but that they receive (or absorb) our
pettiness into their own immensity.
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