a hunt for apses would offer an education, but it would lead far out of France.  Indeed, it would be simpler to begin at once with Sancta Sophia at Constantinople, San Vitale at Ravenna and Monreale at Palermo, and the churches at Torcello and Murano, and San Marco at Venice; and admit that no device has ever equalled the startling and mystical majesty of the Byzantine half-dome, with its marvellous mosaic Madonna dominating the church, from the entrance, with her imperial and divine presence.  Unfortunately, the northern churches needed light, and the northern architects turned their minds to a desperate effort for a new apse.

The scheme of the cathedral at Laon seems to have been rejected unanimously; the bare, flat wall at the end of the choir was an eyesore; it was quite bad enough at the end of the nave, and became annoying at the end of the transepts, so that at Noyon and Soissons the architect, with a keen sense of interior form, had rounded the transept ends; but, though external needs might require a square transept, the unintelligence of the flat wall became insufferable at the east end.  Neither did the square choir suit the church ceremonies and processions, or offer the same advantages of arrangement, as the French understood them.  With one voice, the French architects seem to have rejected the Laon experiment, and turned back to a solution taken directly from the Romanesque.

[Illustration with caption:  Saint-Martin<
/i>-des-champs]

Quite early—­in the eleventh century—­a whole group of churches had been built in Auvergne,—­at Clermont and Issoire, for example,—­ possibly by one architect, with a circular apse, breaking out into five apsidal chapels.  Tourists who get down as far south as Toulouse see another example of this Romanesque apse in the famous Church of Saint Sernin, of the twelfth century; and few critics take offence at one’s liking it.  Indeed, as far as concerns the exterior, one might even risk thinking it more charming than the exterior of any Gothic apse ever built.  Many of these Romanesque apses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries still remain in France, showing themselves in unsuspected parish churches, here and there, but always a surprise for their quiet, unobtrusive grace, making a harmony with the Romanesque tower, if there is one, into which they rise, as at Saint Sernin; but all these churches had only one aisle, and, in the interior, there came invariable trouble when the vaults rose in height.  The architect of Chartres, in 1200, could get no direct help from these, or even from Paris which was a beautifully perfect apse, but had no apsidal chapels.  The earliest apse that could have served as a suggestion for Chartres—­or, at least, as a point of observation for us—­was that of the Abbey Church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, which we went to see in Paris, and which is said to date from about 1150.