The front is heavy, but not so heavy as usually represented in engravings; I think this appearance arises in part from the square solidity of the towers, and in part from the horizontal lines being marked too strongly, a circumstance which always produces a bad effect in Gothic architecture. I have not been able to determine whether it was intended to crown these towers with spires: I am inclined to answer in the affirmative, but rather from analogy than from direct proof. According to Landon there were twenty-five statues of kings in the arches over the western porch, viz. thirteen of the first race, nine of the second, and seven of the Capetian. They entirely filled one range of arches and no more. Now there are two ranges of arches above the doorways in this front, the lower of which, according to the elevation given by the same author, presents twenty-four niches, and the upper twenty-six. Query, how many statues were there, and where did they stand? Felibien, in his plate of the elevation, which is much better than Landon’s, figures twenty-eight niches in the lower arcade, viz. nine in the middle, seven on one side, and eight on the other, and four on the buttresses. The upper arcade is a gallery not intended for statues, the middle part of which is open on both sides. The arches of the lower range have trefoil heads, and appear from below to be entirely composed of models of architecture. The canopies of the portal abound also with models of architecture, resembling in this, and in the style of sculpture, the south portal at Chartres. Perhaps the design of these, though not the execution, may be attributed to the time of Maurice de Sully, in 1165, but this brings the date a century later than that of Chartres. I wish very much to discover that the south porch in that cathedral was of 1160, instead of 1060, but I cannot persuade myself that the physician of Henry I. lived to build it a hundred years after his sovereign’s death. The Matilda mentioned as having contributed to the church, may be the widow of the emperor.
Whittington says, “The eastern end, which is triagonal and very plain, was probably one of the first Gothic structures in France (1168). This plainness, from a proper regard to uniformity, was maintained in the subsequent part of the building, excepting in the chapels, which are of later date;” this I do not comprehend; the eastern end is semi-circular, and is richly ornamented externally with slender shafts, and spires of different heights, which may perhaps have been added at the same time with the chapels, if these are indeed posterior, but assuredly they do not make part of them. It seems to me that those parts which remain without ornament have never been completed, for they exhibit abrupt terminations, which were not in the taste of the Gothic architects at any period. All the flying buttresses are exceedingly slender, and altogether the construction of Nôtre Dame may be considered as among the boldest, and most successful, existing in Gothic architecture; although even here we find some traces of the too great operation of the thrust of the arches of the side aisles.