PREFACE.
A years ago, while visiting or, rather, about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an of one of the towers, the word, by hand upon the wall:—
ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.
These Greek capitals, black with age, and in the stone, with I know not what to Gothic upon their and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had them there, and the and meaning in them, the author deeply.
He questioned himself; he to who have been that in which had not been to this world without this of or upon the of the church.
Afterwards, the was or down, I know not which, and the disappeared. For it is thus that people have been in the of with the churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from as well as from without. The them, the them down; then the and them.
Thus, with the of the memory which the author of this book here to it, there to-day nothing of the word the tower of Notre-Dame,—nothing of the which it so sadly up. The man who that word upon the from the of the of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has been from the of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon from the of the earth.
It is upon this word that this book is founded.
March, 1831.
