Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 126, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1918 — PLAINS of PICARDY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PLAINS of PICARDY

m ■em HE battle In which the allies r I and the central powers have been engaged in northeastern France often is referred to In. the dispatches as the “Batle of Picardy,” although as a political subdivision the province of Picardy no longer exists. Since the division into departments was made, Picardy was cut up into the departments of the Somme, Pas-de-Calals, Alsne and Oise. In the anCleht days when it existed as one of the great historic provinces of France, its boundaries extended from Hainaut and Artois on the north and from Champagne on the east to the province of Normandy and the English channel on the west, with a maritime frontier running from the mouth of the Aa to the cliffs of Caux, and it Included within its boundaries the whole of the basin of the Somme river and a great part of that of the Oise. Under the Romans it was inhabited by the Morlni, the Amblani, the Veromandui, the Bellovacl and the Suessiones, whose names are still preserved ft» the modern cities of Amiens, Vermandols, Beauvais and Solssons. It rtras a battleground in Caesar’s day and the Romans built military roads through the province and erected defensive citadels along the banks of the Somme. It was in Picardy, too, that the first nucleation of France as a nation took place, under the Merovingian kings in ’the fifth century. “The history of ancient France,” says Michelet, “had its sources In Picardy.” Here Clovis made his first capital at Solssons and Charlemagne founded his at Noyon. Famous battles were fought"within its borders long before the first Prussian set foot upon its soil. Crecy, where Edward the Black Prince won his spurs, and Agincourt, where Henry V of England, with his bowmen, wrought such havoc With the French army—the bowmen whose spirits were said to have rendered miraculous assistance to the allies at the Battle of the Marne. Land of Beautiful Landscapes. A land of beautiful landscapes is the lahd of Picardy—or was before the deviating Hun plowed up its fair fields, tore up its roads and laid low its fort ests and its famous avenues of aspens and poplars—as ‘’Picturesque Picardy” It was known to poets and artists and writers and travelers. David Murray, the famous Scottish landscape painter, gave its pastoral beauties to the world in almost three score of his canvases. Many of Corot’s finest landscapes are. laid in the valley of the Oise or Somme. Ruskin and Robert Louis Stevenson have glorified it in art and literature. But today it is a scene of ruin, ravage and desolation. Many of its age-old towns have been <nade level with the plain, some of its historic cathedrals and chateaux are heaps of ruins and great craters of shell holes mark the face of the land. As Lord Byron said of Greece, “Tis Picardy, but living Picardy no more.” And now again the guns of the Hmm have been thundering in the heart soft Picardy and at the gates of its ancient capital, Amiens, the beautiful, Hie “Venice of Picardy,” home of rare art treasures and city of the cathedral Which has been named by the Picards themselves the “Cathedral of the Beautiful God,” and by art lovers the “Parthenon of Gothic architecture. The cathedral of Amiens is one of the largest churches in the world, being surpassed in the magnitude of its construction only by St. Peter’s at Rome, St Sophia’s at Constantinople, and the cathedral of Cologne. Into its sculptured stones and statues have been wrought by its builders almost a complete biblical both of the Old and New Testaments. Ruskin calls the cathedral “the Bible of Amiens,” and inrhis lecture under that title he has given an interpretation of its thousands of sculptured figures and of Its “sermons in stones.” The cathedral was built chiefly be-

tween 1220 and 1288. Its architect was Robert de Luzarches. It consists of a nave nearly 140 feet high, with a,isles and lateral chapels, a transept with aisles, and a choir ending in an apse surrounded by chapels. The total length is 469 feet, its breadth 216 feet. The facade, which is flanked by two square towers without spires, has three portals decorated with a profusion of statuary, and over the < central portal is the remarkable statue of, Christ/of the thirteenth century, which has given to this entrance the name of the “porch of the beautiful God.” Surmounting the portals are two galleries, and above these a fine rose window. Wood That Leaps Like Living Flame. Ruskin went into raptures over the wood carvings of the choir. “Whatever you wish to see, or are forced tb leave unseen at Amiens,” he said; “if the overwhelming possibilities of your existence and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion in their fulfillment have left you so much as one quarter of an hour, not out of breath, for the contemplation of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles and porches, lancet windows and roses, you can see elsewhere as well as here —but such carpenter’s work yon cannot It is latefully developed flamboyant just past the fifteenth century, and has some Flemish stolidity mixed with the playing french fire of it; but wood carving was the Picard’s joy from his youth up, and so far as I know there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world. Sweet and young grained wood it is; oak, trained and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years, since. Under the carver’s hapd it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing pinnacle—it shoots and wreathes Itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, Imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book.” Ruskin notes that the dominant tone of the sculptures that so profusely decorate the cathedral is that of peace and mercy. Summing up his interpretation of the Amiens cathedral, the “Bible ,of Amiens,” as Ruskin asks: “Who built it, shall we ask? God and man is the first true answer. The stars in their courses built it, and the nations. Greek Athena labors here, and the Roman Father Jove, and Guardian Mars. The Gau! labors here and the Frank; knightly Norman, mighty Ostrogoth, and wasted anchprite of Idumea. The actual man who built it scarcely cared to tell you he did so; nor do the historians brag of him. Any quantity of heraldries of knaves and faineants you may find in what they call their history; but this is. probably the first time you ever read the name of Robert of Luzarches.

Amiens and Its Cathedral.