Note 3 — Chapter IV · AMONG THE HINDOOS.

Mr. Robert Tomes, American consul, a few years ago, at the French city of Rheims, describes very agreeably the impression made upon his mind by the grand historic cathedral of that ancient place.[3] Filled with a sense of the majestic presence of the edifice, he approached one of the chief portals, to find it crusted with a most uncouth semi-burlesque representation, cut in stone, of the Last Judgment. The trump has sounded, and the Lord from a lofty throne is pronouncing doom upon the risen as they are brought up to the judgment-seat by the angels. Below him are two rows of the dead just rising from their graves, extending to the full width of the great door. Upon many of the faces there is an expression of amazement, which the artist apparently designed to be comic, and several of the attitudes are extremely absurd and ludicrous. Some have managed to push off the lid of their tombs a little way, and are peeping out through the narrow aperture, others have just got their heads above the surface of the ground, and others are sitting up in their graves; some have one leg out, some are springing into the air, and some are running, as if in wild fright, for their lives. Though the usual expression upon the faces is one of astonishment, yet this is varied. Some are rubbing their eyes as if startled from a deep sleep, but not yet aware of the cause of alarm; others are utterly bewildered, and hesitate to leave their resting-place; some leap out in mad excitement, and others hurry off as if fearing to be again consigned to the tomb. An angel is leading a cheerful company of popes, bishops, and kings toward the Saviour, while a hideous demon, with a mouth stretching from ear to ear, is dragging off a number of the condemned toward the devil, who is seen stirring up a huge caldron boiling and bubbling with naked babies, dead before baptism. On another part of the wall is a carved representation of the vices which led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. These were so monstrously obscene that the authorities of the cathedral, in deference to the modern sense of decency, have caused them to be partly cut away by the chisel.