CHARTRES, the chief town of the department of Eure-et-Loir, 55 miles south-west from Paris by railway, stands on a slope skirted by the River Eure, which flows partly within and partly beyond the ramparts. Its houses are antique and straggling; but there are four fine squares, in one of which, used as the herb-market, is an obelisk in memory of General Marceau, a native of the town. Chartres is theseat of a tribunal of the first instance, a tribunal of commerce, a communal college, and a diocesan seminary; and it has a weekly corn-market, which is one of the largest in France and is well managed by a corporation of women. Its chief manufactures are woollens and leather. Its cathedral of Nôtre Dame, a vast Gothic edifice, with two spires of different construction, is reckoned one of the finest cathedrals in France. It was founded in the 11th century by Bishop Fulbert on the site of an earlier church destroyed by fire in 1020. In 1194 another conflagration laid waste the new building then hardly completed; but clergy and people set zealously to work, and the main part of the present structure was finished by 1240. Though there have been numerous minor additions and alterations since that time, the general character of the cathedral is unimpaired. The upper woodwork was consumed by fire in 1830, as well as the beautiful belfry of the old tower, but the rest of the building was saved; and it still preserves some of its magnificent stained-glass windows of the 13th century. (See Bulteau, Descript, de la cathxdr. de Chartres, 1850.) The churches of St Pierre and St Andró may also be noticed....