Architecture In France.

ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE .

MEDIEVAL TO RENAISSANCE . ( Continued from page 303 . ) I now come to Provence , the most interesting district in Prance , to my mind , for Romanesque work , yet in the eleventh century it was scarcely so advanced as we might expect . We here find

Yalance , Avignon , Aries , St . Croix , at Montmajeur , La Palud , Yienne , and others . These Provencal churches have , for the most part , a cross plan , round arches for the subordinate parts , no triforium or clerestory , the nave being covered with

a pointed barrel vault , resting on massive unmoulded ribs . The section of the few mouldings nsed is Medieval in some , quite Roman in others . But the ornaments are , almost invariably , traditional copies of Roman . We have , too , at Avignon , the dome combined with the pointed barrel vault ,

and at the picturesque sepulchral chapel of Montniajeur , one of those seeming imitations of such old work as the tomb of Galla Placidia , the baptistry at Ratisbon , or the end of Mayence cathedral , which make us doubt whether so clever a plan be oriinal or not . The Avignon dome isso far as I

g , know , unique in the way in which the square plan of the dome drum is worked out from an oblongbase . No Byzantine architect did that . It is Eastern altoe-ether .

As this eleventh century is an important one m the history of our art , I will take a short review of its main features in Prance . In the north we have a style prettywelldeveloped by the Normans , who have left the clear distinct traces of their work wherever their race could find

a home , in England and Sicily , as much as in Normandy . They get , so far as I can see , no share of their inspiration from the south . What was not their own was German . Then east , west , and south of this we find but little to remark until we come to the German provinces on the east , and

approach Aquitaine to the south . There we meet at once with the Venetian work as shown at Perigueux , Souillac , and Angouleme ; and with the Eastern work as shown in nearly every other dome and in the jjointed arches , and with details which show their copyism from the

old provincial works of the Romans . I class them thus , for I have not the slightest doubt in my own mind that the use of the dome was altogether a revival that came from the East in the Middle Ages ; the form of its pendentives being modified by the Roman architects of Byzantium , and as we

see it at Perigueux , but showing their genuine Eastern origin in every other school with which I am acquainted . It is the mixture of Roman , Norman , Rhenish , and Eastern art which makes the study of French so interestingly difficult , and results in so many picturesque arrangements in p lan and outline . In the twelfth century we find art in Picardy and

Normandy still Norman , but advanced , and slightly mixed with the pointed arch . There is little in Brittany worth mention ; but in central and northern Prance there are parts of Senlis , Noyon , Soissons , Laon , Borages , Sens , Chaxtres , Le Mans , and St . Remi at Rheins .

In An ) on and Poitou we have the picturesque church of St . Nicholas ; at Blois , the cathedrals of Tours and Angouleme . In Gruienne we have the portals and cloisters of Moissac , La Cite in Perigueux , & c . In Auvergne , great part of Le Puy , & c .

And in Provence , the portals of Tarascon , St . Trophime at Aries , & c . You will see by the above list that we are now in the era of great churches . Not that the great cathedrals were finished as we find them ; but each has remains enough to show that those who

first designed them were twelfth-century men at the latest , and that then designers meant them to be of the vast proportions which they assume

now . We find that the nave of Le Mans was then built of its present size , because the outer walls and arcades are original . Bonrges , also , was designed to be of the same extent as we now see it , for the north and south doorways are of

twelfth-century date . At Chartres , the great west front is of the same date . The great churches of St . Remi , at Rheims in the north , and Toulouse in the south , were earlier . Still , I doubt whether a more interesting series could be found than we see in ranging from north to south through these great

French churches . The fact of the great size of the churches at this date and earlier seems to interfere a good deal with M . Yiollet-le-Duc's theory as to the thirteenth century work . He describes the cathedrals of that date as being rebuilt in consequence of the

great and sudden efforts made during the enfranchisement of the towns , their great increase of wealth and population having led to the rebuilding on so vast a scale of their cathedrals . It did undoubtedly lead to their being rebuilt in a much more ornate manner , but the size had been set in the olden time long before .

Start at the extreme north , and we are stopped at once at Laon , one of the grandest as well as most ancient of these works , —almost superior in the beauty of its site even to Durham . It stands on a spur of a long range of hills , with a steep escarpment from the plain , and you ascend straight

up the face of the rock by ranges of stairs , one only having no less than 260 steps . The face of the cliff is terraced off and clothed , with vineyards , and high above you as you ascend , towering above all around it , and standing boldly and grandly out , with its towers against the sky , stands the grand

church of Laon . I know of no work more beautiful or nobler of the age , —noble in the magnificence of its outline , and beautiful in the richness of its detail . The