Architecture In France.

miss all these down south , but we have , instead , the bold and graceful portals and the richly-sculptured cloisters—so lavish in their decorations , so elegant in their carvings , that one almost forgets the contrast between Aries and Laon , in the wonderful interest which the carvings to these small southern churches excites .

Now I want to lead you , before we come to the great works of the thirteenth century , to examine again the course of the art-changes up to the end of the twelfth . First , then , we find Normandy , as before , still , to a certain extent , isolated in art , not borrowing from or influencing other provinces ,

and still keeping its own peculiar style , be the origin of it what it may . But it aud its arts seem to have influenced us . Secondly , then , at the time when we had only such archaic work as we see at Durham , Peterborough , and Norwich , there had been finished a large part of the great Pointed

church of St . Denis . But the Angers Pointed churches must have been earlier still ; and earlier still than those were Avignon and other Pointed vaults still farther south . We must call to mind that most of the hnildings , Christian and Saracenic—and grand

ones they are—wherein the Easterns had a hand , as Sicily , and Egypt , and Syria , were , long before , all Pointed in their arches . In Italy , even in the north , all was strictly still Romanesque and roundarched . But though the true Gothic seems to have been begun in France , it was only in the

north that the style had taken root . Little of it is to be found south of Paris , for the Pointed arch in the southern provinces was used with no Gothic feeling . It marks , however , the influence of commerce npon art , in that the nearest to it , perhaps , is to be found in Angers , the chief town northward in the general route . Now , up to this time , it seems to me that this advance in Gothic was

altogether French ; at least , I know of no other place from which the style could have been borrowed : from Germany it certainly was not . All that I have ever seen or heard of it was Romanesque—Romanesque of a very peculiar and beautiful style ; very Eastern much of it , and

containing some of the finest specimens of plan and outline that the world has ever seen ; but no Gothic was there . It did not come from England . Pew of our works here are even Transition , and we cannot call such buildings Gothic . It did not come from Italyfor nothing there is

, to be found that is not Romanesque . To France , too , we must , I think , give the honour of designing the great sculptured portals , such as we find in this country at Aries and Tarascon ( most carefully described by M . Waring at the Institute , in 1860 ) , and the earliest of these are at Bourges and

Strasburg . Somewhat near to them in date are those of S . N . Toscanello and Yerona . But these are very different in arrangement from the French—¦ combine less harmoniously ivith the general mass ; and , ¦ although the French and Italians of those

times may have interchanged ideas , it seems to me that the French architects of Southern France may fairly claim the merit of their design , and nothing that I know is more rich and graceful . It is clear , however , that there was , as I have before suggested , an interchange of thought

between the art workers of France and Italy , because , in . addition to the twelfth century being the age of porches in both countries , we find also , in both > the strangely conventional introduction , under the columns , of lions and other animals . This lasted in Italy to the fifteenth centuryone of the most

, magnificent specimens being the porch of Ancona . To sum up—the French works of the twelfth , century , as a rule , were more powerful than graceful—more bold than studied—less marked as a distinct epoch by mouldings , or outlines , or plans ; , but free in all to an extent that no age , before ov

since , perhaps , has known . The architect in Provence , Auvergne , and Anjou , was a singularly unfettered man . He took for his plan the cross form or the oblong , with or without aisles , as it but answered his purpose or his funds . He turned his lower arches in the

round form which his fathers used , covered his great church with the northern groin or the southern . barrel vault , and sometimes with both together , and formed these groins or vaults with the Pointed arch . Then , upon that , if he wished for a bolder form , he raised the dome with its pendentives borrowed from the east , and finished the

great work by the radiating chapels which led to the glorious French chevet . And then he lavished upon the entrance to this church all the efforts ivhich sculpture could make , and which were thebeginnings of that work which culminated in the portals of Rheims and Bourges . Where , too ,

shall we find such studies in aftertimes as those that we get in the cloisters of Aries or Moissao ? Rude they are—rough—not to be looked at for studies of anatomy or graceful drapery ( though you may find that too ) , or for all the delicate refinements of the sculptor ' s art . But what a study

there is of the men who wrought them ! Whatlessons in stone do they teach ! Walk through those cloisters ; and , as you look at each capital , the mind can find a separate subject to learn from or instruct . The Greek never did this , nor did the Roman . Not even did the men of a century

later ! Compare , for instance , the carving in the cloisters of St . Trip hime with that of the latercloisters of the Augustines at Toulouse—a . wretched falling off . I don't say copy these rudeworks ; but I do say , work as they worked , with our superior knowledge as a help to us , and we

shall do well . Now for the thirteenth century , the last that one can well study in France , for art ran to riot very quickly afterwards ; and , though much of the after work is beautiful , almost to perfectness , yet there is so much waste , if I may use the term , in its beauty , that one can scarcely well go