Early  French  Gothic

Gothic  architecture  may  be  said  to  have  existed
from  the  early  part  of  the  i2th  to  the  end  of  the  i5th
century,  and,  comprehensively,  it  reached  its  highest
point  of  perfection  in  France,  and  no  one,  I  think,


1 64        FRENCH  GOTHIC  ARCHITECTURE

knows  sympathetically  Gothic  architecture,  who  has
not  studied  it  in  France,  where  it  is  at  home,  and
where  it  reached  its  highest  beauty,  even  as  the  influ-
ences of  soil,  sun  and  climate  make  the  cedar  of
Lebanon  lift  its  head  into  the  clouds.  It  was  a  germ
from  Italy  and  came  in  the  form  of  the  Romanesque
implanted  in  Southern  France,  there  running  imper-
ceptibly into  the  Gothic,  or,  more  accurately,  affording
opportunity  for  the  mechanical  transition  of  one  to  the
other,  and  imparting  to  the  beginning  of  French  Gothic
that  classic  dignity  which  is  rarer  in  Northern  Gothic,
whether  of  France,  Germany,  or  England,  that  inclines
to  rude  extravagance.
I  would  here  make  rather  a  lengthy  quotation
(rating  it  for  what  it  is  worth)  from  a  recent  work
of  some  originality,  which  has  principally  to  do  with
Chartres  cathedral,  a  book  blending  the  mystic  with
the  artistic.*  "In  the  main  no  one  knows  exactly
the  origin  of  the  Gothic  forms  of  the  cathedral.
