windows in the façades of its churches; and as the circles grew so large as to be unmanageable to the glazier, the architects of Romanesque days invented a kind of wheel-shape tracery to fill them up. This rudimentary idea grew with the growth of Gothic, and accordingly the rose windows of the early style exhibit real tracery long before the idea had advanced beyond the rudimentary stage on those which were designed with parallel sides. It is accordingly impossible to fix the precise moment when Early became Middle Pointed anywhere, just as it is impossible to say when Middle Pointed abroad became Flamboyant; the Perpendicular of England, alone of all northern styles, having come to the birth armed cap-a-pee with its distinctive attributes. The growth of Gothic was, I repeat, all along, with that one exception, gradually progressive; and unless we recognise this fact, and in recognising it determine for simplicity's sake to adhere in our terminology to certain broad distinctions, we shall at last find ourselves compelled to take into consideration distinctions not only of chronology but of topography, and so leave off, not with three, as the generality of writers assume; nor with four, as Mr. E. A. Freeman contends; nor even with seven, as Mr. Sharpe discovers, but with seventy styles. Desirous as I am to avoid this risk, I continue without apology or misgiving to include the earlier, or "geometrical,” and the later, or "flowing" form of the Middle style under that same appellation.

For specimens of this, the intermediate, period of Gothic architecture we are no longer able to confine

ourselves to France or England.

That the style

originated in the former country I am inclined to believe, and among the first and the noblest buildings --noblest I mean in competition with the whole

world-on which the stamp of the novel method is impressed, stand the Cathedrals of Rheims and Amiens, which are, as well as the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, products of the middle years of the thirteenth century.

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Of later date, and of more pronounced Middle Pointed forms, rises the choir of St. Ouen's Abbey at Rouen (No. 7); while the latest building I believe in Europe which can be attributed to this rather than to the Flamboyant type is the exquisite church of Notre Dame de l'Epine in Champagne (No. 8), a few miles from Châlons-sur-Marne, well described by Mr. Fergusson as

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a miniature cathedral," and reared by an English architect in the middle of the first half of the fifteenth century, years after Wykeham had in our own island introduced his dignified and ingenious but cold invention.*

* In a visit which I recently paid to this church I was struck by two architectural peculiarities connected with it. The first was its general style, which was Middle Pointed, of a somewhat late period, but of distinguished beauty, though rather oddly commingled with Flamboyant details, particularly in the west front, of which I am able to give a woodcut, and which seemed the latest part of the building. The second was a peculiarly English feeling which distinguished the building, and which made itself particularly felt in the window tracery, where the cusping reminded me of Kentish examples, and in the stone perclose to the choir on the south side (that to the north being Renaissance), which looked like a close copy, on a small scale, of the beautiful choir perclose erected at Canterbury Cathedral by Prior de Estria in 1304-5. I left the church satisfied that I had been visiting a work mainly of the 14th century, and puzzled at the symptoms of architectural Anglicanism which I conceived that I had discovered, when I looked at a small description written by its actual curé, the Abbé Barat, which I had purchased within the building, but had not opened till I had turned my back upon it. The few first pages of this publication threw most curious and unexpected light on both the phenomena. In the first place, the building was not one, wholly or partially, of the 14th, but wholly of the 15th century, i.e. it ought by all chronology to have been Flamboyant, and yet it was architecturally Middle Pointed, for the alleged miraculous discovery of the image of the Madonna in a luminous bush, which led to the building of the church, and gave it its name, took place in 1400, and the works were not commenced till 1419. In the next place, I discovered that "un architecte nommé Patrick ou Patrice veut alors bien présenter des plans qui furent approuvés. On lui conféra la conduite de l'entreprise, et par un traité avec les marguilliers il s'engagea à construire le portail et les deux tours moyennant la somme de 600 livres pour ses

In England we are first introduced to complete traceried Gothic in Westminster Abbey, a very remarkable church, from its combining a French plan

honoraires. Comme Patrice était Anglais, il dut fournir pour caution deux bourgeois de la ville de Châlons." The abbé with very pardonable national pride excuses this transaction by the fact that the bargain took place only four years after the battle of Azincourt, when Troyes, Châlons, and Rheims were under subjection to the English. Patrick had finished the west end and the two western bays of the nave in 1429, when, according to Abbé Barat, the "infidèle Patrice" ran away, and carried off the funds which had been subscribed up to that date for the completion of the work, a charge which must of course be accepted with caution. As however the period of his flight corresponded with the revived successes of the French under Joan of Arc and the advance of Charles VII.'s army towards Châlons, it may have been fright as much as dishonesty that led to his retreat. If, which it is reasonable to suppose, Patrick left his plans behind him, the English character of the eastern portion of the church, including the choir perclose, would be sufficiently accounted for, particularly if the work were continued by the workmen whom the original architect had trained. Till it is proved to the contrary, I shall believe upon architectural evidence that Patrick learned his lesson at or about Canterbury, which is otherwise extremely probable when we consider the politico-ecclesiastical bearings of Henry V.'s invasion of France, and the likelihood that the cathedral nearest the French coast would supply the desired architect. The anachronism of style is a more puzzling consideration. Flamboyant had already formed itself in France, and, by a still more sudden and complete revolution in England, the artificial Perpendicular, which, if not (as I believe it was) invented by Wykeham, was everywhere propagated under his powerful influence, had for many years taken complete possession of the building operations of our island. Yet we see this almost unknown travelling Englishman begin nineteen years deep in the 15th century a church of great beauty and costliness in the plains of Champagne according to the forms of a past generation, which were, if not forgotten, at all events completely out of fashion everywhere else. I suppose the true explanation must be the simple one that Patrick was a man of strong mind who was independent enough to have a taste of his own, and that, as he had it all his own way under the exceptional circumstances which called him in at Châlons, so he did not scruple to exercise that taste. Perhaps a dislike to Perpendicular partly contributed to his seeking employment abroad. In proof that the early character of the architecture is not an imagination of my own, I may observe that, on consulting Mr. Fergusson's Handbook upon my return to England, I discovered (I fear to my pleasure) that he characterises this

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