Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/335

Rh logical character of the people was such as to render them the most artistic race of Northern Europe, while their social and political conditions were most favourable to artistic production. The force of natural aptitude, the spirit of national unity as well as of communal independence, and the comparative freedom from ecclesiastical restraints, were all highly conducive to the exercise of that artistic genius which, during the period in which Gothic architecture was developed, was passing from the clergy to the laity. And in addition to all this the native rock-beds furnished better materials for building than were generally accessible elsewhere.

In England at this epoch the conditions were very different. Prior to the Conquest no architecture on a great scale existed, though there were the elements of a style which might, doubtless, in time have grown into importance. By the Conquest the progress of this art was naturally checked, and was for some time held in abeyance by the fact that the conquerors took care to place a prelate or an abbot of their own race at the head of nearly every diocese and monastic institution. No admixture of complementary elements gave to the people what their purely Teutonic nature lacked in the direction of artistic aptitudes. The Norman infusion, after it really took place, did much; but the Norman race was itself too near of kin to introduce such new elements as were required for a fresh life of art.

After the oppression of the conquerors had in a measure ceased, and the fusion of the two races had so far proceeded as to remove the old distinctions between Normans and English, and produce somewhat of common national feeling, the conditions for the growth of a national art were still far less auspicious than they were in France. No free communities like those of the Continent existed. The Commune in England had not the same character and meaning that it had in France. It was not, as in France, a great centre of independent life, where the arts might naturally become the enthusiastic concern of large bodies of laymen working in the municipal employ. Ecclesiastical corporations and private individuals alone, under the Crown, held in England the powers that in France were possessed by the Communes. Hence the cathedrals here did not generally spring up as