Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/479

 Bk. II. Ch. I. DIVISION OF SUBJECT. 447 In consequence, however, of the loss of its early buildings, and of its subsequent pre-eminence and supercession of the earlier styles, the description of its features naturally follows that of the suboi-- dinate provinces, and concludes the history of the mediaeval styles in France. Not to multiply divisions, we may include in the Northern province many varieties that will afterwards be marked as distinct in maps of French architecture, especially at the south-east, where the Nivernois and Bourbonnois, if not deserving of separate honors, at least consist of such a complete mixture of the Frankish and Burgundian with the Southern styles, that they cannot strictly be said to belong to any one in particular, though they partake of all. The Northern, however, is certainly the predominant element, and Avith that therefore they should be classed. To the westward lies the architectural province of Normandy, one of the most vigorous offshoots of the Frankish style: and from the power of the Norman dukes in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the accidental circumstance of its prosperity in those centuries when the rest of France was prostrate from their ravages and. torn by internal dissensions, the Round Gothic style shows itself here with a vigor and completeness not found elsewhere. It is, however, evidently only the Frankish style based remotely on Roman tradition, but which the Barbarians used with a freedom and boldness which soon converted it into a purely national Gothic form. This soon ripened into the complete Gothic style of the 13th century, which was so admired that it soon spi-ead over the whole face of Europe, and became the type of all Gothic architecture. Alsace is not included in this enumeration, as it certainly belongs architecturally to Germany. Lorraine too is more German than French, and if included at all, must be so as an exceptional transitional prov- ince. French Flanders belonged, in the Middle Ages, to the Belgian provinces behind it, and may therefore also be disregarded at present ; but even after rejecting all these, enough is still left to render it diffi- cult to remember and follow all the changes in style introduced by these different races, and which marked not only the artistic but the political state of France during the Middle Ages, when the six terri- torial peers of France, the Counts of Toulouse, Aquitaine, Normandy, Burgundy, Champagne, and Flanders, represented the six principal provinces of the kingdom, under their suzerain, the Count or King of Paris. These very divisions might now be taken to represent the architectural distinctions, were it not that the pre-eminence of these great princes belongs to a later epoch than the architectural divisions which we have pointed out, and which we must now describe some- what more at length.