Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/563

 Bk. II. Ch. VIII. CENTRAL FRANCE. 531 century, with which we are concerned at present. Then architecture was truly progressive : every man and every class in the country lent their aid, each in his own department, and all worked together to pro- duce those wonderful buildings which still excite our admiration. The masons performed their parts, and it was an important one ; but neither to them nor to their employers, such as the Abbe Suger, Maurice de Sully, Robert de Lusarches, or Fulbert of Chartres, is the whole merit to be ascribed, but to all classes of the French nation, carrying on steadily a combined movement towards a well-defined end. In the following pages, therefore, it will not be necessary to recur to the freemasons nor their masters — at least not more than incident- ally — till we come to Germany. Nor will it be necessary to attemj^t to define who was the architect of any particular building. The names usually fixed upon by antiquaries after so much search are merely those of the master-masons or foremen of the works, who had nothing whatever to do with the main designs of the buildings. The simple fact that all the churches of any particular age are so like to one another, both in plan and detail, and so nearly equal in merit, is alone sufficient to prove how little the individual had to do with their design, and how much was due to the age and the progress the style had achieved at that time. This, too, has always proved to be the case, not only in Europe, but in every corner of the world, and in every age when architecture has been a true and living art.