Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/565

 Biv. 11. Ch. IX. FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 533 Style in the centre of France took place with the revival of the national power under the guidance of the great Abbe Suger, about the year 1144. In England it hardly ai)peared till the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral, inder the guidance of a French architect, A.D. 1175; and in Germany it is not found till, at all events, the beginning of the 13th century, and can liardly be said to have taken firm root in that country till a century at least after it had been fairly established in France. The development of particular features will be pointed out as we proceed ; but no attempt will be made to arrange the cathedrals and o-reat buildings in chronological order. Such an attempt would merely lead to confusion, as most of them took a century at least to erect — many of them Uvo. In France, as in England, there is no one great typical building to which we can refer as a standard of perfection — no Hypostyle Hall or Parthenon which combines in itself all the excellencies of the style adopted ; and we are forced, therefore to cull from a number of examples materials for the composition, even in imagination, of a })erfect whole. Germany has in this respect been more fortunate, possessinor in Coloarne Cathedral an edifice combining all the beauties ever attempted to be produced in pointed Gothic in that country. But even this is only an imitation of French cathedrals, erected by jiersons who admired and understood the details of the style, but were incapable of appreciating its higher principles. The great cathedrals of Rheims, Chartres, and Amiens are all early examples of the style, and as they were erected nearly simultaneously, none ■of their architects were able to profit by the experience obtained in the others; they are consequently all more or less experiments in a new and untried style. The princi])al parts of the church of St. uen at Rouen, on the contrary, are of somewhat too late a date ; and beautiful though it is, masonic perfection was then coming to be more considered than the expression either of poetry or of power. Still in Rheims Cathedral we have a l)uilding possessing so many of the perfections and characteristic beauties of the art that it may almost serve as a type of the earlier style, as St. Ouen may of the later; and though we may regret the absence of the intermediate steps, except in such fragments as the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, still between them we may obtain a tolerably clear idea of the form to Avhich French art aspired during its most flourishing age. To avoid as far as may be possible the tediousness of repetition necessary if the attempt were made to describe each building sepa- rately, and at the same time not to fall into the confusion that must result from grouping the Avhole together, the most expedient mode will, jterha]>s, be to describe first the four great typical cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens, and then to point out briefly the