Note 1 — INTRODUCTION

This idea, which has recently found support in quarters which might have been considered free from such chauvinism, is based upon a narrow and peculiarly modern view of art. Art activities in the Middle Ages were as instinctive and unconscious as speech. The forms of architecture were invented and elaborated much in the same way as language. For the purpose of the historian of architecture, the northern half of France, the three southern quarters of Great Britain, and the districts threaded by the Rhine, form a single country, a single foyer of art. They all pressed on from similar starting-points to similar goals; and if the French went ahead in one direction, they fell astern in another. It may be allowed that, on the whole, the architects of the Ile-de-France did better than their rivals. Gothic architecture is pre-eminently logical, and logic is pre-eminently the artistic gift of the Frenchman. So that its more scientific development in the "French royal domain" was only to be expected. That success of this kind gives a right to call the whole development "French mediæval architecture" cannot be allowed.—Ed.