the early part of the fourteenth century. The stone screen round the choir, with its beautiful sculptures, was finished in 1351, as recorded by another inscription *.

The chapel of the Seminary at Bayeux, built between 1206 and 1231, by Bishop Robert D'Abléches, is so entirely in the English style, and so unlike other French buildings of the same period, that it would appear to have been certainly built by an English architect. The windows are all lancet-shaped and moulded, and the ribs are also moulded in the English fashion. It is a remarkably elegant little building, but more like a part of Salisbury than of Rheims or Chartres. The east end is square, but in the interior the vaulting is so arranged as to give very much the effect of an apse.

The church of St. Peter at Lisieux, in Normandy, built between 1226 and 1267, is a remarkably good and pure specimen of the transition and of the Early French style. The pillars are of the usual massive character, with the Corinthianized capitals, very similar to Sens and Canterbury. The triforium is panelled, and some of the panels have trefoils and quatrefoils pierced through them; the shafts have capitals of stiff-leaf foliage; the clear-story windows are lancets, recessed with shafts and moulded, but very flat and square in section. The aisle windows are couplets of two lancet lights, with a panel in the head, and a foliated circle with a boss in the centre, but not pierced. There is a fine Early French lantern open to the church. The apse is a little later than the rest of the work, and the Ladychapel is an addition of the fourteenth century, and fine Decorated work.

M. Vitet, in his Monographie de Notre Dame de Noyon, folio, 1845, and M. Viollet-le-Duc, following him, consider it probable that the Cathedral of Noyon was commenced about 1150, by Bishop Brandoin, the friend of Suger; but the style, though still transitional, is considerably in advance of St. Denis, and in the absence of any positive evidence as to the date, it seems more probable that it is twenty or thirty years later.

The cathedral of Laon is also without any positive evidence as to

We are indebted to M. Viollet-le-Duc, the architect of the church of Notre Dame, and one of the best-informed antiquaries of France, for this valuable information respecting the precise dates of the different parts of the building. [Since this note was published, he has produced several volumes of his great work the Dictionnaire de l'Architecture, which has placed him in the foremost rank among the architectural antiquaries of the day.]

its date, but is considered by M. Viollet-le-Duc to be of the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the reasons he gives for assigning it to this date appear conclusive. The style is early Gothic, but very heavy, and with considerable remains of the transitional charactor; the east end is square, which is very unusual in France, though common in England at that period. The bishops of Laon had considerable intercourse with England, which seems naturally to account for the adoption of this English plan, but the French archi. tects do not allow this.

The Sainte Chapelle at Paris, built between 1245 and 1257, from the design and under the direction of Pierre de Monterau, is one of the most beautiful pieces of work of its time, and is considered by some of the best French antiquaries to be in advance of most other buildings in France of the same period. The windows have foliated circles in the head very similar to the chapter-house at Salisbury. The very rich character of the building causes it to be frequently considered as belonging to the Decorated style, but the character of the foliage and the mouldings shew it to belong to the Early French style, although the later division of it, as shewn by the use of tracery: this kind of tracery in England does not belong to the Decorated style, it is contemporary with lancet windows and regular Early English mouldings; although it shews a building to be late in the style, and approaching to the Decorated. This is the same in France as in England, excepting that such tracery is there used a few years earlier than it is in England.

The very beautiful Lady-chapel of St. Germer in Picardy, near Beauvais, is evidently a copy of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, at least of the upper chapel, for there is no second chapel under the principal one, as in Paris. This chapel has lately been very carefully restored, and those persons who object to the colouring of the Sainte Chapelle as tawdry, may prefer this, where the beautiful sculpture is free from colour. There is no doubt that all these buildings were intended to be coloured originally, as it was the fashion of the age when they were built; but whether they look better without the colouring or not, is a matter of taste which it is useless to dispute about. The church to which this chapel is attached is itself a very fine one, in the style of transition, apparently of the latter part of the twelfth century; but its date has not been ascertained, and it has been ignorantly and absurdly given to the eleventh.

THE DECORATED STYLE IN FRANCE does not differ so materially from the same style in England as to require a separate description. There are comparatively few large buildings of this style in France; it appears that the greater part of their cathedrals were rebuilt in the thirteenth century, or at least the rebuilding was commenced in the early part of that century, and continued rigorously in imitation of the same style throughout the fourteenth. In many instances where the cathedral itself is of earlier date, the chapels between the buttresses, with their large windows of the Decorated style

(166), were in

troduced in the

fourteenth cen

tury, or the latter part of the thirteenth. It is worthy of notice that the ball-flower ornament, which

is almost as cha

racteristic of

the Decorated

166. Bayeux Cathedral, c. 1300.

style in England as the tooth-ornament is of the Early English, is also rarely found in France, and then not in

Decorated work, but in transition work of the end of

the twelfth century, and this more especially in Anjou and Poitou.

The Decorated style in France appears to have been changed into the Flamboyant much more rapidly than in England it gave way to the Perpendicular. Examples of pure Decorated tracery, either geometrical or flowing, distinct alike from the foliated circles and trefoils of the Early English and Early French, and from the vagaries of the Flamboyant, seem to be comparatively rare in France.

THE FLAMBOYANT STYLE is essentially different from any of the English styles, and although obviously contemporaneous with the Perpendicular, has very few features in common with it.

The varieties of Flamboyant work found in different countries, and different provinces, are almost endless, and would require a volume to describe them all. The Flamboyant of France is very different from that of Spain or of Belgium, of Holland or of Germany, and no two of these are alike.

The Flamboyant of Bretagne is quite different from that of other provinces of France. The tracery of the windows is frequently formed in such a manner as to introduce a large fleur-de-lis conspicuously in the head of the window; in other instances the outline of a heart is similarly introduced, and sometimes the heraldic device of the family who built the church is formed in the tracery.

The DOORWAYS of this style are generally very rich; the actual doors have usually flat heads, with an enriched arch, or canopy, or shallow porch over them;

and the space which in the earlier styles forms the tympanum, and is filled with sculpture, is usually

occupied by a window in Flamboyant work, as at Harfleur, Normandy (167).

The windows are of course the chief marks of the style, and are readily distinguished by the waving, flame-like character of the tracery (168). The clearstory windows of this style are generally large and important; and the back of the triforium being commonly glazed also, makes that appear a continuation of the clear-story windows.

Mr. Rickman observes, in describing this style, that "Its essence seems to be elaborate and minute ornament, and this continues until the forms and combinations are