Some of these Gothic churches took hundreds of years to build, so that the workmen who started them never lived to see them finished. Some of the most famous cathedrals are Canterbury Cathedral in England, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Cologne Cathedral took the longest of all to build, as it was not entirely finished until about seven hundred years after it was begun! The beautiful Cathedral of Rheims in France was almost destroyed by the gun-fire of the Germans in the Great War only a few years ago. Gothic churches were built, with loving care, of stone and jeweled glass. Nothing but the best was thought good enough. To-day almost all churches are still built with spires, pointed doors and some stained glass windows, and often the altar is toward the east. But although they imitate the Gothic style in these things, they seldom have stone ceilings, as Gothic churches had, nor flying buttresses, nor walls of stained glass. The ceilings are usually of wood, the spire often of wood, also, and even the whole building of wood or some cheap material. Real Gothic was enormously expensive and difficult, and nowadays people haven’t the time, the money, nor the interest to build in such a way. And that is the story of Gothic churches that the Goths had nothing to do with. [Illustration] 54 John, Whom Nobody Loved Richard, the Lion-Hearted, whom everybody loved, had a brother named John, whom nobody loved. This brother John became king, but he turned out to be a very wicked king. He is another one of the villains in history, whom we do not like, but like to hear about, and like to clap when he gets what he deserves. John was afraid that his young nephew named Arthur might be made king in his place, and so he had him murdered. Some say he hired others to do the killing; some say he murdered him with his own hands. This was a very bad beginning for his reign, but things got worse and worse as time went on.