Among those who were present at the dedication of this church was the Abbé Suger, then a gay young man of twenty years of age, who about thirty years later, in the plenitude of his power, commenced the building of the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, the west front of which was dedicated in the year 1140, and rest of the church built “stupendâ celeritate,” and dedicated in 1144. Though certainly not the earliest, St. Denis may be considered as the typical example of the earliest pointed Gothic in France. It terminated the era of transition, and fixed the epoch when the Northern pointed style became supreme, to the total exclusion of the round-arched style that preceded it. The effect of Suger’s church is now destroyed by a nave of the 14th century—of great beauty it must be confessed—which is interpolated between the western front and the choir, both which remain in all essentials as left by him, and enable us to decide without hesitation on the state of architectural art at the time of the dedication of the church. A few years later was commenced the once celebrated abbey of Pontigny, near Auxerre, probably in 1150, and completed, as we now find it, within 15 or 20 years from that date. [Illustration: 642. View in the Church of Charité sur Loire. (From a Sketch by the Author.)] Externally it displays an almost barn-like simplicity, having no towers or pinnacles—plain undivided windows, and no ornament of any sort. The same simplicity reigns in the interior, but the varied form and play of light and shade here relieve it to a sufficient extent, and make it altogether, if not one of the most charming examples of its age, at least one of the most instructive, as showing how much effect can be obtained by ornamental arrangement with the smallest possible amount of ornament. In obedience to the rules of the Cistercian order, it neither had towers nor painted glass, which last circumstance perhaps adds to its beauty, as we now see it, for the windows being small, admit just light enough for effect, without the painful glare that now streams through the large mullioned windows of the cathedral of Auxerre. To the Englishman, Pontigny should be more than usually interesting, as it was here that the three most celebrated archbishops of Canterbury— Becket, Langton, and Edmund—found an asylum when driven by the troubles of their native land to seek a refuge abroad, and the bones of the last-named sainted prelate are said still to remain in the _châsse_, represented in the woodcut, and are now and have been for centuries the great object of worship here. [Illustration: 643. Chevet, Pontigny. (From Chaillou des Barres.)]