About a century after the erection of these two early specimens, we have two others, the dates of which are ascertained, and which exhibit the pointed style in its greatest degree of perfection. The first, the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, was commenced in 1241, and dedicated in 1244;[41] the other, the church of St. Urban at Troyes, was begun in 1262, and the choir and transept completed in 1266. Both are only fragments—choirs to which it was originally intended to add naves of considerable extent. The proportions of the Sainte Chapelle are in consequence somewhat too tall and short; but the noble simplicity of its design, the majesty of its tall windows, and the beauty of all its details, render it one of the most perfect examples of the style at its culminating point in the reign of St. Louis. Now that the whole of the painted glass has been restored, and the walls repainted according to what may be assumed to have been the original design, we are enabled to judge of the effect of such a building in the Middle Ages. It may be that our eyes are not educated up to the mark, or that the restorers have not quite grasped the ancient design; but the effect as now seen is certainly not quite satisfactory. The painted glass is glorious, but the effect would certainly have been more pleasing if all the structural parts of the architecture had been of one colour. There is no repose about the interior—nothing to explain the construction. The flat parts may have been painted as they now are; but surely the shafts and ribs could only have been treated as stone. [Illustration: 644. West Front of Ste. Marie de l’Épine. (From Dusomerard.)] The other was founded by Pope Urban IV., a native of Troyes, and would have been completed as a large and magnificent church, but for the opposition of some contumacious nuns, who had sufficient power and influence even in those days to thwart the designs of the Pope himself. Its great perfection is the beauty of its details, in which it is unsurpassed by anything in France or in Germany; its worst defect is a certain exaggerated temerity of construction, which tends to show how fast, even when this church was designed, architecture was passing from the hands of the true artist into those of the mason, whose attempts to astonish by wonders of construction then and ever afterwards completely marred the progress of the art which was thought to be thereby promoted.