The Ethnic combination, which led to the marvellous perfection of Gothic art during the Edwardian period, was as fortunate as can well be conceived. It was a Celtic hierarchy and aristocracy steadied by a Saxon people; with the substratum of an earlier Celtic race, held in absolute subjection by the Saxons, but rising again, at least partially, to the surface, under the Norman domination. It was something like what happened in Athens when a Dorian race was superimposed on one of Pelasgic origin; and, although the conditions were here reversed, and the field far more limited, the result was still most successful. Within the limits of a century, the French had jumped from the tentative example of St. Denis (1144) to the perfection of the Sainte Chapelle (1244). Our St. Stephen’s Chapel was not finished till a century afterwards; but while the French hardly ever went beyond their great 13th century effort, in the 16th century we were building the Royal Chapels at Windsor, Westminster, and Cambridge. The French wars and the wars of the Roses seem to have altered the original state of affairs to a very considerable extent. The Norman nobility were decimated—almost, indeed destroyed—and another stratum of society came gradually to the surface, but this time certainly not Celtic. On the walls of the churches of the Lancastrian period we read— faintly, it must be confessed—the great Saxon motto, “The greatest possible amount of accommodation at the least possible expenditure of money and thought.” During this period, too, the cathedral and conventual hierarchies were yielding before the development of the parochial system. It may be wrong to assert that the Reformation began as early as 1400, but it is true that the seeds were then sown, which afterwards ripened into the explosion of the Commonwealth. Some very grand churches were no doubt erected during the Lancastrian period, and some beautiful additions made to existing edifices; but they were hard and mechanical as compared with that which preceded them. They were the work of accomplished masons, not wrought out with the feelings of educated gentlemen; and, though we may admire, we cannot quite adore even the best and noblest productions of their age. Under the Tudors the style went out in a blaze of glory. Nothing can be more gorgeous and fascinating than the three Royal Chapels, and the other contemporary fan-roofed buildings; but they are like the fabled dying hues of the dolphin—bright and brilliant, but unnatural and fleeting. It was the last spasmodic effort of an expiring style, and soon passed away.