Beyond this to the eastward lies the great Burgundian province, having a well-defined and well-marked style of its own, influenced by or influencing all those around it. Its most marked characteristic is what may be called a mechanical mixture of the classical and mediæval styles without any real fusion. Essentially and constructively the style is Gothic, but it retained the use of Corinthian pilasters and classical details till late in the Middle Ages: Burgundy was also in the Middle Ages the country of monasticism _par excellence_—a circumstance which had considerable influence on her forms of art. Taking, then, a more general view of the southern province, it will be seen that if a line were drawn from Marseilles to Brest, it would pass nearly through the middle of it. At the south-eastern extremity of such a line we should find a style almost purely Romanesque, passing by slow and equal gradations into a Gothic form at its other terminal. On turning to the Frankish province the case is somewhat different. Paris is here the centre, from which everything radiates: and though the Norman invasion, and other troubles of those times, with the rebuilding mania of the 13th century, have swept away nearly all traces of the early buildings, still it is easy to see how the Gothic style arose in the Isle of France, and how it spread from thence to all the neighbouring provinces. In consequence, however, of the loss of its early buildings, and of its subsequent pre-eminence and supercession of the earlier styles, the description of its features naturally follows that of the subordinate provinces, and concludes the history of the mediæval styles in France. Not to multiply divisions, we may include in the Northern province many varieties that will afterwards be marked as distinct in maps of French architecture, especially at the south-east, where the Nivernois and Bourbonnois, if not deserving of separate honours, at least consist of such a complete mixture of the Frankish and Burgundian with the Southern styles, that they cannot strictly be said to belong to any one in particular, though they partake of all. The Northern, however, is certainly the predominant element, and with that therefore they should be classed.