For one reason and another, the first country to drag itself from the intellectual torpor which had affected Western Europe for hundreds of years was France. The commercial classes, particularly in the north-west, shook themselves free from the dominion of the feudal lords earlier than their brethren, say, in Northern Italy. As material wealth increased, the French _bourgeoisie_ naturally sought for a means of expressing its pride in the communal life which it had created. But in doing so, it could not rid itself of the memory of the even deeper emotions aroused by the realization of the co-ordinating power of the Catholic Church. The cry, “A cathedral for Amiens, a city church for Rouen,” made much the same appeal to the imaginations of these Frenchmen as the idea of a Parthenon had made to the Athenians 1500 years earlier. Previously the religious buildings had mostly been abbeys, and the property of the religious orders. Now the laity desired to do what they could. The finest French cathedrals were built by the great lay guilds. Their foundations were planted in the very centre of social and communal life. In this respect, the great Gothic churches of France differ markedly from those of our own island. Nôtre Dame, Bayeux, Chartres, Bourges, Rheims, and the rest are to be contrasted with such a typical English Cathedral as Lichfield, which nestles among the trees and makes, with the Close, a little world entirely apart from the clatter and chatter of the market square. Just because a French cathedral was so direct an expression of popular emotion, it was as a rule a less balanced artistic creation. The builders of Salisbury were not driven by the pricking desire to out-top the topmost which impelled the French Gothic architects and masons. But the French cathedral voiced more truly the inner feelings of the people to whose heart-burnings and soul-aspirations it was due.