+WESTERN ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE.+ In Western Europe the unrest and lawlessness which attended the unsettled relations of society under the feudal system long retarded the establishment of that social order without which architectural progress is impossible. With the eleventh century there began, however, a great activity in building, principally among the monasteries, which represented all that there was of culture and stability amid the prevailing disorder. Undisturbed by war, the only abodes of peaceful labor, learning, and piety, they had become rich and powerful, both in men and land. Probably the more or less general apprehension of the supposed impending end of the world in the year 1000 contributed to this result by driving unquiet consciences to seek refuge in the monasteries, or to endow them richly. The monastic builders, with little technical training, but with plenty of willing hands, sought out new architectural paths to meet their special needs. Remote from classic and Byzantine models, and mainly dependent on their own resources, they often failed to realize the intended results. But skill came with experience, and with advancing civilization and a surer mastery of construction came a finer taste and greater elegance of design. Meanwhile military architecture developed a new science of building, and covered Europe with imposing castles, admirably constructed and often artistic in design as far as military exigencies would permit. +CHARACTER OF THE STYLE.+ The Romanesque architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Western Europe (sometimes called the +Round-Arched Gothic+) was thus predominantly though not exclusively monastic. This gave it a certain unity of character in spite of national and local variations. The problem which the wealthy orders set themselves was, like that of the Lombard church-builders in Italy, to adapt the basilica plan to the exigencies of vaulted construction. Massive walls, round arches stepped or recessed to lighten their appearance, heavy mouldings richly carved, clustered piers and jamb-shafts, capitals either of the _cushion_ type or imitated from the Corinthian, and strong and effective carving--all these are features alike of French, German, English, and Spanish Romanesque architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 94.--PLAN OF ST. FRONT.]