The architecture of France during the Middle Ages throws much light upon the history of the country. The features in which it differs from the work done in England at the same period can, many of them, be directly traced to differences in the social, political, or religious situation of the two nations at the time. For example, we find England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the hands of the Normans, a newly-conquered country under uniform administration; and accordingly few local variations occur in the architecture of our Norman period. The twelfth-century work, at Durham or Peterborough for instance, differs but little from that at Gloucester or Winchester. In France the case is different. That country was divided into a series of semi-independent provinces, whose inhabitants differed, not only in the leaders whom they followed, but in speech, race, and customs. As might be expected, the buildings of each province presented an aspect different in many respects from those of every other; and we may as well add that these peculiarities did not die out with the end of the round-arched period of architecture, but lingered far into the pointed period. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--CHURCH AT FONTEVRAULT. (BEGUN 1125.)] The south of France was occupied by people speaking what are now known as the Romance dialects, and some writers have adopted the name as descriptive of the peculiarities of the architecture of these districts. The Romance provinces clung tenaciously to their early forms of art, so that pointed architecture was not established in the south of France till half a century, and in some places nearly a whole century, later than in the north. On the other hand, the Frankish part of the country was the cradle of Gothic. The transition from round to pointed architecture first took place in the royal domain, of which Paris was the centre, and it may be assumed that the new style was already existing when in 1140 Abbot Suger laid the foundations of the choir of the church of St. Denis, about forty years before the commencement of the eastern arm of our own Canterbury. De Caumont, who in his "Abécédaire" did for French architecture somewhat the same work of analysis and scientific arrangement which Rickman performed for English, has adopted the following classification:-- { Primitive. } 5th to 10th { _Primordiale._ } century. { } { Second. } End of 10th to Romanesque Architecture. { _Secondaire._ } commencement of _Architecture Romane._ { } 12th century. { } { Third or Transition } { _Tertiaire ou de_ } 12th century. { _Transition._ }