At this time building was proceeding all over Europe with wonderful vigour. The new style gripped the imaginations of all the western nations, and wherever sufficient funds were obtainable the monkish architects were enthusiastically producing designs which were steadily carried out in stone. In Paris Notre Dame was building all through the closing years of the twelfth century and the opening of the next; at Rouen, the cathedral having been burnt in 1200, half a century of building followed; the glories of Rheims and Amiens were materialising during the same period, and almost coeval is the vast cathedral of Beauvais, which was planned to eclipse that of Amiens in every respect. The ambitious intent of the designers of Beauvais was never consummated, and in the unfinished pile standing to-day one sees the failure to build a Titan among cathedrals. All through the period known in England as Early English there is much similarity in design, as well as in ornament, on both sides of the Channel, but signs of divergence begin to appear with the development of decorative skill during the English Decorated Period, and when the French architect had reached his highest achievement in the subtly beautiful lines of the Flamboyant style, the English craftsmen, after a few brief moments in the same direction, turned about and produced their unique development in the style known as Perpendicular. Here and there in France there are suggestions of the restraint of the last phase of English Gothic, but they are almost as rare as the Flamboyant style in England. At Evreux and at Gisors one sees remarkable examples of the work of the Renaissance in the reconstruction of the west ends of these Gothic churches. The contrast of styles is, however, too marked to allow even the hand of Time to remove the challenge which the two styles fling at one another. CHAPTER XI THE NATIONAL DEFENCES About the year 1909 the administration of the French navy had fallen into a scandalous state of chaos. Battleships were so long in building that the type was beginning to be superseded before the vessels were commissioned. There was a story circulated not long ago to the effect that some one who enquired of the widow of a workman at Cherbourg what her son was going to do for a livelihood received the reply that he would work on the _Henri IV._ as his father had done. The story may not be quite true, but it indicates what people were thinking at the time. British ships are not infrequently completed within a year of their launch, but the _Dupetit Thouars_ which took the water in 1901 was only completed in 1905.