Of the Rhine churches the most remarkable are the work of the thirteenth century. S. Gereon at Cologne was commenced A.D. 1200 and vaulted in A.D. 1227. S. Cunibert was in building from A.D. 1205 to A.D. 1248, when it was consecrated. Naumburg has a nave of A.D. 1200. Limburg is early in the thirteenth century; and Bamberg the same; whilst Gelnhausen was in building from A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1370. Now all these churches are of such a character that were we to see them in France we should at once put them down as the work of the end of the twelfth century, and we should look for another class to fill up the period between A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1270, when Cologne was commenced or the nave of Strasburg completed. You will see how important these dates are when you consider that at the same time that S. Gereon and S. Cunibert at Cologne, the choir of Magdeburg, and Gelnhausen, were being built, Amiens cathedral, S. Denis and other churches of the same kind were rising throughout France, whilst in England Westminster and a host of other churches of late first-pointed were built at the same time. I do not mean to say absolutely that no transitional buildings are to be found, but only that they were of extraordinary rarity and do not afford the same evidence of natural growth that our own do. Of work really similar to our own first-pointed I can hardly give you more than one example, and that at Lübeck in the north porch of the cathedral, where--to say the least--the paternity of the work may well be doubtful. Of a later style and almost unique in its character, is the fine church of S. Elizabeth, at Marburg, a church whose date is well known (A.D. 1235 to A.D. 1283), and which affords us one of the few German examples of a style intermediate between the work at S. Gereon and that of Cologne cathedral. This will be seen by the sketches[83] which I have here, in which, however, it is to be observed that the design of the nave and apsidal terminations of the choir and transepts are the early portions of the work, and that the fittings and west front date nearer the end of the century. In the still beautiful reredos I think we may see the traces of an incipient departure from the style of the earlier work, and an approach to identity with what I must consider as the inferior art of the thorough German Gothic, as it is seen in its perfection in the cathedral at Cologne.