Mirrored in this compendium is the mind of the Middle Ages, that realised its dreams and needs in the most imaginative, daring, and grandly constructive type of building that the world had ever seen--that of Gothic Architecture. It was a mind at once practical and transcendental; grappling alike with the actualities of life and with the mysteries of the universe; hungry for knowledge, uncritical in appetite, accepting the miraculous as simply as it accepted the wonder of the world that was opening out to its eager vision with an immensity of promise. It was the mind of a giant youth, still exulting in the glow of growth; audacious in courage, of vaulting imagination, with thews and sinews that achieve prodigiously. In the pursuit of abstract knowledge the age was prone to expend itself on subtleties, to entangle itself in sophistries, to lose itself in merest speculation. But when it grappled with the problems of building, this weakness was transformed into strength. Then it displayed a faculty of reasoning, apt, direct, and original, and a readiness in the practical application of mathematical principles. Of these, however, it was not bent on giving a scientific demonstration; it was satisfied to employ them in the pursuit of beauty. And its feeling for beauty, as we shall see later, was of extraordinary subtlety, expended upon relieving the structure of formality and imparting to it the variety and elasticity of a living growth. Nor was it only in this indirect way that the “Speculum Universale” was reflected in Gothic architecture. Its chapters were represented in sculptured illustrations upon the exteriors of the cathedrals, particularly around the portals, in order that all who came and went might see and learn. The statues and reliefs at Chartres comprise some two thousand figures, while Amiens presents another memorable example. Thus the Gothic Cathedral was not only the House of God; it was also the House of Man--the civic centre of his religious, social, moral, and intellectual life. CHAPTER II GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE I The term Gothic, with the suggestion of “barbarian,” was applied by men of the Renaissance to Mediæval Art. Unlike the term Romanesque, it is not a name that defines. Hence an attempt has been made to substitute the word, _ogival_, from the French ogive, which is applied to the curve of the pointed arch--a distinguishing feature of the Gothic style. But in our own language, at least, Gothic has become so embedded that it is more convenient to preserve it. We understand by it that style which was developed out of Romanesque about 1150 and continued to flourish until the development and spread of the Renaissance style.